Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#271

Post by Khaine » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 9:04 AM UTC

gluggymug wrote: post #161

danieltillett wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a purely economic perspective a building that lasts more than 50 years is probably not worth doing. In theory you could invest the initial savings and replace the whole building in 50 years from the income. The downside of pushing the engineering to the limit is the builders often cut corners to make their own savings so that the building does not even make 50 years. Plenty of new buildings here in Australia are…

Agreed. I was a victim of this in my former home in Adelaide. It was a newly built townhouse complex so we were a body corporate. Within 4 years of building completion, we were suffering from rising damp and completely loose paving in the shared driveways. The paving was too high relative to the damp proof course and the base wasn't prepared properly. It took a couple of years of legal stuff to claim on the building…

It is absolutely criminal how much we let builders get away with, and since building inspectors are no longer independent (the builder pays for them) everything is stacked against home-buyers these days

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#272

Post by Khaine » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 9:26 AM UTC

Marazan wrote: post #261

Gibbon1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes that's quite the nasty bit of concrete.

I would love to know the mindset and thought process of Brutalist architects and admirers who see that and see beauty whilst the majority of the rest of the world sees a broken down leaking eye sore. We are so far apart it is like trying to understand and alien. I have seen a scant handful of Brutalist building that I consider fine works of craft but the gob smacking majority are pitiful piles of concrete and exposed…

I don't think I've ever seen a Brutalist building that I consider good. Worse still, stupid architects get them heritage listed so we can't even replace them with actually useful buildings (i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Offices,_Belconnen)

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#273

Post by coldtea » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #264

coldtea wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, "should" or "shouldn't" can get too complex to analyze. There's no god given set of rights -- what we get to do is what the era/society/legal system we live in allows us. And what's moral/good to do even outside or against what's allowed, is a matter of philosophy. People expected to be able to smoke even on an airplane in the 70s. Nowadays not so much. Asking someone not to smoke "within 30 ft of this building…

The difference being that I don't pay a tax to the people who are inconvenienced when I smoke. Suppose everyone in an area set a price that they would be willing to smell cigarette smoke during their meal. If I pay them all that price, why shouldn't I be allowed to smoke? And some people would set it at +infinity, which is fine too, which would mean I don't get to smoke. With heating, the government is placing a +inf…

>With heating, the government is placing a +infinity price on heat retention for buildings(with ceilings > 8'), but isn't actually enforcing that price in any other manner. Why not just charge progressively increasing amounts for electricity/gas expenditure?

Because they just want to impose a rule for what they believe is better for the environment.

They don't want to make it into a market product.

>Basically, if I want to pay for tall ceilings in my house, shouldn't I be able to, assuming I pay the appropriate amount?

That just makes it into something the rich can do while the poor can't. While indeed it also servers to lower the number of people doing't it -- it's not what any society that holds to high esteem any values besides net worth would want to do.

And I'm not just talking about the "tall ceilings" thing here, which might or might not be reasonable, but the more general question "shouldn't I pollute/waste as much energy as I want if I pay enough for it?".

Somethings we don't allow people to do at any price. Like kill people. Even if the victim also agrees. I, for one, don't believe payment trumps any morals in principle, and I wouldn't want that to be the case.

Whether it happens in practice (e.g. bribery etc), that's OK. But I wouldn't design a system where that's accepted and celebrated too.

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#274

Post by jonnathanson » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #207

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A combination of three things, IMHO: 1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later. 3. Minimum standards for housing construction. The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the c…

>"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference" True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on it. The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for quality.…

I think a key difference is that you drive the car everyday. Even if you have no clue about the inner workings of the car, you have a direct, frequent, operating relationship with it. You understand its basic principles and functionality in a hands-on way (literally). If unseen defects are present in a car, they'd reveal themselves to you in short order.

The same cannot be said for houses. You live in a house everyday, but you don't have a true working or operating relationship with it unless you're very handy (which many home buyers these days are not). The car has a direct input/output operating cycle that you control; the house does not. It's harder to suss defects out because the house doesn't 'run' on them per se. You only learn about the defects when the house fails in one way or another. That may be two days into the inspection period, or it may be two years after closing.

