Tar Paper Research Articles

Hand-Me-Down-Days

Hand-Me-Down-Days Girl in the backrow whose only gift for Christmas is a pencil box, empty, its sole treasure your name crayoned in letters stark as winter trees: you linger in the doorwayfar away your father rocks in some dark corner of a tar paper shack, curses the wind whistling through cracks. Near the river your mother's new grave glistens. Late afternoon light slants across our desks. We huddle by the stove to read the lines of your hands hovering above the fire, scrubbed raw on ridges of washboards. Wind skirls across rocky fields whipping you all the way home. -Jeff Daniel Marion 17 ...

Shacks, People And Petroleum

Abstract Tents, shacks and small houses served as the first living quarters in Turner Valley Heat, water, sanitarian, business, leisure, entertainment and crime were to develop in due course. But at first it was a lot like an extended campout. Dingman No. 1 made the Valley famous in 1914. The closest town was Black Diamond, a farming community centre. Even by 1924 when the spectacular Royalite NO.4 well blew in, only a few buildings existed at the present site of the town of Turner Valley. A panorama photograph, one of those mind-bending photos that looks south at one end and north at the other, shows only a few buildings near those famous wells in 1925. Seventeen derricks or well heads dot the panorama view. Sam Coultis lived on the hill which became known as Snob Hill across the river and southeast from the plant. Just below the riverbank sat the houses of his workmen. Each day they walked across a foot bridge to the small plant. A school, some company offices and warehouses, a few homes near the wells where the men were employed and the famous flare in the coulee called Hell's Half Acre complete the picture. This was the beginning of the boomtime for Turner Valley. Housing at first consisted of tents. As the permanence of the oilfield became obvious, some people built houses but many just lived in tar paper shacks. That is, tar paper was the only covering on the small frame buildings, built on skids, that were hauled from one work site to the next. Some shacks eventually got a protective coat of siding but still, they were small. One lady commented that the cars were bigger than the houses so that the cars could pull the houses around. Full sized houses were built for the plant management at the top of Snob Hill. Other people rented or bought land but many just squatted, with no thought or care for a title, until they moved to the next worksite. The only settlement to survive the years since the 1920s was Black Diamond. Even there many of the houses had come from many other communities before settling down for good. Heat was an important commodity when you lived in a tar paper shack, years before insulation or central heating. Most buildings were heated with waste gas from anyone of the numerous nearby wells. Seldom did the gas cost much, if anything, but the unscrubbed fuel exacted other payments. First it just plain stank. A high sulphur content made the valley smell like rotten eggs when the gas was burned. Next the pressure was highly unpredictable. One lady boasted she could cook a turkey in 20 minutes when the pressure was up to 220 pounds per square inch. Another lady died when her house blew up after a gas leak filled her house with gas. Not only did the gas smell. One story says that when the vicar was coming for tea the silver tea service was highly polished and then covered carefully to keep it bright.

Gypsy Moth: Efficacy of Aerial Treatments of Carbaryl Applied at Half the Normal Dosage Rate12

Airplane spray tests were conducted in New Jersey to determine the efficacy of LV applications of Sevin 4-oil® at a dosage rate of 1 pt Sevin 4-oil (½ lb AI) plus 2 oz kerosene/acre against Porthetria dispar (L.). A variety of sampling methods was used to evaluate effectiveness of the carbaryl application including frass, larval and egg mass counts, as well as net changes in defoliation levels, in both treated and untreated areas. Comparisons in 3 treated blocks with untreated checks, using 1-ft tar paper squares, showed reduction of frass, larvae, and egg masses averaging 83.8, 87.3, and 87.6%, respectively. An additional egg mass count on all trees within 1/40th acre plots showed an average reduction of 93.1% considering all 3 treated blocks. Defoliation levels remained at relatively light, stable levels in the treated areas whereas up to 75% defoliation occurred on host trees in the untreated area. The test demonstrated that satisfactory gypsy moth population reduction and foliage protection can be obtained using ½-1b dosage rates of carbaryl.

A comparison of plastic and tile drain pipes with differing cover materials

A comparison was made between three types of plastic drain pipes and conventional earthen tile drains combined with cover materials of washed river sand, fibreglass, and tar paper. Rate of drawdown of a water table was measured for each combination of pipe and cover material over a period of 220 hours. Soil material that accumulated over three years in the observation pits and over four years in the pipes was measured. All combinations of pipes and cover materials provided satisfactory drainage and there were no differences of practical significance between them in terms of rate of drawdown. The river sand used in the experiment caused blockage of slot openings in corrugated plastic pipe, and one type of smooth walled plastic pipe was badly distorted by soil pressure leading to a widening of the slots, entry of soil material and breaking the fibreglass covering. Another type of plastic pipe was unsatisfactory because the perforation method left plastic material as hairs within the pipe. The fibreglass, 0.2 mm thick, was too thin to be entirely satisfactory, but was, under favourable conditions, a most effective cover material. Tar paper was quite unsatisfactory as material to prevent soil entry to pipes.

