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Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19644, 13 June 1929, Page 4

NOTES.

Tenders are invited by the Lytieltoa Harbour Board until 4 p.m. on Thursday. July 4th. 1929, for lengthening the ladder of the dredge Canterbury. Messrs Ellis and Hall, architect?, have recently let contracts for the following work:—Extensions and alterations to house, Fendalton, to Mr E. C. Gravestonj'brick shops, Lower Biccarton, to Mr G. L. Bull. Tenders arc invited for the excavation, concrete work, and back filling of a hole for a submerged tank at the Vacuum Oil Company's store, Moorhouse avene. Messrs Collins and West, architects, 81 Hereford street, announce that the date for receiving tenders for the new building at Connon Hall has been extended until 12 noon on Friday, June 14th.

The new rooms in the storey which is being added to the United Service Hotel will be ready for Carnival Week in November. The outside walls and the roof are in position, and the workmen are now engaged in demolishing the old roofs. In spite of the fact that these were erected in 18S5, the timber is in perfectly sound order. Formerly several 400-gallon tanks supplied the water to the hotel, but a large oOOOgallon tank has now replaced them. The top floor will consist of suites and bedrooms, eacli with a bathroom. Running water will not only be supplied to each of the new bedrooms, but the majority of the rooms in the old part of the house will also be supplied. Most of the bedrooms will be equipped with telephones very shortly. The electrician (Mr O. W. Sandelin) is engaged on the installation of the electrical equipment. The elevator will be ex. tended to the top floor within the next day or two.

The demolition of a tull, substautiailybuilt brick and steel building is a saddening spectacle. It seems as though so much effort and money were being thrown away. When such a building has reinforced roof and floors the task becomes, if not a difficult one, at all events hard and tedious. It is not often that Wellington sees a comparatively modern three-storey brick and steel structure being levelled to the ground, but that is to be witnessed any day now in the demolition of H. Nimmo and Co.'s block at the Willis and Bond street corner. The brick-work is being disintegrated from the interior and sent down by means of schutes direct into lorries. Bond street west has been closed for vehicular traffic for a matter of six weeks to enable the side wall to be demolished in safety, whilst a temporary overhead protection (in timber) has been erected in that street for the protection of pedestrians, and the plateglass windows of the show-room. A new and up-to-date five-storeyed warehouse is to be erected on the site.

Modern decorators are fixing a st/ern eye upon white ceilings. They say they are senseless and old-fashioned. Ceilings are now being papered with original and most successful results. One room in a London house had walls of duck egg blue and a black ceiling patterned with tiny oranges, and a well-known hostess has painted the ceiling of her bedroom silver, with a decoration of vivid blue stars.

It may not generally be known that round the spot where the springs rose in Bath, the famous English watering place, the Romans built a large masonry well or reservoir, octagonal in shape, and measuring 50 by 40 feet, in which the hot water collected. On the south side of this reservoir, at a lower level, and running east and west, they constructed a chain of baths with masonry walls, lining the bottoms with lead weighing 401b to the square foot, much of which is in perfect condition now. From the reservoir they laid lead pipes of great thickness to the various baths, These pipes were made of lead sheet bent round and soldered or melted along the joint, the ends being connected by lead joints, wiped just as lead pipe joints are wiped today. The springs deliver about 500.000 gallons a day, and since that was far more than was required for their use, the Romans constructed ar.. oval masonry culvert from the reservoir, with branch connexions to the baths, to carry away surplus water towards the River Avon below. That culvert is in perfect condition still, and is used to-day for the purpose for whictt it was originally intended. One portion of the duct consisted of 4in oak encased m lead.