114 A DISTRICT HOSPITAL I ITS CONSTRUCTION AND COST. 



Where the iron meets the frame of the doors at the bottom, the 

 latter being sloped to run off water, a fillet (Fig. 3.) must be 

 introduced ; and the channel thus formed must be filled with 

 cement in order that no space may be left by which air might 

 travel up the corrugations of the iron, even when the doors are 

 shut ; and a similar expedient must be used around all door and 

 window cases. At the top, the duct is let down square on to the 

 top of the corrugations ; and the sheets being tolerably true, it will 

 there be sufficient to see that the painters in finishing the outside 

 carefully putty up any small chink which may remain. Attention 

 to secure the same quasi air-tightness should also be given to the 

 bottom edge of the inner skin of iron. Four inch studding is used. 

 By this arrangement two conditions are secured ; in the summer, 

 when doors and louvres are both open, the heat of the sun on the 

 roof draws a current of air of considerable velocity between the 

 two skins. This not merely abstracts heat from the interior 

 of the building, but effectually prevents the transmission of heat 

 from the outer to the inner skin ; and the result, as practically 

 seen at Kiama, is that the interior of such a building is, in hot 

 weather, markedly cooler than buildings otherwise constructed and 

 of more solid materials. Secondly, when, as in winter, the doors 

 and louvres are closed, the inner skin of the building is surrounded 

 by a layer of that excellent non-conductor, air, not less than four 

 inches thick ; and I have no apprehension that difficulty will be 

 experienced in keeping such a building sufficiently warm. But on 

 this point I cannot adduce the same degree of practical evidence 

 as on the foregoing ; for, through some incaution, the wood used 

 was imperfectly seasoned, so that both the floors and windows 

 present numerous and large cracks communicating with the outer 

 air. Yet, although it is thus impossible to say to what temperature 

 the interior might be raised, even with these serious drawbacks it 

 is not too cold. This mode of constructing iron buildings I believe 

 to be entirely new ; its novelty consisting, not merely in the 

 arrangement by which the whole surface is kept bathed in a rapidly 

 moving current of air, but in the control to which the latter is made 

 subject ; so that the moving current may on occasion be converted 

 into a nearly stagnant and non-conducting coat. I am much 

 indebted to Mr. Harding the Architect, for working out the 

 practical details and for successfully executing them ; he having 

 been supplied by me with a diagram of the arrangement, and some 

 measurements only. 



Having thus dealt with the material, and with the mode of 

 •construction as far as that is necessitated by the material, I proceed 

 to give details of cost. The Kiama Hospital, just as it shows in 

 the photographs, (Figs. 1, 2 and 4.) holding nine beds, and having, in 

 addition, a detached ward for isolation, a dead-house, a windmill over 





