PARK AND CEMETERY . 
164 
to street trees is a matter which has 
been fully established in the courts 
in the older parts of the country, and 
we should surely exercise every reas- 
onable precaution to avoid a repeti- 
tion of the experiences they have had 
in the East. 
The width of the parking also af- 
fects the care and control of our street 
trees. In Iowa there is but little uni- 
formity about this. In some cities 
the ordinances define the parking 
line at 12 feet from the property line 
for a 66 foot street, and in other 
cities it runs up as high as 20 or 24 
feet on a street of the same width. 
Generally speaking the majority trend 
toward .too narrow a parking. The 
result is that pole lines and street 
trees are forced into too close a prox- 
imity to each other, and where these 
conditions prevail trouble is sure to 
It is only in comparatively recent 
years that cement has come into 
more extensive use as a building ma- 
terial, and it is but natural that the 
majority of us are as yet undecided 
about how to proceed in the painting 
over cement, because we have not 
had sufficient time in which to make 
our experiments, note the results and 
arrive at a positive conclusion. 
A painter once told me he had 
trouble with cement surfaces until he 
found a method which he could rely 
upon. His method was to give the 
surface a coat of strongly glued cal- 
cimine before applying the oil paint; 
this might have helped him out at the 
time, but it is certainly no method 
which can be safely recommended. 
Many hastily conducted experiments 
have led to wrong conclusions, and it 
has even happened that two men, ex- 
perimenting along the same lines 
have come to opposite conclusions. 
The reason for this is that there is a 
difference in cement and cement sur- 
faces. 
It has long been the popular opin- 
ion that linseed oil is hurtful to ce- 
ment, and also that no oil paint would 
endure if applied direct to the cement. 
I believe both of these opinions to be 
wrong. 
One of the foremost authorities on 
cement assures me that he has been 
painting with oil paint over cement 
for many years with the best results. 
It is true, however, that all non-dry- 
ing oils are more or less destructive 
to the cement, and if the cement wall 
follow sooner or later., and the trees 
always get the bad end of the bar- 
gain. Trees on a wide parking are 
also better protected in general and 
are less likely to be mutilated by 
driving too close or by hitching to 
them. 
Aside from the matter of tree 
growth the general appearance of our 
streets would be greatly improved by 
a wider parking. On many of our 
town streets the actual wearing sur- 
face is confined to a narrow tract, and 
the remaining two-thirds of the street 
proper is covered with weeds and tall 
grass. This portion is ragged and un- 
kempt, giving the entire street a shab- 
by and neglected appearance, where- 
as, if this portion was brought into 
the parking each abutting property 
owner would become responsible for 
its care and lawn treatment.- 
should be saturated with raw linseed 
oil there is no doubt about the out- 
come, as the oil would slowy disinte- 
grate the cement. But for painting 
we do not use non-drying oil, and our 
oil paint will dry on the surface with- 
out affecting the cement, a fact which 
has been fully demonstrated. As for 
the cement affecting the oil paint., so 
is that more apparent than real. It is 
held by experts that cement surfaces 
properly executed, clean and dry, are 
no more dangerous to oil paint than 
the modern wall plasters. 
Undoubtedly most of the trouble is 
caused by the painting being done be- 
fore the cement is dry. Cement dries 
very slowly. The opinion of men who 
are experts in the use of cement say 
that a cement wall must stand at the 
very least over one summer before 
painting with oil paint. 
The first thing required is to wash 
the surface thoroughly with a weak 
solution of muriatic acid, followed with 
a good wash of clean water. The 
strength of the acid solution should 
be about 7 or 8 per cent. This wash 
will clean the surface, neutralize to a 
large extent the alkali, and thus make 
on the smooth cement surface enough 
of an impression to give the paint a 
proper hold. The surface must then 
be given time to dry perfectly. 
In painting it is well to use consider- 
ably more turpentine than is ordinar- 
ily the case, and very little dryers. 
In fact, boiled linseed oil is considered 
preferable to raw. For priming, the 
paint should be used thin, and contain 
so much turpentine that it is almost 
flat, increasing the amount of oil for 
succeeding coats. Each coat must be 
given ample time to dry before the 
next one is applied. 
For water color or calcimine, wash- 
ing with muriatic acid solution, fol- 
lowed by clean water, should be done 
if first-class work is to be expected. 
When the surface is thoroughly dry it 
should be given a coat of alum size, 
or, still better, a coat of flat paint, and 
when the size is dry the surface is 
ready for calcimining. 
One painting contractor, who does a 
great amount of work in our Eastern 
sky-scrapers, tells me that he makes a 
size of equal parts of acetic acid and 
alum. His formula is one pound of 
acid, one pound of alum and two gal- 
lons of water. I have not tried this 
size, so I give it for what it is worth. 
So far so good, but in this method 
there is one thing which nearly every- 
body is opposed to using in paint now- 
adays, namely, time. Time is the 
great sesame for all painting. Give the 
surface time to dry and let one coat 
dry thoroughly before another is ap- 
plied. 
In our modern rush the painter is, 
however, often forced, against his pro- 
test, to paint over a surface long be- 
fore it is dry enough to receive the 
paint. This is true not only of cement, 
but also of plaster and sand finish. We 
all know there will be trouble when 
painting is done over a wet surface, 
and with cement the main difficulty is 
that it dries so very, very slowly that 
it is invariably painted before it is 
half dry. It may appear dry on the 
surface and still contain a large quan- 
tity of moisture. 
To meet this demand for rush, in- 
ventive methods have set to work to 
make a paint which can be applied over 
cement as well as plaster surfaces while 
the same are still damp. There are a 
few such paints on the market to-day; 
some are manufactured in paste form 
to be thinned down with turpentine and 
benzine. They dry out perfectly flat, 
have great covering power and will ad- 
here to the damp cement or plaster by 
virtue of the fact that they will per- 
mit the moisture in the wall to evapo- 
rate through. 
It must be plainly understood that 
ordinary oil paint or enamel cannot be 
applied over them until the wall is thor- 
oughly dry, because such coating will 
close up the pores of the wall, so to 
speak, prevent the moisture from es- 
caping and force it to accumulate be- 
hind the paint, causing the paint to blis- 
ter and come off. 
PAINTING CEMENT SURFACES 
, Paper by P. W, Nelson, Before Ohio 
Painters' and Decorators' Association 
