Symposium I

Materials of Construction in the Building Industry

I Papers presented before the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry

at the 80th Meeting of the American Chemical Society,

S e w York, N. Y., April 22 to 26, 1935.

I i I

__

Correlation and Interpretation of Chemical Developments in

TYLER STEWART ROGERS

Technical Sersice, kmerican krchitect,

New York. h-. Y. Relation to Building

SEW development in chemistry is prac- tically valueless, in terms of dollars, until it is applied on a commercial basis. There

is a long distance to be spanned between the research labora- tory and ultimate consumer-a distance that is perhaps greater when the consumer is a buyer of the building field than when the discovery applies to other branches of com- merce or industry. If research and coinmercial chemists know the path that must be traversed to make their work of maximum dollar value, they can do much to speed up the use of their own developments and im- provements.

That is the practical meaning of “correlating and interpreting chemi- cal developments”-in other words, making your advances untierstand- able as well as useful to those who should buy them. In this paper an attempt xi11 be made to mark the signboards along the path that n u s t be followed to reach the building field.

HERE is a vast and important T difference between selling mer- chandise and selling building prod- ucts. Shoes, representing merchan- dise, pass from the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the retailer to the consumer. They are unchanged on the way. The manufacturer exclu- s i v e l y c o n t r o l s their shape, size, color, finish, and q u a l i t y of ma- terials. A development in chemis- try applying to shoe manufacturing

can be readily disseminated among shoe manufacturer?. There are not many of them, relatively speaking, and they all have a highly specialized knowledge of their processe?. They can quickly understand how to apply the improvement, and they can appraise its worth. The consumer is not di- rectly concerned except as the improvement reduces the eo4 of shoes or improves their quality.

Buildings, on the other hand, originate in tlir mind3 of a consumer, not a manufacturer. Before the building becomes a reality, someone must plan it. The professional planner i;

The task of correlating and interpreting chemical developments in relation to building uses is a practical responsibility of the chemist. Because architects are coordinators of thousands of items and experts in but few, they cannot delve into technical findings and draw sound conclusions of value in their work. Because builders and contractors are merely the assemblers of these thousands of items designated and selected by the architect, they cannot be expected to traverse the long road back to the laboratory. There is no one but the chem- ist equipped to correlate and interpret chemical advances in relation to building. There is no direct contact between laboratory and lay- man except through the meager efforts of trade associations, the occasional studies of architectural magazine editors, and the com- mercially inspired liaison of the manufacturer’s sales and advertising departments.

Hence the chemist, who will key his work to the needs of the indus- t r y and will translate his findings in terms the building factors can understand and apply, will shorten the road from the laboratory to consumer and will vastly increase the commercial value of his work.

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VOL. 27 , NO. 8 884 INDUSTRIAL AND ENGISEERING CHEMISTRY

the architect'. It must be financed, involving a banker. l 'la- terials must be purchased to fit the job-not just any kind of material, but certain selected kinds that are precisely adapted to each other and to t,he whole assemblage, as conceixyed by the planner. This buying is done by a general contract,or or by subcontractors often numbering twenty or more. The buying is from a building supply dealer in some cases, direct from the manufacturer in others, and from fabricating shops in the remainder. Then these hundreds or thousands of different products are assembled by the contractors JT-ho eventually turn over the finished structure to the owner. There are seT-eral variations of this procedure, but none of thein is significant to our present purpose.

Any new material or new development must, become knon-n to the architect, a t least. Usually it must also be knon-n to contractors, subcontractors, and dealers. Some kinds of chemical advances must be known t,o manufacturers and fab- ricators. Some must be knonm even to bankers, for they can exercise a veto power through their loans if they consider the product experiniental and hence risky. And very often such advances must be known or a t least understood by the on-ner or consumer, that he may willingly accept his architect's recommendabion that the neTv product be employed.

