The exhaustion of the first edition of this book, within so short a time
of its publication, makes it difficult to add much new matter for the
reissue now called for, or, in the light of subsequent research and
experience, to revise what had already been written.
Any book that seemed to show a way of meeting the present building
difficulties, however partially, was fairly assured of a welcome, but
the somewhat unforeseen demand for my small contribution to the great
volume of literature on cottage-building is, I think, to be attributed
chiefly to its description of Pise-building.
Of the very large number of letters that reach me from readers of the
book, quite ninety-nine out of every hundred are concerned with Pise.
The other methods of building have their advocates and exponents, but it
is clearly Pise that has caught the attention of the public as well as
of the Press both at home and abroad, and it is to this method of
construction that I have chiefly devoted my attention since the writing
of the book as it first appeared.
In our English climate Pise-building is a summer craft, and the
small-scale experiments of one person through a single summer cannot in
the nature of things add very greatly to the sum of our knowledge of
what is possible with Pise and of what is not.
Most of the new data have come through the building of Mr. Strachey's
demonstration house, an account of which is included in the present
volume.
At the time of writing, various tests are being carried out with the
help of the National Physical Laboratory; but the results, though
exceedingly encouraging, are not yet ready for publication.[1]
The fact that Pise-building is essentially a "Dry-earth method" makes
necessary the creation of artificial summer conditions under which the
experiments may be conducted during the past winter. As a result of
these researches, a considerable mass of useful data has become
available for the opening of the present building season.[2]
Much helpful information is also likely to come to us from the Colonies,
particularly from Rhodesia and British East Africa, where there is great
activity in Pise-building, and where there is no "close season" such as
our winter imposes upon us here.
It is instructive also to note that great interest in Pise-building has
been aroused in Canada and in Scandinavia, the two countries that we
were wont to associate particularly with timber-building.
From both I have received a number of letters complaining of "the lumber
shortage," and discussing the advantages of Pise as compared with their
traditional wood-construction.
If these great timber countries are themselves feeling the pinch, the
advocates of wooden houses for England may find that they are not merely
barking up the wrong tree, but up a tree that is not even there.
The timber famine is, in any case, a calamity to anyone dependent on
building, that is to everyone, for even a Pise house must still have a
roof and floors and joinery.
But to invoke the timber house as our salvation under existing
conditions seems to be singularly perverse and unhelpful. Pise, at all
events, seems to offer us a more promising field for exploration than
most of the other heterodox methods of construction that have been
suggested, too often upon credentials that will not bear any but the
most cursory scrutiny.
Pise, even now, is still in its experimental infancy.
It has yet to prove itself in the fields of National Housing and of
competitive commercial building schemes on a large scale.
Lastly, Pise does not claim to solve the housing problem. There is no
solution unless, by some miracle, the present purchasing power of the
sovereign appreciates by 200 per cent.