CONCRETE PENETRATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 914, 6 March 1930, Page 20

CONCRETE PENETRATION

WAITEMATA COUNTY TEST WORKS MINISTER APPROACHED If the penetration method of laying concrete roads, now being tested out by the Waitemata County Council, is successful the Minister of Public Works, the Hon. E. A. Ransom, will be pleased to see it used. This information was given to a council deputation which met the Minister at Waiwera yesterday. Announcing that the tension tests had given more than satisfactory results, Mr. A. Murray, the county engineer, appealed to the Minister to decide at any early date whether highway subsidies would be paid on this form of construction on two country roads. The cost was two-thirds that of ordinary concrete construction. The Minister said the reports of the tests made there with the concrete penetration system had arrived too late for the Highways Board’s consideration at the last meeting. He asked for records of tests of the system in other countries before deciding whether , this form of construction was useless. He said that other counties besides Waitemata had applied for permission to spend money on penetration concrete roads. He wanted to be assured whether a penetration road which showed weakness would become a total loss, or whether it could be preserved by a coat of bitumen. A suggestion that the district engineer, Mr. J. McEnuis, should submit a strip of bitumen road to the same heavy traffic as had been imposed on the experimental stretch of concrete peneration road was approved by the Minister.