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287
“Timber buildings deteriorate more rapidly than brick
or stone ones when unoccupied. For a frame building covered
externally with weather-boarding or corrugated iron, and
lined internally with plaster or incombustible material (not
match-boarding), a period of loan of ten or twelve years, or
perhaps even fifteen years, might appropriately be allowed.
(The period allowed by the Board for a building of brick or
stone is thirty years.) But in the later years of its life a
frame building would require frequent expenditure on repairs
to keep it in a habitable condition, and it would be undesirable
that instalments of repayment of loan should have to be
made at the same time.
“The Board would no doubt be willing to sanction the
use in hospital construction of the more recently introduced
materials and methods in any case in which they could be
shown to be cheaper than the ordinary materials in use in
the locality. The report of the Departmental Committee of
the Board of Education already referred to recommended that
Local Education Authorities should be encouraged to submit
proposals for the use of novel materials or methods of construction
for public elementary schools, and that a loan period
of thirty years should be regarded as normally appropriate
to such cases, instead of the period of fifty years allowed
in cases where ordinary methods are used, but that it should
be made a condition of approval that provision should be
made for the periodical inspection of the structure.
“It must be remembered that as many of these special
materials are not impervious to moisture, buildings con[structed
of them require to be coated with cement on the
outside, and that owing to the thinness of the walls more
ample provision for warming is necessary than in brick or
stone buildings. Until experience has been obtained of