RUBBER IN BUILDINGS

Grey River Argus, 4 January 1940, Page 8

RUBBER IN BUILDINGS

A CONQUEROR OF NOISE. Many New (Zealanders have been pleasantly inticduced to the noiseless comfort oi rubber on the flooiS and stairs of nodern buildings. As time goes on nibber is coming more and more into< the building industry.

“While the npst obvious building use for rubber?,is in flooring, a full list of the posdbilities would fill at least a page ofiimall type,” remarks Philip Scholbergijn "The Architectural Review.” at foundation level the tint application wou’i be the rubber - composition dampcourses, while th) halyards of the flagstaff at the might quite well be rubber impregnated so that their weather resistancs was improved. Between these twe levels its applications vary front fie small fittings such as door stop! and chain pulls to the more strucnral aspects such as rubber roofing tompounds, waterroofing solutions 1(1 damp walls or rubber mats tor tie insulation of machinery or floors not to mention the various adhesivp for fixing tiles and other material! and the very large field of eleckcal equipment employing large quantities of rubj| ber for insulation purposes. A “As a means of foviding a goifl key for rendered flnihes on concreM walling, or for prodicing a textuH which will allow the concrete left untreated, rubbeihas been ly used as a rorm filing, and has W .reasonably good Ufe. Specialty /shaped strips or tube! are tacked tol the inner face of the shuttering, and’ remain embedded in the wall face when the shuttering is struck. When the rendering is to bd applied th 3 rubber strips are flexilie enough to be easily removable ant an undercut .groove is left to providqa key. Used in sheet form as a stutter lining rubber can be made t< produce a light texture in the will face and thus save expensive bush hammering and other treatments, i "From thk point of Hew of the user perhare; the greatest advantage of rubber looping is its high resistance to abrasion. Under standardised tests rubber corned out very nearly top of the fist with only a few materals such as vitreous tile above it. ; Nearly all technicians concerned With the rubber industry will readily v admit .that laboratory tests do nofi, always give reliable results, but ii one bathroom in this country therd is a piece of rubber flooring which has been walked over by at least sk million people, this figure being luthenticated by the fact that the lubber in question was first used at we turnstiles of an international exibition. Rubber manufacturers claim that, under normal a mod quality rubber floor, properly (laid, will last for anything from iventy to forty years, and that though’the initial cost may be somewhat hither than for other coverings, rubbej will show a saving over a period of years. For the architect the chiefladvantage of rubber is that it gbes him complete freedom to designthe sort of pattern he wants, and thk colour variations are almost unlimted.”

,Some curiosity<|ias been aroused among visitors toPourerere Beach, Hawke’s Bay,, oven the last few days by the inexplicable Presence of a par-tially-wrecked car bn the road, several miles from thefoeach. The car, which is an old ir»del, is tilted up against the hi'lsidebound a bend in the road, and appeal to be fairly extensively damaged. How the vehicle reached this positions and why it remains there, are mjkeries to which no solution has been (forthcoming/ /