Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/269

Rh in repairs, the longevity of the better building and the lessened, if any, insurance that need be carried, inside of four or five years that  difference is wiped out and, as a matter of fact, the best construction is an actual economy, for in no case does the interest on the added cost of good construction amount to anything like the insurance premiums, the wear and tear and deterioration of the ordinary or allegedly cheap building. The only man who profits by the so-called ordinary or cheap building is the Buddenseick, the speculative builder whose business it is to put up the flimsiest kind of a contraption, paint it gaudily and sell it at a fat profit to the easily gulled individual who believes in buying ready-made houses.

The space assigned me will hardly permit our going very extensively into the minutiæ of fire-proof construction. Suffice it to say that in general terms it means the avoidance of anything combustible. But farther than that it is also well to remember that many materials that are in themselves incombustible, non-inflammable, are most seriously damageable, nevertheless, by flame or great heat. Iron, for instance, can not burn but subjected to heat it will twist and contort and in column form, as an illustration, it will collapse to the utter destruction of whatever it is supporting. So that many materials have in turn to be protected from fire though they will not themselves burn. Many people imagine that stone represents the very epitome of safe and permanent construction, yet all granites, marbles, sand and limestones spall and go to pieces under severe fire tests. My idea of a perfectly fire-proof building, therefore, is one whose exterior walls are of undamageable material, brick and terra-cotta, products that have gone