Edison Portland Cement - 8

Edison Portland Cement - 8

The pouring of the entire house is accomplished in about six hours, and then the molds

are left undisturbed for six days, in order that the concrete may set and harden. After that

time the work of taking away the molds is begun. This requires three or four days. When

the molds are taken away an entire house is disclosed, cast in one piece, from cellar to tip

of roof, complete with floors, interior walls, stairways, bath and laundry tubs, electricwire

conduits, gas, water, and heating pipes. No plaster is used anywhere; but the exterior

and interior walls are smooth and may be painted or tinted, if desired. All that is now

necessary is to put in the windows, doors, heater, and lighting fixtures, and to connect up

the plumbing and heating arrangements, thus making the house ready for occupancy.

As these iron molds are not ephemeral like the wooden framing now used in cement

construction, but of practically illimitable life, it is obvious that they can be used a great

number of times. A complete set of molds will cost approximately $25,000, while the

necessary plant will cost about $15,000 more. It is proposed to work as a unit plant for

successful operation at least six sets of molds, to keep the men busy and the machinery

going. Any one, with a sheet of paper, can ascertain the yearly interest on the investment

as a fixed charge to be assessed against each house, on the basis that one hundred and

forty- four houses can be built in a year with the battery of six sets of molds. Putting the

sum at $175,000, and the interest at 6 per cent. on the cost of the molds and 4 per cent.

for breakage, together with 6 per cent. interest and 15 per cent. depreciation on

machinery, the plant charge is approximately $140 per house. It does not require a

particularly acute prophetic vision to see "Flower Towns" of "Poured Houses" going up

in whole suburbs outside all our chief centres of population.

Edison's conception of the workingman's ideal house has been a broad one from the very

start. He was not content merely to provide a roomy, moderately priced house that should

be fireproof, waterproof, and vermin-proof, and practically indestructible, but has been

solicitous to get away from the idea of a plain "packing-box" type. He has also provided

for ornamentation of a high class in designing the details of the structure. As he expressed

it: "We will give the workingman and his family ornamentation in their house. They

deserve it, and besides, it costs no more after the pattern is made to give decorative

effects than it would to make everything plain." The plans have provided for a type of

house that would cost not far from $30,000 if built of cut stone. He gave to Messrs. Mann

& McNaillie, architects, New York, his idea of the type of house he wanted. On receiving

these plans he changed them considerably, and built a model. After making many more

changes in this while in the pattern shop, he produced a house satisfactory to himself.

This one-family house has a floor plan twenty-five by thirty feet, and is three stories high.

The first floor is divided off into two large rooms--parlor and living-room--and the upper

floors contain four large bedrooms, a roomy bath-room, and wide halls. The front porch

extends eight feet, and the back porch three feet. A cellar seven and a half feet high

extends under the whole house, and will contain the boiler, wash-tubs, and coal-bunker. It

is intended that the house shall be built on lots forty by sixty feet, giving a lawn and a

small garden.

It is contemplated that these houses shall be built in industrial communities, where they

can be put up in groups of several hundred. If erected in this manner, and by an operator

buying his materials in large quantities, Edison believes that these houses can be erected

complete, including heating apparatus and plumbing, for $1200 each. This figure would

also rest on the basis of using in the mixture the gravel excavated on the site. Comment

has been made by persons of artistic taste on the monotony of a cluster of houses exactly

alike in appearance, but this criticism has been anticipated, and the molds are so made as

to be capable of permutations of arrangement. Thus it will be possible to introduce almost

endless changes in the style of house by variation of the same set of molds.