CHEAPER STATE HOUSES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 7

CHEAPER STATE HOUSES

CHRISTCHURCH MAN’S NEW PROCESS SAVING OF £BO TO £9O CLAIMED Three State houses, at present being built in brick, will be turned over to a Christchurch builder and contractor for outside plastering by a new mechanical process. The builder, who claims to be able to save between £BO and £9O on the cost of each house, will use compressed air to force the plaster on to the walls of the building. Applied through a machine developed and built in Christchurch the plaster is claimed to last, unfaded in colour, for at least 20 years. A similar method of applying piaster has been in use in the United States for some time, but improvements have been made for the local process. The main saving by the method is through the smaller number of men required on the job. If a similar job was done by hand (the usual method) two men would work for six days to complete an ordinary bungalow. By the mechanical method it is claimed that one man would be occupied one day on a similar house. Materials used in the process are the same as in hand plastering—cement and sand. The sand is coloured permanently and colours thus do not fade.

Mr P. C. Venter, who developed the method, is at present working on a Christchurch building 100 foot long and 54 foot high. He expects to complete it within 10 (Jays, allowing five days of that total for cleaning and scraping down. This is the second job he has had for the new method, but experiments dated back two years, he said yesterday.