Cement for the Farm. 445 



per barrel landed here, and it cost me 20 cents per barrel to get it 

 hauled out to my farm. It cost me six dollars ($6.00) per thousand 

 to have my lumber hauled from the mill, about thirty (30) miles. 

 I had to pay also for digg'ing cellar, cistern, foundation trenches 

 and all the unskilled labor in mixing and handling the cement. 

 Now the ordinary farmer and his boys could have done at odd times 

 all these things themselves and saved all the money that I had to 

 pay out. The entire lower floor of the house is of cement six inches 

 thick. I find that three or four inches would have been ample. 

 The floor of the dining room and kitchen forms the roof of the double 

 cellar. To support this cement floor I put across a double thick- 

 ness of American Steel Woven Wire, with a six-inch mesh, covering 

 the entire space with it. I also used thirteen steel wagon tires, which 

 I bought second hand for 30 cents each, turning one foot of each 

 end up into the concrete wall. Some of my farmer neighbors, in 

 giving me advice, felt morally certain that this floor would cave in. 

 Knowing that they would spread their knowledge far and wide, I 

 took the additional precaution of building a sixteen-inch concrete 

 pillar in the center of each cellar. I also had angle bars and many 

 braces of different shapes made out of wagon tires at a very low 

 cost and put one every two or three feet in each corner of the wall ; 

 also used them in every other place where there was a possibility of 

 the building settling and forming a crack. My walls are nine inches 

 thick and there is not a crack in the building from top to bottom. 

 I used Portland Cement of the best quality and could now, with my 

 experience, build fully as good a house with twenty-five barrels less 

 of cement than I used. The size of the house, including porches, is 

 thirty-three by fifty-three feet. I built the house on the highest 

 point of the farm, on a bare knoll, so that I could get the air and 

 sunshine and no dampness, and found that it was a success. One 

 hundred feet south of the house I have forty (40) acres of timber, 

 but I get all the shade I want from the porches. 



I might mention that the columns of the jiorches are also of 

 cement and are reinforced by steel boiler tubes three and one-half 

 inches in diameter and eleven feet long, which I bought from a 

 second hand iron man at fifty cents apiece. I also used them for the 

 down spouts of the house and to carry the water underground to 

 the cistern. My cistern is a model and the barn is also a good one. 



A. ]\[. WINNER, 



West Plains, Mo. 



