SHAVINGS

Evening Star, Issue 21218, 27 September 1932, Page 2

SHAVINGS

LATEST BATHROOM EQUIPMENT. Bath equipment consisting of hot unci cold tups, together with a hand shower, is the latest addition to modern plumbing showrooms. A neat lever between the two taps cuts off the water supply to tho ordinary outlets, and directs it through tho shower, which is a tube of flexible steel, fitted with a grip of white enamel. The entire fixture takes up little more space than a simple bath-tap fitting. * * * * NOVEL FIRESIDE FURNITURE. Fireside furniture from the most recent British Industries Fair has reached New Zealand. One novel set is camouflaged as a brass soldier on parade. The up-turned hearth brush forms the toppiece of his helmet, the poker is in the shape of a sword, and a pair of tongs are hidden in his hollow body. Other sets are in the form of coloured Dutch boys and brass cats with coloured bows. * * » » LOG SPLITTING GUN, One of the simplest and most useful tools to arrive on the local market is known as the artillery log splitting gun, of great interest to every farmer and every post splitter. It is merely a round steel bar, bored to take a charge of powder, and pointed to allow it to bo driven into the log. Tho fuse is inserted in a touch-hole drilled in the side of the gun. It is claimed that with this instrument labour and materals are cut to a minimum. # # « « ECONOMY IN SCHOOL BUILDINGS. Sir Donald Maclean, President of the Board of Education, speaking at tho opening of a new' senior girls’ high schools at Lowestoft, said that the findings and general experience of school architects were that economy results not so much from methods alternative to ordinary construction as in employing ordinary methods in the lightest possible form compatible with sound construction and sanitation in the simplest finish, and in employment of inexpensive but serviceable fittings. Local authorities, in accepting these principles in their entirety, could make savings amounting to very large suras on the normal cost of schools. Timberframed schools could be so finished and constructed as to warrant a loan period of twenty-five years and to show an initial saving in capital cost of about 33 1-3 per cent. Such buildings were, of course, not wooden buildings, as ordinarily understood by the term. The board was willing to approve and recognise such schools as part of the permanent school supply. They were quickly erected and adaptable to advances in educational ideas. The keynote in economy was lighter construction and simplicity. By lightness of construction, standardisation of units, and attention to the necessary detail, schools could be produced, and in many districts were being produced, which contributed to the architectural amenities of the neighbourhood far more than tho solid and pretentious buildings of some years ago.