"UNIT" HOUSES'

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 56, 29 November 1919, Page 9

"UNIT" HOUSES'

AN ENTERPRISE OF STEEL AND CONCRETE. A concrete town is being built at Braintree, in Essex- Describing a visit to see the early stages of the undertaking' a "Westminster Gazette" representative says: We inspected a house which is already occupied, Vatehed bricklayers mortaring block to block in unfinished houses, and examined tho plant for obtaining gravel (witli ail American steam shovel), for mixing tho gravel with sand and cement, and for making "unit" blocks. '

TJiis "town" is being erected for the employees of tlio Crittall Manufacturing Company, Limited, through whoso steel windows the tenants will look out on tho world. The Braintree Co-operative Homes, Limited, a public utility society under tho Act, have called in the Unit Construction Company, Limited, to build the houses Tho house we saw was two-stoned, with ft flat roof. The exterior resembled stone, was simple, and not unplensing. It cost ,£'o7B to build, with a.n additional i3O for outhouses and cement courts; about a shilling per cubic foot. It has two sitting-rooms, four bedrooms, and a bath-room, and a general air of no nonsense. There is a little of Miss Jlurdstone, indeed, about that house. What is not concreto is steel. The window frames are of steel, so are the cupboards, so are the doors and stairease. It seems superfluous to add that the liouso is fireproof. Also the house is said to be "cool in summer and warm in winter"—like a tube railway. Thero are to be sixty-six houses on the estate, of nine types, ranging from ,£7OG (plus JE-10) to ,£512. The block-malting machines turn out 5000 blocks a day. About 1000 blocks go to make a cottage- Thero is no waste, for a yard is taken as tho unit, and every standardised component is a multiple of that up it. Nothing is "left over." "Tlio simplest possible construction, cay the contractors: "a foot rule is iiot even necessary." I asked a director to I ell me exactly how long a period was required in which to build a "unit" house of the typewe bad seen. Put i" that form, apparentlv. the question was not. easily answered. "Given a clear field on a largo scheme," ho replied, "wo can erect 100 bouses in. seven months."-/