BUILDING HOUSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25941, 6 September 1945, Page 8

BUILDING HOUSES

SEEKING NEW IDEAS EXPERIMENTS BEING MADE “ With the present shortage of timber and of houses, the Housing Construction Department is exploring all new ideas of constructional methods which appear to have merit.” said the director of housing, Mr G. W. Albertson, in an interview in Auckland. In pursuance of this policy, a number of experimental houses were being built in Wellington, Auckland, and other parts of the country. Many inventions and suggestions for overcoming the shortage of houses were received by the department, and it was felt that it was a departmental duty to investigate any of merit, Mr Albertson continued. Sometimes, however, it was very hard to persuade a contractor to experiment with someone else's invention. The department, therefore, welcomed suggestions from contractors who were sufficiently confident to try out their own ideas. In such cases, provided the suggestions appeared to have merit, the contractor was allowed to experiment. When the development of a new type of steel shuttering for use in place of wooden boxing or wooden or steel-lined shutters for concrete work was referred to him, Mr Albertson said that the department was arranging for the construction of a set for the erection of 10 experimental houses at the Hutt, Wellington. Experiments were being carried out in the use of concrete wallboard and pre-cast reinforced concrete, said Mr Albertson. The department was also experimenting with the use of Oamaru stone to discover how far from Oamaru it was economic to build in this material. Similarly, the possibilities of Putaruru stone were being investigated. “Although we have made many experiments, we have still not discovered a cheaper house than the weatherboard type,” Mr Albertson concluded. New Zealand was a timber country, and its building tradition was established in timber. So far, the use of bricks and concrete had not replaced timber here, because of the extra cost involved.