HOMES FOR WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 123, 25 May 1920, Page 8

HOMES FOR WORKERS

PROGRESS AT MIRAMAR

QUANTITY METHODS IN HOUSEBUILDING INITIAL DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME; The housing problem in Wellington is familiar enough to the 'public both through the press and by actual practical experience. Most citizens have coma up against it more or less during the last year or two, particularly in' the last year. The shortage of hpuses is so manifest that it has become an accepted fact, a, matter of every; day comment like the weather, something that looks like beingl with the citizen for some time to come yet. ' Meanwhile, there has been an outcry: "What is the Government doing?" "Where are the workers" dwellings .promised us?" and so forth. All the answer most people get in the shape of a. definite concrete fact is a criticism of what may be seen of the workers' dwell-. ings going up at Miramar, off Broadway, by the golf links. The criticism has been both of the design of the house and 1 the slow progress made in the building. It has been said that the houses are too small, the rooms poky, and the air space around them limited. The reply is that the houses had to be designed on an economic basis to meot the requirements of the people who will occupy them. Limitations of. rent-—buying the house by instalments —to something not much over £1 a week, inevitably limit the amount that may. be spent on a house, and anybody knows that it is .impossible to provide a ■ mansion in these days on such conditions. The alternative is for the Government to subsidise the houses, and this was not deemed advisable. ■ Actually, there are in the cheaper design three rooms averaging 14ft square., a backbedroqm 14ft x 9ft, and a small bedroom—half that size— suitable for j>. child. AH the houses are fully equipped with bathroom,' wfehhouse, and what are known as "all modern conveniences." The sections are more than standa-rd 40ft frontage by 132 feet depth, quite as much as most men could look after in their spare time. A few houses are also being built of a more spacious design, with more and llarger rooms, but they will be priced accordingly. READY FOR CARPENTERS.

I It is rather with the slow rate of progress that the public has found fault, but there also the same causes which have delayed building generally have operated—the shortage of labour, shortage of cement, shortage of timber, and other essential material, and, furthermore, certain difficulties with the local authority. Even now the street sewering for the houses has yet to be done, and this devolves on the local authority, which does not appear to be in a position to expedite the work. However, at the present time the basic obstacles to progress seem all to have been satisfactorily surmounted^ Through the agency • of the Board of Trade adequate supplies of cement were secured; gravel from the Defence Reserve, of a quality ideal for concrete, is being carried by heavy motor trucks lent by the Defence Department to the Labour Department at the rate of over thirty tons a day right on to the job; joinery, such as windovv sashes, door frames, etc., is coming in fairly well; and, on the whole, the prospects for the acceleration of the pace of construction are bright. A Post reporter, who visited the scene of operations yesterday afternoon, was impressed with the improvement in the situation. At .both ends of the long stretch of sections along Broadway houses are approaching the roofing stage. Messrs. Swanston and Ashton on their i contract just by the Miramar Golf j House,, have three houses nearly ready I for the carpenters, and about , eleven ' others in various stages of erection with timber and joinery, beside those in the j more advanced state of construction. | These houses are of the hollow concrete I block construction, the blocks being | made in moulds on the spot. At the other end, Mr. J. Cavanagh has made i substantial progress with his contract ' for six of the larger and more spacious dwellings of a more expensive type. These are constructed of solid tongued and grooved-concrete blocks.

OVER FORTY FOUNDATIONS LAID

It is, however,' in Central Miramar, , off /the main tramway route and away from .the public eye, that the most remarkable progress lias been made. Here, Mr. H. E. Manning has a contract for fifty-one houses of No. 24 design—the cheaper worker's dwelling—and they are to be built -with machinery of his own invention in monolithic reinforced concrete. If anything, Mr. Manning has had more than his share of the troubles attending the execution of a big building contract in these times, when there is the keenest competition for supplies of all kinds. But he has applied the methods of quantity production and standardisation with great success to his building operations at Miramar. To get the special machinery made he had to go .to different manufacturers for different parts ; there was the greatest difficulty in securing steel for the reinforcement, and he suffered also from the same shortages of other materials. In the meantime, he did with the aid of a clever and energetic foreman, the work that could be done—the laying of foundations. An . original device was adopted to facilitate the work. Instead of pegging out with., measurements each house separately, he had a template made the exact dimensions of the ground plan of the house, and. this was laid down in place and the outline traced on the ground, so that the trench for the foundations could be dug immediately. This one template served for all the houses, and special boxing further expedited matters. The result is that to-day Mr. Manning has the foundations complete of no fewer than 44 houses. Damp courses are rapidly being laid, and the flooring beams installed. Everything is ready for the building of the walls, I if the wo*d "building" can be used of a ( process of pouring concrete into moulds, a, process far quicker than laying bricks or blocks. APPLYING MACHINERY. . The special machinery comes into play from the foundations upwards. It, consists mainly in a mould, the shape of the walls, made of steel plates held together by patented devices and quickly installed and quickly removed and transferred to another building. The concrete, of a suitable mixture, made mechanically also, is poured into the moulds and sets in tiers. When one tier has set, 'another is added until the work is com plete. Those connected with the pro cess have every confidence in its sue cess and consider that it will revolutionise the building of standard houses. The rate of building contemplated, when everything is in full working order, is extraordinary, and, if the process justifies expectations, the acuteriess of the housing problem should disappear before long. The reinforcement hi also a feature of note in a country where earthquakes are still a danger. Vertical rods embedded in the foundations are interlaced with horizontal steel, and the whole monolith should defy the natural agencies of destruction. It might he thought that • the standard concrete I houiß would make for didpUMing unj,-

formity in aspect. This is avoided m two ways. First, the houses are not built on one frontage line, but are set back at intervals in a sort of crescent form, one house being further to the front of the section than its neighbour. In the second placo the concrete walls are capable of being finished with rough cast in different colours and in at least three different designs. Competent architects are satisfied that' in these ways sufficient .variety may be lent to these colonies of workers' dwellings to avoid the uniformity which is the curse of mean streets in the Old .World. It may be added that the sections in central Miramax are much larger than those on Broadway, being. over forty feet frontage with two hundred feet depth. It is impossible at the present time to state precisely when ,tb» TMiramar dwellings will be Teady £or occupation, but they should be becoming available, at the present prospect, from about September or October onwards in increasing numbers. There are nearly a hundred of them altogether, and the Labour Department is also building elsewhere in the city in single houses, and at Petone Mr, Manningi has a contract for fifteen dwellings. The completion of the whole scheme should materially help towards solving the housing problem.