NEW POST OFFICE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4833, 22 May 1925, Page 2

NEW POST OFFICE.

THE PAEKOA BUH.DiN’G. PROGRESS BEING MADE. Tlie contractors (Messrs Robinson and Beagley) are making steady pr >- gress in the erection of the r.ew post office building on the Normanby Road and Princes Street triangle at Paeror,. The excavation work has beei completed, and to-day the site presents a scene of industry, bustle, and noise. A network of boxing to hold the concrete has been built, and running parallel to this a staging has been erected to carry the men with the wheelbarrows containing the concrete. Some thirty men, comprisin', carpenters, labourers, and concreteworkers, are employed on the job, and each man has his allotted task and has to work systematically to keep pace with the concrete mixer. This machine is driven by a benzine motor engine and is turning out concrete at the rate of nearly sixty yards in u day of 8% hours, or approximately six yards an hour. Next week a, second mixer is to commence operation, and will mix and distribute concrete for the vault, which is an excavation nine feet deep on the Normanby Roal side of the site. SoE’e idea of the wonk that has t < be done can be gained when it is staed that about 300 yards of concrete will be required for the foundations of the building alone. Metal for t<4 concrete is being received daily from Te Aioha, and is the best quality procurable, being the hard blue rock. Approximately 180,000 bricks will be required for the building. These are being manufactured Te Awamutu. Sand to the amount of 300 yards is at present being parted from the Puke to the site, and 60' tons of cement (1080 bags) will be used in the course bf construction.

In an interview with Mr Robibns'on yesterday it ivas learned that the work on the foundations of the building is expected to be completed within the next ten days, and the main outside walls will then be commenced. Progress on the work has been considerably hampered by the recent wet weather, and the difficulty experienced in securing rough carpenters and suitable labourers.