House and Garden 
THE APPLICATION OF CONCRETE TO BALUSTRADES, 
Cement Age 
In a recent test at Pittsburgh five piles placed as a 
foundation for heavy machinery in the Westinghouse 
establishment, bore a load of three hundred tons 
without settlement. This is said to he the heaviest 
test load ever placed on piles of any kind. 
To return, however, to our concrete 
house. When it is built as described it 
is practically mono¬ 
lithic. That is to say 
The Great 
Advantages 
Of Concrete 
Houses 
it has no joints nor crevices, and is 
as continuously solid as if carved 
out of a single stone. A house 
built in the old way, however 
carefully, is apt to leak air about 
the windows and outside door 
frames. 
This condition becomes aggra¬ 
vated of course during high, cold, 
winds. In the concrete house, 
the window and door frames are 
placed in position before the con¬ 
crete and the concrete packs 
tightly around them closing all pos¬ 
sible sources of leakage from that 
direction. 
The concrete house, too, is ver¬ 
min proof, as there are no accessi¬ 
ble hollow spaces in the walls, 
and, above all it is fire-proof. It is 
this latter, absolutely. You could 
no more burn a concrete house 
than you could kindle a fire with a 
block of granite, and if the dra¬ 
peries or other inflammable stuff in 
any room should, by mischance get ablaze, it would 
be extremely easy to confine the fire to the place 
where it originated. 
1 hen again a concrete house is sound-proof. No 
noise is conveyed through floors or partitions. It is 
worth while to note that space may be saved in parti¬ 
tions by stretching wire on steel uprights and 
RAILINGS, Etc. 
CONCRETE BALUSTER IN A PHILADEL¬ 
PHIA BRIDGE, SHOWING ROUGH¬ 
ENED SURFACE, SOMEWHAT 
LIKE PEBBLE DASHING 
CONCRETE BRIDGE OVER PO^UESSING CREEK, PHILADELPHIA. THIS 
BRIDGE HAS A SPAN 71 FEET WIDE, WITH A RISE OF 9^ FEET 
Cement Age 
242 