Housing programmes for Eskimos in Northern Canada

The Government of Canada began supplying housing for some of its Eskimo people in the Northwest Territories in 1956. At this date the majority of Eskimos still followed their traditional nomadic way of life and lived in igloos or snow houses during winter, and in skin or canvas tents during summer. Since 1956, the tendency of Eskimo families to settle in the vicinity of trading posts, church missions, and newly established federal schools has increased, and the problem of providing permanent accommodation for them has been aggravated. At first the new townsmen improvised shelters from a combination of tents, packing cases, and scraps of metal, tar paper and lumber. When these inadequate dwellings were used as permanent residences, grave social and public health problems resulted from overcrowding.

A New Method of protecting Wood against Marine Borers

During the last five years the authors have supervised 11 series of exposure tests, ranging from 6 to 25 months, of Japanese cedar samples tested in various ways to prevent attack by marine borers. Some of the new methods were applied to more than 20 ships sailing to the southern seas, but unfortunately most of them were lost or destroyed before ade_??_uate tests could be completed.Protective methods generally in use for saving wooden ships from borers are either chemical or mechanical. The chemical method kills the borers by painting or injecting preservatives or toxicants into the wood. The mechanical method prevents borers from reaching the timber by sheathing it with sheet metal or specially treated fabric. Observation of exposure tests on materials treated by these two methods have given the following results:1) Painting the exposed surface with a chemical substance harmful or disagreeable to marine borers such as copper paint, is commonly practiced as the most effective and practical method in use at present. This method is not permanent because the protective substance either gradually leaches out, or the coating itself is destroyed by abrasion in a very short time. Subsequently frequent docking and renewal are necessary.2) Sheathing the bottom with an outer board with an intervening layer of tar paper has been considered resistant, but their experiments show it quite ineffective against both shipworms and boring crustaceans over a two year period.3) Impregnating the wood with preservatives and toxicants is cons dered better than co ting, but the large amounts of impregnants necessary, and the increase of weight to the ship are undesirable.4) So far as the weight i concerned, sheathing the bottom of a ship with thin wood impregnated with creosote or copper hydroxide is better than injecting the hull itself. But the impregn ted boards lengthen the life of the ship only until the in ected tox cants leach out of the thin wood, which is usually within a year.No chemical method depending on toxicity lasts over one or two years.Next they tested various methods of applying soluble urine resin compounds, which may be so treated as to make a hard, unsoluble outside layer, giving mechanical as well as chemical protect on. Results were obtained as follows:1) Test pieces painted with urine resine compounds were not attacked by the borers after one and one half years. and after two years the test pieces were attacked slightly only at one corner where the coating abraded. The method is more effective than painting with copper.2) The two year tests of an intervening layer of urine resin compounds give complete protection against the borers. Veneer plates with two or three protective layers of urine resin compounds may be applicable for the outer protective boards of ship.3) Samples sheathed with thin boards injected with urine resin compounds lasted two years against borers.4) Another important result of this method is the waterproof quality imparted to the woodtself. The weight of samples after two years test in the sea showed only 10-20% increase remakably lower than that of the other methods which allow sometimes up to 120% increase in weight.

The Plant Louse Problem of the Texas Gulf Coast

Standard control measures of other sections fall down because of low temperatures and high winds. Various dosages of calcium cyanide were tried out from the standpoint of shortening of time period of exposure with regard to the possibility of fumigating beneath cheap tar paper covers. Heating of nicotine sprays and of nicotine dusts seem to offer promising results in sections with cool temperatures in the growing season. Increased efficiency or greater dilution and cheaper treatments are considered as possibilities of the use of heat.

Miscellaneous Codling Moth Studies1

Only three per cent of the larvae captured in bands treated with beta-naphthol completed their life cycle and emerged as moths. Field tests and behavior studies indicate that this chemical repels 10 to 20 per cent of the larvae. Alpha-naphthy lamine (Techn.) used in a similar manner gives promise of being as effective as bet3- naphthol. Corrugated strawboard proved the best material for chemical treatment while a combination burlap and kraft paper is more efficient than burlap, crepe, or tar paper. where untreated bands are used. Thickness was found to be an important factor in determining the efficiency of any banding material. Mature larvae are attracted to upright objects and find the tree readily in daylight but only by accident at night. Although able to successfully hibernate in leaves and in sod, larvae will not readily do so if coarse debris is present or if adequate cocooning quarters such as bands are available on the trunk. Small shrubs and bits of dead weed stems in the absence of coarse debris furnished attractive cocooning quarters for larvae. Larvae can live in buried apples for at least seven weeks, and before the soil is too solidly packed can escape through six inches of it.

HOW TO GET RID OF FLEAS

Reading in the April number of the Canadian Entomologist, Mr. Heath's account of the plague of fleas in Manitoba, recalled what I had read in the Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales. It appears that in the Australian bush fleas are as great a nuisance as they are in some parts of Manitoba. A settler, who had suffered greatly from their presence, wrote to the Gazette that he had occasion to use tar paper in his dwelling, when he discovered that fleas would not stay in the house with it, and from that time he had no more trouble with fleas in his house, although they were as plentiful out of doors as ever. Last autumn, or early winter, one of our local members, on his regular visit to the Society's room, started the enquiry as to what was the best way to get rid of fleas, as his house had got overrun with them from having allowed their dog to sleep in the cellar. I thought of what I had then recently read, hunted up the number of the Gazette, found the reference, and showed it to him, when he said he would try it.