STANDARDISED HOUSES.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1925, Page 9

STANDARDISED HOUSES.

GOOD HOMES AT CHEAP COST. THE FRANKTON FACTORY. Among the members of the Wellington City Council’s Housing Committee who were most impressed with the visit to the Railway Department’s settlement at Frankton recently was Mr. R. Semple, who says that he sees in the Government system of standardised bouse building as carried out there the most practical solution of the problem yet offered in New Zealand. All the wooden parts of’ the 90 houses erected, at Frankton, and at many places in the Auckland district, have been cut out by special machinery at this Government mill, established for the purpose in the vicinity of the site of the railway township. Joists, uprights, rafters, flooring struts, etc., are all cut to size and stored away in great racks so that when an order comes along for one or two houses all the attendant has to do is to get hold of the schedule and pull out so many pieces from this rack and so many from that until the schedule is exhausted. Nothing could be simpler. Every piece is numbered, and what is more, every piece is planed—even the roof timbers—so that the timber can be handled with the greatest expedition. No sawing at all is required. It is only a matter of nailing the pieces in their right places. “We were told up there*” said Mr. Semple, “than on a recent occasion a house was wanted for a ganger somewhere down the line. The parts were all loaded on a truck, and in three weeks that house was completed and occupied. I believe in the system, because in the first place it cuts the cost of a five-roomed house down by £l7O and provides for really comfortable little places that are by no means jerrybuilt. We were told—l do not knowhow true it is—that the Railway Department will have fulfilled all its requirements for houses in the North Island in about two years' time. “I was wondering whether this mill could not be made available for the various municipalities in this island. Why should not a double shift be employed working the mill sixteen hours out" of the twenty-four, instead of only eight. It might be well worth a try out.”