Mention of the engineer has been omitted for the term "engineer" embraces so many identities, from the civil, struc- tural, mechanical, sanitary, electrical engineer to the special- ist in elevators, heating, air-conditioning, process work, and inanifold other divisions of engineering activity. Even chemists and chemical engineers are sometimes employed di- rectly in the execution of a building project. But the n-ork of all of them must be correlated by the architect; hence it is easier to consider the architect alone. If the story is sold to the architect, all of the important engineers in the process will be reached. Besides, on sinall projects, which make up the bulk of the business of building, these engineering special- ists are not employed and the whole burden falls on the archi- tect or some more or less amateur planner.

HUS there is a vastly more distant road to trarerse from T laboratory to consumer in the building field than in ordinary commerce, Let us concentrate our attention upon the architect,, using him as the most important single factor to study. If you understand the architect, the otherq will be readily comprehended by deduction.

The architect's design function is actually a minor part of his work. That is the most difficult' thing for laymen to understand, for they think of him primarily as an artist. His principal job is that of a co8rdinator. This vital point should be stressed. After the architect has envisioned the whole building to suit his client's requirements, he must select many hundreds of materials on small jobs and several thousand materials on large projects, and each must be properly re- lated in character and function to all the others.

The file from Tvhich bhe architect d r a m his data, if it is set up as recommended by the American Institute of Architects, con- tains 40 main sections, each representing a division of the specifications. Kithin these i n a h sections are 313 aubdiri- sions and 1044 sub-subdivisions.

Or consider the problem from another angle. Sweet's Archi- t'ectural Catalogs for 1934, though by no means complete, list 2170 types of products made by 890 manufacturers who advertise through this medium. Each producer may offer from a half-dozen to several thousand different items. Each kind of equipment may be made in several models and sizes. Each maker of paint may offer many formulas or brands for many different purposes. -4n architect once estimated that his office had to specify directly or indirectly about 14,000 items for a single Chicago office building! The point is that

-4 typical specification may cover over thirty trades.

no architect' can be an expert in any material or type of equip- ment, but he must know the practical advantages and limita- tions of many hundreds of products.

O K do chemical developments relating to building reach H the architect? Chemists rely for much interchange of knowledge upon research papers prepared by their associates and upon reports issued by such bodies as the Bureau of Sbandards, the American Society for Testing Materials, and a host of others. But valuable as they are, these reports and papers do not serve the architect effectively.

They seldom reach him. They do not interpret their find- ings in terms of practical application. They are too technical for his ready assimilation. They are often inconclusive- progress reports rather than conclusive findings. They seldom devote as much thought to reporting the significance of their results as to elaborating upon the experimental pro- cedure followed. They use terms the architect does not un- derstand or has forgotten since his college days. They use the symbols of calculus and chemistry with the abandon of an Einstein. They are indeed for the scientist' and techni- cian, not for the uninitiated.

It merely stresses the fact that there is need for some interme- diate step between the laboratory and the layman. For, in comparison with the chemist and his knowledge of the sciences, the architect is almost as much a layman as any banker or merchant.

For example, the chemists who wrote certain recent research reports on bituminous roofing materials were primarily con- cerned with the composition and physical characteristics of various asphalts and pitches, and how to test them for con- formity to standard. The architect Tvants to know which product is most waterproof, which can be used on sloping or flat-roof decks, which n-ill bond to concrete, m-hich is best for various conditions of climate. The anmers to rime of these practical questions Tvere found in the reports except' by a long and tedious process of deduction and comparison.

And eren if the answers had been there, the limitations im- posed upon public institutions concerning t'he revelation of trade or brand names makes it almost) impos,sible for the architect to guide his buying by the findings of these scientists. A more recent task has been the study of waterproofing and damp-proofing materials, a field that appears to be as full of quackery as the old patent medicine racket. A Bureau of St,aiidards Research Paper reported on some forty-seven integral and fifty-one surface waterproofing compounds or admixtures. To avoid revealing trade names, t'he paper re- sorted to giving the chemical analyses of the commercial products. But in this field very few manufacburers reveal the composition of their proprietary materials. Hence the architect cannot make use of otherwise valuable findings.

