COMMUNITY FACILITIES:

NBC "�Home' show boosts help for home builders

Home builders at last seem to be convincing some of influential people outside the industry that the community facilities problem is too big for builders to solve alone.

Among the most recent and important converts: NBC's daytime TV program, "Home,"� which has just devoted major portions of its show for 10 days to what became television's first serious look at housing problems. "Home"� focused on community facilities in Dayton and Detroit.

Home builders glowed as "Home'-� hostess, Arlene Francis, said what they have been saying two years without much effect: "It isn't the houses that cause the problem. It's the children. The problem is inability of small local governments to cope with urban problems while they still cling to the pattern of the rural past. Unless they come to a solution, home building will eventually have to stop."�

"Home"� has an audience estimated at 2 million viewers. NAHB officials were so impressed with "Home'-� treatment of community facilities they are having the presentation edited down to a 30-min. film to be made available to local associations for showing in their areas.

NAHB directors, who have had trouble getting any more than two paragraphs at a time in the public press about community facilities, have decided to try offering special inducements. They are sponsoring a contest for newspapermen, with prizes of $1,000, $500 and $300 for the best three published series of no less than five articles each on the community facilities problem in the writer's area.

Jersey builders win suit against punitive permit fees

New Jersey home builders won a precedent-setting court decision against excessive building permit fees.

In a test case involving the town of Point Pleasant (pop. 6,800), the New Jersey Home Builders Assn, attacked the constitutionality of an ordinance which set permit charges on this basis: 25tf a sq. ft. for residential building with a minimum of $200; lO⅜⅜ a ft. on additions to residential buildings; and a sq. ft. for commercial buildings.

Home builders' Counsel Alexander Fein-berg told House & Home that a superior court ruled the ordinance illegal because it discriminated against home buildings and was designed to raise revenue. (The state constitution says money can only be raised by taxation.)

Accordingly, the only legal fee the town can impose for building permits is to cover department administration costs plus a small, "reasonable"� revenue. Point Pleasant's building department costs the town $4,500 yearly; it takes in $9,000 (which is considered reasonable). With the raised fee, the town would have taken in $70,000.

Feinberg said that this was the first successful case of its kind in New Jersey. The ruling will apply throughout the state.

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CANADA:

Bonded heating, 20 % more costly, is a hit in Toronto

Toronto home builders and heating contractors are blazing a new trail in selling quality to the public.

Home buyers are being offered an industry-wide yardstick to insure they have a proper heating system "certified bonded heating."�

It is the first time in North America the plan has been tried.

The scheme is catching on fast. Some 1,600 Toronto homes under way or about to start will have bonded heat about 10% of the new homes in the area. Says one expert: "They figured they'd do well if they got

1.200    certified jobs the first year. They got

1.200    in a month. It shows builders will pay more for quality if they're sure of getting it."�

Solves a price war

The idea arose after Toronto heating contractors grew worried at how competition was 1) driving prices for project house heating systems down to a profitless level as low as $500 per house and 2) forcing heating subs to skimp on quality of materials and workmanship. This brought standards way below those laid down by Canada's Natl. Warm Air Heating & Air Conditioning Assn, manual-�the standards required by the

Natl. Housing Act. But poorly trained inspectors for Canada's Central Mortgage & Housing Corp. often failed to spot the shortcomings. The result was many a dissatisfied customer.

Basically, a bonded heating installation does no more than comply with national warm air standards. But to put teeth in the plan, a specially formed local chapter of NWA hired an engineer-inspector. To display the certified seal, a dealer must first submit his plan to one of three reviewing engineers. And the engineer-inspector must approve the completed job. Each heating contractor puts up a $1,000 bond, guaranteeing to follow NHA standards on bonded jobs. He must make good any defects found by the inspector, under pain of losing his right to stay in the plan. Participation does not prevent a contractor from installing un-bonded jobs, however.

Advertising backs it up

The customer, presold by a $50,000 newspaper and car card advertising drive, gets a stamp of approval on his heating system.

Toronto builders figure bonded heating costs them a 20% premium $100 more than a $500 minimum heating plant. But they say it is well worth it.

Officials of the US' Natl. Warm Air Heating & Air Conditioning Assn, say they hatched the idea, but Toronto is the first to apply it.

NEWS continued on p. 76

Plastics men, convening in New York, study howto tap the big housing market

When 20,000 plastic men descended on New York June 11 for their annual conference, their thoughts were turning to the building industry as their next major outlet.

Running concurrently with the conference, the 7th National Plastics Exposition put on some 330 shiny exhibits. Over a third of them displayed materials that are or could be used in homes.

The thousands of products on display were ample proof that the plastics industry is one of the fastest growing in this country. Last year, 1,800,000 tons of raw plastic were produced as against 1,550,000 tons of aluminum. Plastics now outsell all nonferrous metals. Production jumped 30% in 1955 over the year before. Production next year is expected to reach 2 million tons representing a sales volume of $2 billion. About 10% of plastics production now goes into construction. Industry leaders feel confident that this figure will swing up sharply in the next decade.

Plastic houses get attention

Probably the most discussed exhibit at the exhibition was a large scale model of the Monsanto-MIT plastic house of tomorrow (H&H, Dec. '55). Right in line, the Society of Plastics Industries put on display the winners of a $3,250 house design competition held June 6 in Chicago, and sponsored by the SPI and held under AIA auspices. The design contest awarded eight prizes for houses and special room treatments. Judges Paul M. Rudolph, AIA Sarasota; John M. Highland, AIA Buffalo; and Hiram McCann, editor of

Modern Plastics magazine, awarded the grand prize for the best house using plastics to William Goodwin of MIT.

Made up of three 34' spans of reinforced, prefabricated plastic, the house makes a definite zoning division between its living and dining room sections. A mechanical core unit lies between two of the big spans, and the standardized sections of the house could be placed on small or sloping lots. The design of Goodwin's house is practical now and its continuous structural system might get considerable public acceptance.

Second prize for the best house went to Architects Hermes and Colucci of Cincinnati for a design using standardized "umbrellas,"� shaped like hyperbolic parabolas, to form the roof. The judges pointed out that this structural system might be expensive, but could be easily built with today's plastic molding techniques. Its plastic roof umbrellas give considerable freedom of space in. the house and provide an unusual freedom for indoor-outdoor living.

Monsanto Chemical Co.