Random reminder

Press, 20 October 1987, Page 31

Random reminder

SCOPE FOR REDEVELOPMENT

Tourists with trades experience are frequently surprised to see New Zealand houses in the process of construction. Our wooden frame buildings are immensely too strong by some overseas standards. 100 x 50 where 20 x 20 would do! exclaim our visitors. Diagonal bracing as well as wallboard! Rebated studs! Gangnail trusses you could build a bridge with! The benefits to us of this apparent over-design are, first, that houses do last for a hundred years, except those clad in certain proprietary, claddings; second, &at young couplflPcan knock out walls

and put in I-beams without being killed by the roof; third, that when the family becomes teenaged, spare bedrooms can be created in the attic. The Jodrell Bank radio-telescope, a 76-metre steerable dish, was built on this principle of double-the-reinforcement-and-add-10 per cent back in 1956. In 1971, its "life” being over, it was simply rereflectorised and put back into service. Now in 1987 called the Lovell telescope, it is to be dished up again. It will carry on into the next century. Sir Bernard Lovell and his engineer Charles Husband are not, alas, New Zealanders. Not for the first time, the facts l&e got in the way of a good story.