The scientists themselves do not always agree. One group is interested in lime as a plasticizer for cement mortar, another st,udies the stearates, and perhaps someone else earnestly deli-es into the possibilities of calcium chloride. Each tells his own story, but there is no one to int'erpret to the architect which one is best to use under a given set of conditions. There is a common weakness in research work; it does not relate itself to t,he problems that are encountered in actual field application.

Lacking some interpretire body, comparable in many re- Ypects to the British Building Research Station at' Garston, England, which derotes itself to the interpretation of scien- tific discoveries and improvements in relation bo practical building, the architects of America obtain their information through two principal channels-architectural magazines and the sales promotion efforts of manufacturers of materials.

The architectural magazines publish surprisingly little

This is not an indictment of their fundamental value.

AUGUST, 1933 ISDUSTRIAL AND ESGINEERING CHEMISTRl- 885

interpretive material on the advances of chemical or ot'her basic sciences in relation to building. I t is a relatively recent development in the architectural press to talk of such prosaic and practical things. Our profession has been pampered with pretty pictures of finished TTork for so many years that we are nieetiiig with some difficulty in getting architects to rely upon our serious efforts to be helpful in keeping pace with scientific progress.

This leaves the architect on the one hand, and chemists and other scientists on the other, to the not too tender mercies of sales promotion and advertising departments for the inter- change of knowledge of coninion interest. Today the sales- inan who calls on archit'ects, the printed catalog or nianu- facturer's manual, and advertising in the architectural maga- zines are t'he rehicles which convey the knowledge cheiiii acquire in the laboratory along that distant road to the arc tect, the builder, the engineer, the Imnker, and sometimes to the consumer.

BT-IOPSLT, somebody must traverse the road between 0 the laboratory and the architect. It cannot be the architect. He has far too many problems in too many di- versified fields to permit' him to search for t'he discoveries being made daily in many realms of science. I t should not be solely the sales department of manufacturing icompanies. The sales department may be the vehicle running back and forth along this road, but the load it carries must be placed there by the scientist who k n o w the real value of his own tle- relopments.

The sales department is now the principal correlating and interpreting medium, and that is unsound. Most industrial chemists now undertake research work a t the instigation of the sales manager. He reports that a competitor is under- selling him, and demands a cheaper manufacturing procedure. He says some other company has come out with a nev nia- terial and commands the chemist to produce something better. He reports a coniplaint in the performance of certain products and asks the chemist to pacify the disillusioned buyer. Sel- dom does the sales depart'ment concern itself n-it,h all of the manifold problems an architect encounters in t'he use of a material. Csually their object is to produce something that will sell fast and profitably. That is the sort of correlation existing today.

The important kind of correlation is between a given new e other materials n-ith which it may be wed in uction. If you have discovered a urea-formal- that makes a good floor tile, tlo not stop there.

The architect must know TI-hat adhesiyes to u>sc d i e i i in- Ftalling it ol-er n-ood or concrete or gypsum. He must, know its behavior under traffic, hoT7 to clean and maintain it, how it vi11 behave if t'he floor gets wet', how to cut through it for installing underfloor duct connections. If you develop a nen- plaster, the architect must knoxv what kind of plaster base to use, n-hat kinds of paints can be applied, what effect it will ha\ve on sound absorption and acoustics. If you de- \-elop a new dielect'ric such as the U. S. Rubber Company's Laytex, the architect is little concerned with its "insulation reiietance constant," or its "specific inductive capacity," hut he is vitally interested in the number of additional conductors he can pull through a one-inch conduit, or the space he can save by using smaller conduit sizes.

That is the sort of correlation that counts in the building field. Here the chemist and the architect can help each other. Before the chemist undertakes product improvement or origi- nal research in this field, he should discuss his objective with half a dozen architects, contractors, and building managers. He should ask bhem what difficulties they face with present products and their use; he should find out what other ma- terials are employed with the proposed product; and, above

'

all, he should find out' what facts they will need about prop- erties, performance, installation, and design before they will accept and use the improved material the chemist is seeking.

