World Cleansing Men Get Together
Page 43
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IN his presidental address at the annual conference of the Institute of Public Cleansing at Southend-ontea, on Tuesday, Mr. C. R. Moss, t,LB.E., A.M.1.S.E., F.S.1.A., chief saniary inspector and cleansing superintenlent for Brighouse, referred to the nternational Association of Public ;leansing, which, he said, would be of "Intense value. Its new title was ntapuc. It had been created, he said, to bring tgether in a permanent organization 11 those bodies throughout the world ,ho were interested in the technique f public cleansing and its associated natices.
The personnel problem, he observed, as still difficult. Despite protective °thing, superannuation, sick pay and ,lint Industrial Council awards, the lain fact was that the service was tat tracti ve.
After the presidential speech, the -oblems associated with the preparaan and cleansing of streets before and ter ceremonial processions were dealt ith in a paper by Mr. B. Wheelhouse, !puty director of public cleansing for restmi n stet..
Yesterday morning, Mr. F. J. A. wits, A.R.San.I., deputy cleansing perintendent of Croydon, spoke on Future Possibilities in Public Cleans:. g," a subject which was also dealt th in a short paper by Sir William irling.
festminster's Technique Snow Disposal
4UCH had been said in favour of 1 the gang system of street cleansing, which the mechanically propelled tck was used for collecting the sweep0, commented Mr. Wheelhouse. So the battery-electric had been roured for this purpose, but Aberdeen played a petrol-engined pedestriannrolled truck.
this had a 3 h.p. air-cooled fourokc engine and an 111-cu.-ft. body. c petrol consumption was at the rate 1.6 gal. for an eight-hour day and running cost, including petrol, oil. ase, tyres, repairs, insurance and ad Fund licence, was 11.2d. an hour. -le was satisfied, he said, that for stminster the gang system was not iciently attractive to warrant depar:. from the one-man-per-section idea. section sweeper could, for instance, e advantage of a vehicle's removal n a temporary parking place to ep the area vacated. t had been said that heavy labour I transport costs for the removal of w were bound to follow the use of wploughs. Mit was this true? When snowploughs were used, the removal of the ridged snow to sewers and other places of disposal need not necessarily be undertaken immediately. except in the more important streets.
Mr. Wheelhouse had on many occasions found that, having ploughed the snow towards the street channels and salted the path cleared by the ploughs, the temperature had risen within a few hours. Taking advantage of this change, the ploughs were run in the reverse direction to plough off part of the ridge towards the centre of the road, the process being repeated until there were several separate ridges.
The plough was then raised slightly and the vehicle driven diagonally across the road, thus breaking up the ridges and liquefying the snow.
All Traffic Stopped In the case of ceremonial processions, all traffic was stopped—even the council vehicles employed on the route for sanding and for the removal of street refuse. This meant that parking positions for the vehicles, with ready access to the route, must be selected and approved by the police in advance.
The route was divided into sections and it was necessary for at least one position adjacent to each section to be available for parking the vehicles before and after sanding. This also applied to vehicles which received litter from trucks before the procession and to the sweepers' trucks and tools while the procession was moving.
According to weather conditions, the whole of the route would be washed 48 hours before the procession, All gullies on and adjacent to the route were emptied and resealed a day or two beforehand. This was done as a safeguard against a choked gully, which could prove an embarrassment.
Vehicles required for sanding were loaded after the completion of the previous day's work, whilst the spreading equipment, tyre pressures and water, oil and petrol levels were examined so as to avoid any possible delay the following morning.
A spare vehicle and a breakdown van with two fitters in attendance were available in case of need. As equipment must be ready to deal with any situation which might arise because of the vagaries of the weather, even snowploughs and salt might have to be placed alongside the sanding vehicles.
Following a procession, the sweepercollectors did invaluable work. They removed the sand and gave a final polish to the roadway. Three worked together, the one in front being close to the kerb, the others following in echelon.
Possibilities of Daily Collections
w/As it fair or ethical, said Mr. VY Shults, that those responsible for a fundamental part of the public health service should demand that the housewife should store her domestic refuse for seven days or even longer? In place of what he called "that ugly, smelly, galvanized monstrosity, known as the dustbin," he foresaw the use of small plastic containers of about 0.5-cu.-ft. capacity.
If the principle of daily collection were adopted, there was nothing to prevent the use of small, simple, sideor rear-loading electric articulated vehicles operated in relays in conjunction with fast-moving petrol or oil-engined vehicles.
There was no sound reason why a refuse-collection service could not, in future, be elevated to the same social plane as milk or bread delivery.
The labour-recruitment problem had existed for many years and the prospects were not rosy. Acceptance of the policy of daily collections would greatly simplify the problem.
To the technical officer considering the practicability of daily collection, it was suggested that he should examine the loading rate per man per day, the decrease in costs when operating small. simple vehicles, particularly batteryelectries, and the subsequent possibility of maintaining an acceptable labourtiansport cost ratio.
It was visualized that in the not-toodistant future cleansing and ancillary vehicles would be fitted with two-way radio, linked to a master station at the general office. Mr. Shults thought that the system could be adopted with great advantage.
Limits of Bulk Carriers The 40-cu.-yd. transporter was becoming increasingly popular, said Mr. Shults, yet even this had its limitations, in that its maximum economic range was relatively small—about 20 miles. This was little more than a step and an 11-ton payload could be described as a "handful." • The first possible future improvement when considering street cleansing was the use of vacuum sweeping. Such a scheme was proposed as far back as 1928, but little of practical value had eventuated.
Sir William Darling, who followed. said that the previous speaker was right in protesting against what he had called " the eternal gospel of enormity." Small vehicles, he said, with local collecting depots, had many advantages.
It was a simple fact, commented Sir William, that the more cleansing vehicles put on the road, the more street cleaning had to be done. 'Were 1 Jules Verne or H. G. Wells," he said, "1 have no doubt that I could, without great effort, visualize some sort of great vacuum cleaner which, proceeding over pavement and street,. would sweep a mile of thoroughfare in a couple of minutes."