SEVEN-DAY HOUSES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 23 August 1926, Page 10

SEVEN-DAY HOUSES

EX-SERVICE BUILDERS.

MODEL BESIDESCE FOR £3OO. LONDON, July -5. Fifty out-of-work men who fought at Zeebrugge, alii unskilled builders, started yesterday in Westminster on house const ruction.

They are trying to erect a single two-storey six-roomed workman’s dwelling in less than seven and a half days —the record held by skilled labour in Philadelphia, U.S.A. "The site on which we are working,” a Daily Chronicle representative was informed yesterday, “is owned by the London County Council in Horseferry Road and Dean Bradley Street, Westminster. For six months the house will be used for demonstration purposes, and will then be pulled down. ■ ‘Work was started on the house at daybreak to-day, and we shall knock off at 1() o’clock to-night. And, long before the seven and a half days have gone, we have every reason to believe that the house will be finished —and furnished. “The site was cleared this morning, the foundations dug, and the concrete poured iu before 11 o’clock. Then hundreds of oiled hollow steel forms were erected over the foundations and covered with a steel reinforced ceiling. “During the afternoon the forms were 'fil’ied with lightning cement. Tomorrow morning the cement will have set, the tie-pins will be knocked away, the steel forms removed, and the walls of the first storey will be upstanding, and doorways and window spaces allowed for. The process will be repeated to construct the second storey. “The mixing of the concrete is by patent machine, and l to bring the whole system to perfection has cost nearly £400,000. As the material is mixed it is automatically conveyed through wide piping to any part of the skeleton house. “It is estimated' that the cost of erecting the present model house will not be more than £300.”