The Prefabricated House 



633 



not red or black oak; and dense Doug- 

 las-fir and dense southern pine. Sea- 

 soned wood should be used so far as 

 possible. Leakage, especially of fresh 

 water or rain water, into the boat must 

 be minimized. Ventilation must be pro- 

 vided for all parts of the hull. More 

 attention must be paid to ventilation 

 when the boat is laid up than when it 

 is in use. Except for the interior trim, 

 preservative treated wood is needed if 

 durable wood is not used, but it is 

 difficult to employ with full effective- 

 ness in boats because the cutting, fit- 

 ting, and fairing so often expose parts 

 of the wood that have not been pene- 

 trated by the treatment. 



Decay of wood used in aircraft is 

 easily avoided. The cases of damage re- 

 ported in service have nearly always 

 been due either to failure to put drain 

 holes at the lowest points or careless- 

 ness in allowing them to become 

 clogged. Out-of-doors storage in crates 

 that admit rain also caused damage. 



The life of plywood bonded with 

 protein glue has been greatly increased 



in moist situations by the use of chloro- 

 phenols or phenates in the glue. The 

 resistance of fiberboard to deteriora- 

 tion by molds can be increased simi- 

 larly by the use of chlorophenates, 

 which in this case must be added to the 

 fiber during manufacture as well as to 

 the laminating glue. 



Often, when one replaces decayed 

 members of structures, he leaves some 

 of the old decayed material in contact 

 with the new wood. This is an invita- 

 tion to trouble. It should never be done 

 where moist conditions may continue. 



CARL HARTLEY is a pathologist in 

 the Division of Forest Pathology, Bu- 

 reau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agri- 

 cultural Engineering. Except for 3 

 years of general plant-disease investi- 

 gations for the Instituut voor Planten- 

 ziekten, Netherlands East Indies, Dr. 

 Hartley has been continuously with the 

 Department of Agriculture since 1909. 

 His principal contributions have been 

 on diseases of forest nursery stock and 

 deterioration of forest products. 



THE PREFABRICATED HOUSE 



RONALD F. LUXFORD, F. A. STRENGE 



The thing about a house, when a 

 person buys or builds one, is its perma- 

 nence. It is probably the most durable 

 good a man is likely to get in his life- 

 time, other than the ground it is built 

 on. Almost anything else a car, a 

 binder, a suit of clothes is expected to 

 wear out in a few years. But a man's 

 home, his cottage or mansion or dream 

 house, is expected to survive the ages. 



Into this market has come the pre- 

 fabricated house. No mystery need be 

 attached to the prefabricated house; 

 the prefabricator has simply moved 

 part of the building operations under 

 roof and developed machinery to do 

 them. Presumably, this shift of opera- 

 tions combines the advantages of ma- 

 chine speed and accuracy with the 

 elimination of the factor of weather 



and lowers the cost of many building 

 jobs otherwise done with hand tools at 

 the house site. 



According to his wishes and means, 

 the individual prefabricator often uses 

 some of the newer materials in his de- 

 signs moistureproof plywood, insu- 

 lation, sheet-type building boards, 

 spray-type paints and varnishes, and so 

 on. The builder of the conventional 

 houses also uses those materials, but the 

 principal material for both conven- 

 tional and the prefabricated houses is 

 wood. Through economies of factory 

 operations and more efficient engineer- 

 ing design, many prefabricators figure 

 they can shave 10 to 20 percent off the 

 cost of a conventional house of the 

 same size and turn out a product just 

 as good or better. 



