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King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4814, 24 July 1939, Page 8

To minimise danger from fumes likely to cause fire or poisoning, garages erected in future in Christchurch as part of the actual construction of a house will have to have their walls and ceilings made of brick, stone or concrete. The Christchurch City Council has decided to draft a bylaw providing that where garages are incorporated in, or added to, houses the construction should be on those lines. The council’s housing and town planning committee recently sought the advice of the medical officer of health (Dr. T. Fletcher Telford) on the problem. He stated his opinion that garages attaches to houses should be constructed of concrete, or if made of wood that the garage should be lined with impervious material thoroughly sealed at all joints. Dr. Telford also stated that every garage, connected to a house or built serarately, should have ample ventilation. He attached an extract of an American publication from the Laboratory of Applied Physiology, Yale University, stating: “A rough estimate of the volume of carbon monoxide that an automobile may produce is one cubic foot a minute per 20 horse power. This is sufficient to render the atmosphere of a single car garage deadly within five' minutes if the engine is run while the garage doors are closed.”

A continual rolling sound in the middle of the night puzzled a patient in the New Plymouth Hospital recently, and when he located its source he received a surprise. On the table beside his bed a mouses’ tail could be seen sticking out of an egg cup and inside the cup the front paws of the mouse were moving at racing pace. The animal was getting nowhere, but its paws were revolving three round pieces of barley sugar in the bottom of the cup at a great rate.