WAR AGAINST NOISE

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 January 1941, Page 8

WAR AGAINST NOISE

RUBBER FLOORINGS. ' Plenty of people have pleasantly tested the comfortable silent rubber floorings of modern buildings in New Zealand. In recent years architects and buildings have shown an increasing disposition to experiment with rubber, not only as a floor covering, but in wainscoting, panelling, and other directions (remarks a contributor to the “Architect, Builder and Engineer”). Thanks to recent advances in the art of compounding, it is being more readily appreciated that in rubber the architectural and building professions have a product which is capable of varied artistic effects which can be made to tone with general schemes of decoration.

Rubber flooring may be in large sheets or small squares, commonly referred to as tiles, or where special ornamental effect is, desired, the various coloured rub.ber sheets may be cut to any shape and fitted as an inlaid pattern. In this way complicated design and lettering can be incorporated. It is seldom that rubber flooring is laid . with an even i shade or tone, as with other floor coverings. It is the universal custom to provide a border to give the whole a finish. The border may consist of tiles or strips of a darker colour, or the effect may be obtained by banding. Apart from the various coloured tiles, the rubber itself may be given a dappled oi’ marbled surface. As it happens, the means of obtaining marbled effects with rubber are relatively easy, and the, results particularly good in this medium. The rubber may be laid on any I sub-floor, either concrete, wood or other material, but suitable precautions must be taken to render the concrete as far as possible dampproof, and in the case of wood, conditions liable to cause warping and contraction of the boards must be avoided, as otherwise there is a tendency. to split the rubber where it is firmly attached to the wood. Attention must also be drawn to the permanent and artistic properties of

rubber flooring. This quality of permanency is so marked, especially in the thicker types, that the material is being placed, in a structural as well as a decorative sense, in the same category as marble, magnesite, mosaic, and other materials of lasting character. In proof of this, it has recently been fitted over an extensive area flush with a marble border, with a specially moulded stair tread for a marble Staircase. 1