READY-MADE HOMES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19009, 9 May 1924, Page 9

READY-MADE HOMES

AMERICAN SECTION HOUSES FIVE ROOMS FOR £l5O. Reference to the advantage of what may be called “the ready-made house’’ was made by the President of tbe Arbitration Court, Mr. Justice Frazer, during the hearing of a matter between the timber companies and the Auckland Timber Workers’ Union. After a statement by the secretary, Of the union, Mr. E. Phelan, as to the cost of timber for four and fiveroomed houses, His Honour said he did not know why builders, timber merchants, and sawmillers did not follow the practice of the United States. There those industries formed a syndicate and manufactured a wooden house in sections. They undertook to supply a five-roomed house, complete with glass, hardware, roof iron, nails and paint for 535 dollars, or a little over £lOO. For the sum named the buyer got the house complete in sections and ready to erect. If that could be done in the United States, continued His Honour, surely they ought to be able to do something in New Zeadand, and the question was whether it would pay to import wooden houses, paying the duty on them. Supposing the freight and duty on such ah American house came to 50 per cent.; it would be a little over £l5O for the structure when landed in New Zealand. Nowadays they could not get a house for so low a sum, quite apart from the labour of erection. All that was needed in those sectional buildings was to put them together, and he supposed a carpenter could do that in a very short time. Mr Phelan admitted that the average working man in Now Zealand like', to go into a house a little beyond his means. His Honour said that was so. The American houses looked quite well on paper, but there was nothing fancy about them, and no doubt the design could be modified. He thought the. average man when he found he could get a standard house at about one-third the usual price would probably put aside his own ideas and buy a good serviceable home at a cheap rate. Mr S. E. Wright, who appeared for the employers, said he knew of an instance in New Zealand where four and five-roomed concrete cottages had been erected. Some of these were semi-detached, two houses being built together. They had a: water supply and a drainage scheme, so that the workers living in them were very comfortable. Those cottages were let at 10s a week, and the proprietors made no loss.