RELIEVE SCHOOLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1944, Page 4

RELIEVE SCHOOLS

EXPANSION SCHEME

PREFABRICATED CLASSROOMS

Substantial relief to overcrowded Auckland schools is now in sight, factory work being already 40 per cent complete for 45 prefabricated school units to be distributed over the district.

The idea is to assemble the schools in sections or panels. When the foundations are prepared, it will merely be necessary to nail and bolt panels together, tack on cut battens, fix the roof trusses, lay the roofing material, give the final coat of paint to exterior wood, and install the fittings. The factory has done the rest.

Exterior wall panels will be of plywood. This is a radical departure for schools. Five-ply, half an inch thick, resin-bonded, with three coats of paint, is considered able to withstand the weather and to suit the

purpose for which the schools are designed. Walls will not be lined inside. Studs will be dressed, and these, together with the interior plywood, will be stained.

Each portable school will be 33ft bv 30ft. It will comprise a classroom, 30ft by 27Jft, with a small storeroom, cloakroom and porch filling one end of the building. If thought desirable, two classrooms could be joined together. Roofs are to be the truss lean-to type, projecting about 3ft over the front to give some protection from sun and rain. Two-thirds of the front will be of pivot and hopper windows, and there will be other windows along one side. A tar composite material, three sheets thick, placed over plywood, will form the roofing. Heat is to be provided by a stove set away from the rear wall, which will have asbestos sheet protection.

Before he could start on his task of mass-produced schools, the factory contractor, Mr. P. Patten, had to erect special buildings at Penrose and to arrange a layout and organisation to suit the new methods. As each school needs 95 panels, 30 being for the floor, he has to prepare a total of 4275. Then five roof trusses are required for each school. That means 225 in all. There are hundreds of other parts.

About 30 men are engaged at the factory. Mass production means specialisation. For example, some men drive and punch the nails for the sft by 52ft floor panels. Each drives and punches over 2000 nails each day, week in, week out. " Perhaps they haven't been long enough at it for the job to seem monotonous. In another factory is a man who for 31 years has done nothing else except nail floor boards. He is considered a champion nail driver. But several at Penrose would probably run him close.

Stacks of panels, roof trusses and other parts are now ready. But that does not mean schools can be assembled straight away. Construction of some parts is ahead of others. But, at the present rate, the factory part of the Dig plan to reinforce the capacity of established schools will socn be accomplished.