CONCRETE WORK SIMPLIFIED.* THE present writer once described the veteran
author of this excellent work as "the father of concrete." There can be few, if any, men still in active work whose experience of concrete goes farther back than Mr. Potter's. But concrete itself is of course very old. The concrete stairs of Colchester and Rochester Castles still show the marks of the encasing boards ; the dome of Agrippa's Pantheon, which is a. hundred and forty-two feet in diameter, is of concrete ; and fragments of concrete buildings are found in Mexico and Peru. Concrete seems, however, to have fallen out of use more than once in the history of the modern world. Of recent years, with the invention and cheapening of Portland cement, a great deal has been heard of concrete and concrete-steel construction, and structures have been erected all over this country, the Continent, and America which, when they have one day to be demolished, are likely to try the wits of the housebreakers to the utmost. A number of books dealing with the methods of utilising concrete with steel in works of a varied character, from hotels and reservoirs to bridges and canal boats, have been published, but the mathematical formulae with which they are laden have made them unattractive to many persons who lack a technical train- ing. In the work before us, which, though called a third. edition of that in three volumes issued in 1877 and 1891, appears to have been almost entirely recomposed, we have a book so plainly written that every paragraph must be perfectly clear even to the novice. Mr. Potter's pages promise to be invaluable not only to builders and architects, but to land- owners, on whose estates so much work, from cattle-troughs to cottages, can often be carried out to advantage in concrete.
The mark of the book is its essentially practical character, and in dealing with concrete, theory and practice, as is well known, are not the same thing. Mr. Potter is himself an old clerk of works, and there are few of his pages on which we do not come upon useful information from his own experience. The author deals frankly with all the objections which have been raised to concrete construction, and demonstrates where the faults lie. Cracks, he shows, are frequently due to careless- ness in regard to the cement, the aggregate, or the building. As to condensation, after living in three concrete houses, be has come to the conclusion that when the material is of the right class and the concrete is dry, there is no dampness to be feared. • Mr. Potter, who is always moderate in his statements, * Counts: its Usos in Building. Ily Thomas Potter. Loudon; B. T. Botsford, Us. Gd. net.]
says that "if a number of cottages are to be built together or detached, the walls will in most cases cost less [if of concrete] than if of brick, flint, or stone, while their strength and durability surpass either." A great advantage in building cottages or farm buildings of concrete is that farm labourers, who have not the rooted prejudices of the bricklayer or bricklayers' labourers as to how substances should be mixed for building, are competent to undertake concrete work under the guidance of an intelligent carpenter. Mr. Potter'a warnings on the subject of fireproof construction and of using inferior foreign cement are not unneeded, and the plan he recommends of fixing linoleum on concrete floors with a kind of glue might be better known than it is. The concrete must be quite dry, and the linoleum ought to be well seasoned and should not be under an eighth of an inch thick.
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