Unfortunately the chemist must take the initiative. Rarely indeed do architects or builders carry their problems to t'he laboratory for study and solution. They take what is available and try to make t'he best of it. But if a chemist seeks the advice of these men with a view to improving any detail of building practice, they will be ready to cooperate.

HIS method of correlating chemical developments with T existing building procedure vast'ly simplifies the task of interpret,ing their significance to architects and other buy- ers of t,he building field. The research chemist who has evolved a new material or an important improvement knows more about its characteristics and uses than any other person. If he has properly correlated his work with the needs of the building field, he knows everything about his product the architect, the builder, and the owner must know before they will buy it.

So the chemist, or inrentor, or discoverer ought to be the best equipped person to interpret his findings to ultiinate users. But professional ethics or just mere custom makes i t practically impossible a t present for the laboratory man to report his findings in any other way than through a "research paper" or "technical report,." l n d in t'his paper the chemist feels constrained, for some odd reason, to express himself almost entirely in laboratory terms. Perhaps that ic what makes it "scientific." It certainly is impressive to the lay- man, approximately in inverse ratio to his abilitj- t'o under- stand n-hat the author says.

In this paper or report the chemist is trained to make no positive statements beyond factually reporting procedures, reactions. formulas, and results. He seems to make it a point of pride to be extremely cautious in drawing conclusions, couching them in carefully chosen w x d s of precise connota- tion. Rarely m-ill he appraise the significance of what he has done in the broader ternis of practical usage; such iinscientific est'imates are left to others.

Perhaps this paper or report is published in some journal. Such publication is an inadequate means of starting a new discovery on its m y to practical application in the building field.

More likely, the report is sent to the company's executives where someone more or less familiar with both the laboratory and the field finds the product has commercial possibilities. Thence it goes to the sales manager and through him per- haps to the sales promotion manager and the advertising department. And through these channels, often mit'h the aid of an advertising agency, the cliscorery is broadcast to the building world.

In the process the scientific terms are freely translated to plain language, the carefully xorded and extremely cautious conclusions are turned into assertions and claims, and then the copy is dressed up with sales-pulling adjectives. Prob- ably the reason laboratory men do not more often ohject to the way t.heir companies promote their discoveries and im- provements is because the originator selcloni recognizes his brain child after it has been dressed up for public appearance.

This is not an indictment' of sales departments; it is the natural result of conditions as they commonly exist. The sales mind is as imaginative as the scientific mind is precise. If the chemist fails to interpret in clear and unmistakable lay language the uses, applications, and limitations of his de- velopment, some less \vell-informed mind must (30 it later. And in each step away from t'he laboratory, the translations are bound to become less and less accurate and more and more influenced by commercial considerations. That is just human nature a t work, not intentional deceit.

What happens?

INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY VOL. 27, NO. 8 886

It therefore devolves upon the scientist to interpret his findings in language the layman can understand. He should inform his company precisely what his development will do, He should establish its limitations. He should be explicit in his statements. If the scientist cannot be positive in his assertions, the product should remain in the laboratory. If he can be positive about some characteristics but not about others, he should place all the doubtful aspects in the category of limitations. He should not leave it to the nontechnical mind to guess about probabilities; if guessing must be done, i t would be better entrusted to the research man. And when the sales department has prepared its announcements and planned its promotion program, the chemist should edit every detail for accuracy of both statement and implication.

The most reliable manufacturers in the building field follow this procedure. Their reputations have grown because their technicians have absolute control of the statements pub- lished about their products in advertising and sales literature.

Unfortunately these conditions do not hold generally throughout our industry. But out of ten cases where sales claims are gross exaggerations of fact, probably not more than three or four are the result of deliberate distortion. The majority are due to ignorance coupled with enthusiasm, with the responsibility resting largely upon the research man’s failure to interpret his findings with crystal-like clarity.