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#275

Post by tsomctl » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #249

sanoli wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about a specific model of washer. My dad did his research, talked to a bunch of maintenance guys who repaired machines for a living, and ended up buying the best built machine that was being sold. Recently I bought a couple of used Snap-on hand tools that were made in the early 90's. I know how tough they are. They are just pretty damn well built. In 20 years if I remark how great they're still going, tha…

Snap-on is fantastic. If anyone ever sees any for sale at yard sales - even broken, rusted-up, mostly junk tools, buy them. If you can find a distributor, they honor the lifetime warranty. Craftsman tools used to be the same, although you have to be careful - they've started mixing in the cheapo junk lines and putting the Craftsman name on them, and those don't necessarily have the same warranty policy.

More specifically, anything branded Craftsman Evolv is guaranteed to be garbage. I've seen Craftsman Evolv tools that are identical to ones at Harbor Freight, but at twice the price.

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#276

Post by douche » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

alricb wrote: post #268

douche wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why people put asphalt shingles on new houses, instead of putting on steel roofing. It might be a hair cheaper, but the difference between shingle and the screw-on steel panels is not that much. A.) Snow doesn't come off of shingles worth a damn unless you have a wicked pitch on your roof. So you have to get up and shovel off the roof, or risk icedams, leaks, and potentially the whole roof colla…

You should never have to shovel your roof; you should have a vented attic or enough insulation to avoid ice dams, and the structure should be strong enough to support the snow load.

That would be a great ideal, but I've never seen it in practice. Probably with the truss-style roofs that are used commonly now, the snow weight is less of a problem than with the older rafter-style.

I'm unclear what point ventilation or insulation in the attic would have to do with ice dams... In my experience, it's caused by snow that doesn't get removed, which then melts, seeps down to the roof, and refreezes, with the texture of the shingles providing a greater surface area to freeze against.

All things being equal, it's nice to have a steel roof that will warm up on a sunny day and have all the snow slide off.

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#277

Post by ThrustVectoring » Sun, Nov 08, 2015, 11:10 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #207

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A combination of three things, IMHO: 1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later. 3. Minimum standards for housing construction. The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the c…

>"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference" True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on it. The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for quality.…

Yeah, that's roughly how it works in the US. Pre-WW1, though, there was much more of "buy land and materials, build a house yourself" going on. Like, sometimes you'd basically clear the trees from a plot and use the lumber from that to build the house.

That's what I meant by labor specialization - on the home-buying side, much fewer people can build a home or participate meaningfully in construction and remodeling.

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#278

Post by tandyclone » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 12:45 AM UTC

listic wrote: post #257

Is there a non-paywalled version? 'This article is available for GBA PRIME members only'

Easily ripped-off because their paywall needs a new word to describe simultaneously terrible, useless and laughable that isn't Donald or Trump. In most desktop browsers, press (or stop on mobile browsers) to stop loading content while the page is still loading in just the right time window and the paywall ask will be less likely to popup (but still nondeterministically succeed sometimes).

Or read just the the text here:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe...

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#279

Post by alricb » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 1:17 AM UTC

douche wrote: post #276

alricb wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should never have to shovel your roof; you should have a vented attic or enough insulation to avoid ice dams, and the structure should be strong enough to support the snow load.

That would be a great ideal, but I've never seen it in practice. Probably with the truss-style roofs that are used commonly now, the snow weight is less of a problem than with the older rafter-style. I'm unclear what point ventilation or insulation in the attic would have to do with ice dams... In my experience, it's caused by snow that doesn't get removed, which then melts, seeps down to the roof, and refreezes, wit…

See: http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-046-dam-ic...

The snow melts because of heat coming from the inside the house. [1]

So if you keep your roof cold through insulation and ventilation, you don't need to remove the snow (as long as the roof can handle it structurally)

[1]: http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Portals/55/docs/CEERD-RV/CEER... [pdf]

Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

#280

Post by ryuker16 » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 10:36 AM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #194

old-gregg wrote: post #109

The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers. The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war". Examples of…

If you go around old homes in Portland, you will see lathe and plaster walls as smooth as a still lake built close to 100 years ago, not to mention lovingly crafted wood details. If you go into a modern home, you see sheet drywall with tons of shitty looking texture all over it to hide the deep imperfections with the hanging of the drywall, and nary a wood detail to be found. It's absurd that we've taken these woeful…

I'd imagine all the cheap shanty towns and crap houses were bulldozed over a long time ago.