Arizona republican., 1908-12-04
REINFORCED. CONSTRUCTION Test of Strength of Valley
 Bank Walls PRISON WALL COUNTERPART Specifications are the Same in Both Instances and the Demonstration in One Case Applies to the Other. Results Gratifying.

A very interesting test was made yesterday, of the merits of reinforced concrete construction, in respect of it's
 strength, the test being made on one
 of the walls of the new Valley Bank building on West Adams street. now
 under construction by the Arizona Con-
 struction company of this city. The
 result could not have been more satis-
 factory had the walls been made of
 solid steel.
 Since the new prison has been under
 construction at Florence and the plans
 have been quite generally discussed by ! the people, there has been some criti-
 cism by the uninformed, of the thin
 ness of the prison wall and its seem
 ing vulnerability. Those who are ac- customed to seeing prison walls many i feet thick and built of rock, were in clined to shake their heads when they
 noted that the plans called for a wall only 952 inches thick at the base and
 Az inches thick at the top They could
 not shake off the impression that a good husky man could push it over like a house of cards, or at least that a few prisoners could shatter it with a
 battering ram by vigorous assault. l As the prison architect, Thornton Fitzhugh, is also the architect of the Valley Bank building he told the board ! of control that he would give them a | little demonstration just for their own satisfaction. A panel of the bank ' building wall was therefore construct ed in accordance with the exact speci- | fications of the prison wall and yester | day the test was made. A timber AZ X41z inches and 22 feet long was swung | by loose hemp ropes so a good swing could be secured and the ropes could be held securely in the hands. Four men then took hold of the ropes and with a five foot swing battered the wall on the outside for five minutes, or at least until they were out of breath, and they were the four huskiest men the construction company could muster. The effectiveness of this blow in engi- neering terms would be 500 second foot pounds and it was landed repeatedly on the wall.
 The wall on the outside scarcely showed the briuse of the batering ram Just a trifle of the mortar on the very outer shell was disturbed enough to show the mark. A careful inspection of the inside of the wall did not reveal any sign of the hammering. The wall had been plastered and not a chip of it scaled off nor was there a crack of any size or length whatever. Scarcely a vibration could be noted during the battering, though there was the ringing echo of the steel within the wall.
 The result wa seven better than the builders had anticipated. The wall is reinforced with carbon steel bars a quarter inch square, set six inches apart. So much for the strength of it. But if the convicts inside were pro vided with a piece of railroad iron for a ram and were given all the time they required to do so, it might be supposed that eventually they could work hole in the wall After they had done so they would find themselves still sepa- rated from liberty by the steel bars unless they could crawl through the six inch aperture between the bars. The truth is the wall is absolutely i'm pregnable to any force that can ever be brought to play against it by the con victs inside or their friends outside. Anyhow to yield successfully to a bat tering ram the work would have to be accomplished quickly for the first blow would most likely arouse the guards, even assuming that they were asleep which they will not be and in the event they are. a rope ladder will be better aid for escaping. This is mentioned cOnfidentially for it is not designed to give anybody an opportunity to scale the wall even that way.
 So much for the prison wall. Con corning the Valley Bank building MT. Fitzhugh said yesterday that in the near future he proposes to make test of the beams in the new building that will be even more interesting. It is expected that there will be some de- flection in the beams as even cement and concrete are not the hardest and most solid materials in the world but the deflection is about as insigniflcant as anything in the building material line. The beams are figured to sustain a certain weight. They will be loaded by one and one half times the figured weight and if the deflection is more than one six-hundredth of the span of the beam the architect has the privilege under the specifications, of rejecting it. It is expected to sustain its figured load at not to exceed a defleotion of one eight hundredth of its span.
 For making this test micrometer will be used to measure the deflection, that device being merely a magnifier of measurements into appreciable dis tances for detection.