Quantity Production in Houses.

Progress, Volume XV, Issue 7, 1 March 1920, Page 737

Quantity Production in Houses.

Mr. F. 0. Wade, Agent-General for- British Columbia, says that the problem of supplying Great Britain with houses, to say nothing of rebuilding Bur ope, can only be met in one way—by mass construction. Henry Ford, according to recent dispatches, is opening up factories in Copenhagen, and we shall soon have under our noses an illustration of what mass construction means. Mass construction was the secret of Henry Ford’s success in producing a motor car a minute. The superiority of machine over man in every form of structural endeavour is no longer questioned. Built-to-order units, even to the smallest detail, have long been recognised as the only successful method of constructing steel buildings. The same principle has been adopted in the construction of wooden houses, and if Europe is to be rebuilt it can only be by the use, of material which lends itself so readily to the built-to-order process. If mass construction can be used so successfully in structures of iron and steel, how much more easily can it be adopted in producing thousands of houses in a minimum of time! Let me indicate how mass construction works out in practice.. To begin with, artistic designs are made and carefully worked out by architect and builder. The plans are so drawn as to combine beauty with utility. The same .plans can be used many times over in multiplying houses for different districts, and they are so numerous that they need not be duplicated in a single district. The immense amount of necessary cutting and sawing in ordinary work is saved. A waste of 18 per cent, on lumber cut on the handsaw plan is avoided. The buildings are cut to fit, so that the purchaser does not lose an inch in waste material. Nor , is there any difficulty in proving that ample material can be obtained for the task in hand. If I may speak of that part of Canada with which I am most nearly associated, I may say that British Columbia possesses 650,000,000 acres ,of virgin forest, and a stand of saw lumber of over 400,000,000,000 ft. board measure. In strength values for structural timber, fibre stress, modulus of rupture, stiffness, and elasticity, as against southern pines, British Columbia fir takes first place-with many points to spare. ' • \ -