NEW COTTAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 134, 8 June 1932, Page 9

NEW COTTAGES.

MARRIED UNEMPLOYED MEN. NEAT AND SERVICEABLE. QUICK JOB AT OTAHUITU. So designed as to give the maximum interior utilisable space, 25 cottages have been ordered by the Public Works Department for the use of unemployed married men, and they are at present being built at, the Otahuhu railway workshops. Officials at Otahuhu this morningsaid that they had had no official information as to the destination of the cottages, but it is understood that they are meant for the 10-acre farm plan, and that the first batch are bound for

Whangarei. The cottages will be built solidly of the 'beet of rimu. Each will have four rooms, and a small bathroom 7ft Oiu by 4f 6in, a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. The kitchen is 7ft by 12ft, the living room 9i"t by 14ft, and the two bedrooms, each Oft by lift. In the kitchen, besides the stove, are the requirements for washing, the copper and the tubs and a sink. There is a, fireplace in the living room. The houses are match-lined inside throughout, with rusticated boards outside. They are roofed with corrugated iron, which is bolted down, not nailed. Kauri is used for the washing tubs, and totara for the sashes.

Twenty-five houses comprise this first order, and 6000 ft of timber is used for each. That makes a total of 150,000 ft.

Complete Cottage as Guide. The scene in one of the large workshops at Otahuhu this morning was one of great activity. Only one cottage was actually built there on the floor. The others lay in neatly piled sections. The plan of construction was explained by the works manager, Mr. A. E. I'. Walworth. One complete cottage was built according to the. blueprint, and then jiggs and templates were taken of each section. With these as guides, or,

models, the rest was easy. The templates were taken over to the mill, which adjoins the construction floor, and the various timbers were cut into all the shapes and sizes needed. All that was necessary back on the construction floor was to fit the various already sawn timbers together. For instance, the walls were in sections, marked "wall, section 1" or "section 2" as the case might be. The timbers sawn for that particular section were taken from the mill to the floor, and then merely fitted to that particular frame marked "wall, section 1" or "2."

Complete Workshop. There was a template for every conceivable part of a house, from the very two-inch long wedges for the window frames to the rafters for the roof. A truck-load of timber would come in from the yards outside the mill. Some of it would be taken on an electric "horse" to one machine, and some to another until it was distributed all over ■ the floor to the various machines that were to treat it as required. On a little electric saw ■someone was even cutting out wedges for the windows. There were exact measurements for everything; and out at Otahuhu they have machines for everything that might conceivably have to be done with wood.

As this was a "rush job," as one of the men termed it, there was a good deal of sawdust about, but not as much as would have been expected. Just over the circular saws there are suction pipes, and the sawdust and shavings are sucked away to feed the furnaces, which in turn steam-heat the workshops. Finished in a Week. It is only a week ago since the Public Works Department gave in the order, and the cottages will be finished in a week, eo that progress lias heen rapid. Mr. Walworth explained that it took five days to make the jiggs and the tcm-> plates, in which time, to the casual onlooker, it would have seemed that nothing had been done; but once they were finished, it was plain sailing-. Besides providing a home for some unemployed married man, the building Of these cottages has given work to carpouters »J.o otherwise *aigbt**™ bee « Jaid off. Altogether the little house*, t they look anything like the o„ 0 ; ,lreadv practically completed, will | )0 serviceable and comfortable.