Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/867

 1869.] Designing Competitions. 699 He purposes than anything else. For sea-walls and the like, it is excellent, for it will effectually resist the action of the water, which English concrete does not. Our American concrete is more like the French composition, inasmuch as we use water-lime cement in the making of it instead of the common lime for hy- draulic purposes. For building above ground beton is excellent, though, of course, more expen- sive than simple concrete where quick- lime is the binding agent. The method of moulds we have already described will be the fittest for its use, and the only difference lies in the composition of the material. Beton should be made of Broken brick, Sharp sand, Water-lime. 1 parts. 3 2 Mix the sand well through the broken brick. In a box, prepared for the pur- pose, dissolve the water-lime, making it of the consistency of thick cream, and throw the mixed brick and sand into it. Work it speedily and turn it into the mould on the wall. As beton sets rap- idly it will be necessary to mix it near to the mould, and only in the quantity actually wanted for immediate casting. Pack it well down at the sides and ends ; and it will economize the material and help its solidity to also pack the heart with large pieces of clinker brick. As the moulds are taken off and the courses complete, all holes may be plas- tered up with cement mortar, and the face made even. If sunk joints (bevelled or square) are required on the outside face, wooden moulds suitable to the purpose are to be tacked on the inside of the moulding- box. Where flooring-joists rest the be- ton is to be packed around them solid. Chimney flues may be made circular with great advantage. Houses con- structed of beton are remarkably cool in summer, and warm in winter, and must therefore be healthful in an emi- nent degree. As to their comparative cost we can only say that it depends altogether on the price of water-time. DESIGNING COMPETITIONS. WE cannot think of any more ap- propriate designation, for this curse of our profession, both in England and here, than that which heads this article. Here it has not become so con- stant a nuisance, as it is, and has been for many years, in England. But it has shown its bold, brazen front, amongst us ; and it becomes the duty of the Architectural Review, as a national advocate of the just rights of the profession, to denounce it, as a demon of discord in our midst, begotten and sustained by speculation and swin- dling, rendered more abominable, by a simulation of liberality, which is most foreign to its true intent and object. In England, every little knot of rate- payers, or others, who have to erect any small parochial concern, instead of honestly emplo T ing a respectable archi- tect, and pa3 - ing a just fee for his ser- vices, fly to a newspaper, and insert an advertisement, offering, as a reward, one-third, or one-fourth the value for the best of any number of competition designs for the proposed structure. Of course, there are always a number of strugglers, ready to dash into the con- test headlong, and exert all the ability theypossess (which isoften considerable) in doing what? Why, in affording the before-mentioned sleek parochial gen- tlemen the very acceptable favor of a ■supply of varied ideas, they never dreamed of, which will, of course, be