This idea will be abhorrent to the scientific mind. Many will say that scientific facts cannot be accurately stated in plain words that frequently have many connotations. Some will deny the scientist’s responsibility for translation and in- terpretation. But if it is admitted that the need for some in- termediary agency to interpret laboratory findings in lay language has not yet been satisfied, all must agree that it is better for the technician to bridge the gap than to leave this task to an unscientific mind.

RECEIVED April 27, 1935.

Cellulated Clay Units J

GEORGE A. BOLE The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

NTEREST in light-weight masonry ma- terials developed several years ago when I cell concrete and Aerocrete came on the

market. The United States Gypsum Company introduced a foamed gypsum product. Haydite and similar light-weight clay aggregates for concrete had been used for some time. However, up to that date a light-weight clay unit had never been produced. It is rather a misstatement to say that no light-weight clay masonry materials had been made. A rela- tively light-weight tile and even bricks had been manufac- tured by burning sawdust out of a stiff mud product. This was called masonry lumber and was used in floor construction a t a verv earlv date. It was. however. much heavier than the cell concrete or the foamed gypsum. In recent years the makers of refractorier have been developing light-weight furnace linings. However, their main purpose has been the production of an insulating rather than a structural unit although the unit has served a structural purpose also. In the main these materials have been made by burning a combustible from a clay body. There have been some exceptions to this procedure as will be pointed out later.

BOUT this time there was developed A a t the Ohio State University a light- weight building unit. The principles in- volved were chemically simple. An acid was added to a clay slurry containing dolomite and plaster of Paris. The acid and dolomite behaved like the leaven in bread, developing sufficient gas to make the fluid mass rise; the plaster of Paris caused this mass to set. It was only a matter of a few minutes until a mass was formed which could be cut into any desired shape. This bloated mass was then dried

and fired in the usual manner. The fired product usually was not sufficiently true to shape to be marketed as such but had to be put through a cutting process.

Since the first product was developed and put on the mar- ket, several other light-weight building materials have come into use, each of these materials having a special virtue. Aside from the chemically bloated ware and ware from which sawdust has been burned the other most-used principle of making a light-weight clay product involves the forming of a permanent foam with oleate3 and then mixing this foam with the clay slip. A setting agent such as is involved in develop- ing a silica gel from water glass is then added to harden the mass. X fourth method, and one of interest to the chemist, involves the incorporation of naphthalene with the clay, dis- tilling it off, and then recovering the naphthalene.

HE original idea in developing a light-weight product T was to produce a material which would be u3ed a3 back-up in tall building construction, thus taking a large burden from the steel structure and allowing it to be made le-- mas- sive. It wa? so evident that this cellulated material would make a good insulator that structural insulation soon became the main obiective. The fact that it could be sawed and

shaped on the job made it all the more desirable for this purpose. Still later, its acoustic properties were proved and gave it a natural use in auditoriums, restaurants, and the like. It has the advantage over other com-

- B . Elevator t o convey raw materials from M. Device for measuring acid solution for wet

storage bins t o elevated bins C. Elevated bins of raw, dry materials for 3. Roller conveyors to carry dry batch to wet

manufacturing procesB (Z-drty storage) mixers and return empty batch boxes D. Gates in bottom of elevated bins to scales E. Batch box to receive batch of raw, dry 0. Wet-batch mixing machine

materials P. Conveyor to carry molds while wet batch F. Scales for weighing dry batch is setting up G . D r y batch mixer &-f. Drier car being loaded (twin tunnel drier H . Storage bin for mixed dry batch holds thirty-four cars) I. J . Scales for weighing out batch to wet mixers R-1. Tunnel kiln-1000 brlck equivalent per K. Kiln, 27 L. Mixing and storage tanks for acid solution cars long -t 5 feet; 150-hour cycle.

mix

Gate in bottom of dry batch storage bin

Water and acid t o mixing tanks

Q-8. Drier car being unloaded to kiln car

car (or 5 feet 4 inches long).

DESIGN OF INTERMITTENT PLANT SUBMITTED BY THE HARROP CERAMIC SERVICE COMPANY