The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-10-07

thousand and in all sorts Of bui,a.
ings other than frame Is To tho
thousand.
These figures bring out a min.
which observant fire chiefs have
been emphasizing for a long time
the hazard from fire results NOT or
much from the materials Of which
a building is constructed as from
what goes on inside the buildiny
A building may be made entirely Of
steel and brick. but il it houses
an automobile garage or main,
shop or a paper-box factory or any
other fire-hazardous industry
fire may break out and destroy ,he
totally.
Fires Result From CareIessness
The lesson in this for the aver.
age householder is that he him.
self and his family constitute a
large part of the fire hazard in his.<
home. Nearly half the fires in
dwelling houses result from care
lessness. Faulty construction ac-
counts for nearly all the rest Of
them. Fires communicated IN
dwelling houses from outside
sources are 70 few in number a to
be negligible. Even the Single
roof, that favorite scapegoat, is
exonerated. The investigation il
showing that when the cause of a
dwelling house fire is given as
sparks on roof" the truth usually
is that a defective chimney was the
incendiary. Poor mortar. and an
insufficient quantity of that. was
probably used in the first place.
The fiues in the chimney were un-
lined with tile. In time brick
drops out of the chimney, and the
adjacent shingles catch fire at the
first opportunity.
The new building plans devel-
oped by the National Lumber
Manufacturers association are de-
signed to cut the frame-construc-
ton fire hazard in two, even con-
cedipg that the house occupants
continue their carelessness. The
principal features of the new type
of construction are designed to.
make wooden building slow burn
ing. A slow burning building is
about all the householder can hope
for, even if he builds of fireproof
materials. The fact is that no
buildings, excepting perhaps steel
and stone jails and maybe the
pyramids of Cheops, are absolutely
fireproof. The disastrous loop
fire in Chicago last year ate up a
16-story steel building, and there
have been other instances of sup
posedly absolutely fireproof build
ings being totally destroyed by fire.
From the standpoint of fire, the
chief defect in frame construction
of the past has been that it left be-
tween walls and between the cell
ing of one room and the floor of
the room above drafty open spaces
which serve as flues when the
house catches on fire. A fire orig
mating in the lower part of the
house can roar through these
spaces, if it gains Roadway before
discovery, and often by the time
the firemen arrive the building is
ablaze in a dozen places from eel
lar to roof.
The new construction stops
these impromptu flues by the
simple and cheap expedient OF
blocking them at intervals with
wooden barriers. This cuts on
drafts and thus prevents rapid
spreading, forcing the fire to con-
sumo its own way as it goes. Such
fire could remain undiscovered a
considerable time and still be
localized to one part of the house.
But the model fire-resistive
plans do much more than this
They provide for solidly framed
room corners, flue Innings for
chimneys, all wood kept 20 inches
away from fireplaces, no wood
within two inches of chimneys tine
spaces being filled with loose In
combustible materialsl, top OF the
furnace Is inches away from the
cellar ceiling and the ceiling itself
protected from the heat below,
heat pipes kept an inch away from
the woodwork and sheathed win
/ incombustible materials Where
they pass through floors, and num-
erous other precautions.
These specifications have beeh
brought to the attention Of archi-
tects and builders generally by the
trade and technical publications.
and any prospective house builder
can now have the use OF them. by
adopting this type Of construction.
and with attention to the safety OF
the electric wiring. any home
builder can take advantage OF the
cheanness of lumber and still get
house that in fire resistance VIII
compare favorably with slow Dprh-
ing dwellings of twice the COST