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House and Home Magazine - July 1956 - Return to Main Search
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Text Summary via OCR:

continued from p. 59

News

Are plumbing contractors sponsoring national plumbing code to smother it?

A National Plumbing Code, the elusive goal of the building industry for many years, is apparently still a long way from homes.

Harry Stevens of Hutchinson, Kan., chairman of the code committee, National Association of Plumbing Contractors, estimates it will be a year or more before there is a final draft of a proposed code, although other experts have told House & Home they think such redrafting as is needed could be done in a single weekend.

All this is proving rather discouraging to the building industry which thought the plumbing code problem had been licked with ASA approval of the A40.8 code last year. A40.8 is based on a 1951 report of a plumbing industry coordinating committee.

More and more study

NAPC cast the only vote against A40.8 when ASA approved it, contending it was not a workable code at all but only a set of standards. It is not in such form that it could be adopted by any city as a code, according to NAPC's Stevens.

Stevens, reporting at the NAPC convention in Milwaukee in June, said that his committee is currently studying and assembling information from A40.8 for presentation to the reactivated coordinating committee.

The reorganized committee will include representatives of NAPC, the American Society of Sanitary Engineering, the American Public Health Assn, and the Building Officials Conference of America. The US Public Health Service has agreed to sponsor the work, subject to Congressional appropriation. Among the consulting organizations: VA, NAHB, HHFA.

Stevens admits that with the help of NAPC's new technical chief, Albert Morgan, a code could be drafted in a few weeks. But he adds: "We want everyone who has any

interest in the code to have a voice in its drafting. It wouldn't surprise me if this committee becomes a permanent committee to study and recommend changes from time to time. Conditions and materials change and the code will have to be kept up to date."

Minority against standards

Although Stevens and other NAPC leaders are giving vocal support to a national plumbing code, there is a strong minority among the association's 12,000 members who oppose any move to bring uniformity to plumbing. They oppose it for the same reason the building industry supports it: standard roughing dimensions and fixture sizes would mean less work for plumbers and lower costs for builders (and the public).

Typical of comments made by plumbing contractors opposed to a uniform code:

•º    "This would lead to a dull life for contractors and eliminate the need for trained men to do the work."

•º    "It would eventually eliminate the small contractor and promote prefabricated industries and large plumbing contractors."

•º    "I feel standardization of this kind would produce more handymen and do-it-yourself people."

One man who still believes A40.8 is good enough as is for a code is Vincent Manas of Washington, D. C. Engineer Manas was executive secretary for the committee which wrote A40.8, claims 10 cities have adopted it outright while 1,100 others use it as a guide. Manas published an illustrated book on A40.8 at his own expense.

Dean Francis M. Dawson of the college of engineering, University of Iowa, and a nationally recognized authority on plumbing, also believes A40.8 is a good code. But he says: "It's obvious now that it needs changes because we have found it has a few faults."

LUMBER MARKET:

Plywood, lumber prices fall as starts stay down

In lumber and plywood prices, builders are getting the first dividend of lower housing production.

Plywood has plummeted to a 2½ year low. The price of ¼" AD index grade broke from $88 per M in May, first to $80 and then down to $76. Plywood sheathing was moving slowly at around $112-$ 113. Some West Coast mills returned to a $3 to $4 higher price on both ¼ " AD index and sheathing but they were getting only a minor mixed-car share of the business. Even so, plywood production was still outstripping , orders.

Standard & better 2x4 green fir randoms, which brought $80 M in April, were down to $74 and $75, with some sales as low as $73. Utility & better fir studs, which rise and fall with housing, were reported down to $62.

Pine boards showed a weak undertone again. Sales of cedar siding hit a low level, though prices remained largely unchanged.

With low prices likely to bring production cutbacks for many a forest product, some experts now think the well-advertised rail car shortage may turn out to be not much of a squeeze, after all.

Court upholds ban on slow routing of rail freight

A federal court in Portland, Ore. has apparently ended free warehousing of unsold West Coast lumber in slow-moving freight cars.

The judges dissolved a temporary injunction which had stopped enforcement of an Interstate Commerce Commission ban against deliberately circuitous car routing. They ruled the court has no authority in the case. But they also criticized ICC for not notifying mill operators before forbidding the continued on p. 67

Building materials prices fell slightly in May (to 130.9 from April's 131.3). It was the second dip since materials prices began a long climb to their present record levels in July 1954. The May decline, said BLS, was caused chiefly by a 4% drop in softwood plywood and cast iron soil pipe and a 3% drop in prices of fabricated steel windows.

Boeckh's building cost index for residential structure-”continued its steady, two-year climb in May. Col. E. H. Boeckh said the jump from 271.1 in April to 273.0 in May was almost entirely due to soaring labor wages. Building paper took a big jump, from 133.8 to 138.1 and asphalt products zoomed from 104.9 to 111.9. Home building faces still more increases in costs, said Boeckh.