Iron Houses.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 456, 22 March 1890, Page 6

Iron Houses.

Mr Gladstone, we are informed, is having an iron library erected at Hawaraen. It is to contain 16,000 volumes. The house contains five rooms, the largest one measuring 41 x2l feet. Cases are being made to hold twenty tons of books. Mr Gladstone intends the library for quiet study, and therefore proposes to admit only a few persons at a time. These houses are put together like a child’s puzzle, and can be oaken apart, compactly packed and removed elsewhere. A large number of iron villas have been sent from the works at Albert gate to the Riviera, and there erected upon plots of land purchased or rented for a term of years. When the lease expires the houses can be packed up and removed. There is beginning to be a demand for iron bungalows as marble residences in England. The rapidity with which they can be built, and their small cost, as compared with the ordinary dwelling of brick and stone, are recommendations which tell in their favour. The possibility of having a house built in a month to the buyer’s own plan and ready for occupation as soon as finished, seems almost incredible. The pretty Welcome Club at the Italian and American Exhibitions was made of iron, and its cost—£3oo —will give some idea of the comparative prices of brick and iron. It was covered with trellis-work, which imparted a picturesque and rural aspect to the outside. In its uncovered state the corrugated iron cannot be said to be ornamental, but the trelliswork embellishes it at a small cost. It ie suggested by the manufacturers that thatching the roofs with heather would add to the pictorial effect, and also give additional protection to the roof. It is now feasible to add an additional room to the ordinary brick dwelling-house, where such accommodation is needed. Being removable, it is the property of the tenant, so that the objection felt by most people against building for the ultimate benefit of one’s landlord does not hold good in such a case. Stabling and coach-houses can, in the same way, be temporarily erected. As a play-room and school-room for children, a detached iron building communicating with the house by a covered way would frequently prove a boon to the brain-working father of the family, and in times of illness it would be possible, by this means, to isolate a patient completly from the other members of the family. There is no damp to be apprehended in an iron house. A useful present to a village would be an iron play-room, which could be built in a week. A building costing £2OO can be erected in a fortnight. The price of a room measuring 20 feet by 13 feet would be about £so. The cost of removal is from £5 upward. The brick-work chimney is preferred to any other by the builders of iron houses, no mode of heating being so wholesome as the open grate, with direct ventilation. There are other methods of warming rooms, and some of then* are sufficiently satisfactory when the ventilation has been properly secured, The drainage can be worked on the usual plan, if this be preferred to the simpler mode recommended by the originator of the iron houses.—‘London Standard.’