SEVEN-DAY HOUSES

Shannon News, 17 August 1926, Page 4

SEVEN-DAY HOUSES

EX-SERVICE BUILDERS. MODEL RESIDENCES FOR £3OO. LONDON, July 5. Fifty out-of-work men who fought at Zeebrugge, all' unskilled builders, started yesterday in Westminster on house construction. They are trying to erect a single two-storey six-roomed workman’s dwelling in less than seven and ahalf days—the record held by skilled labour in Philadelphia, U.3.A. “The site on which *we are working,” a “Daily Chronicle” .representative was informed yesterday,' “is owned by the L.C,C. in Horseferrj' Road and Dean Bradley Street, Westminster. For six months the house will be used for demonstration purposes and vnll then be pulled down. “Work was started on the house at daybreak to-day, and we. shall knock off .at 10 o’clock to-night, and long before the seven and a11a 1 f days have gone, we have every reason to believe that the house will be finished—and furnished. “The site was cleared this morning, the foundations dug, and the concrete poured in before 11 o’clock. Then hundreds of oiled hollow steel forms were erected over the foundations and covered with a steel reinforced ceiling. “During the afternoon the forms were filled with lightning cement. To-morrow morning the cement will have set, the tic-pins will be knocked away, the steel form removed, and the walls of the first storey will be upstanding, and doorways and window spaces allowed for. The process will be repeated to construct the second storey. / “The mixing of the concrete is done by a patent machine, and to bring the whole system to perfection has cost nearly £400,000. As the material is mixed it is automatically conveyed through wide piping to any part of the skeleton house.

“It is estimated that the cost of erecting the present model house will not be more than £300.”