It looks like the entire thing is made of chipboard and planks of wood? Is it a temporary building? How long does that last?
Most mass builds are built like this
How to build a house alone [video]
31–40 of 292 posts
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#32In my hometown it was very common for people to build their own house twenty years ago, ignoring all kind of permits. A lot of people worked in construction or were plumbers, painters... they worked patiently in the weekends and with a little help from friends, only sprinting at the moment of the concrete injection. Even if the houses were illegal (there's an interesting background on why people takes that risk) the…
I see you're Spanish, but it was the same in Croatia. People built houses over a few weeks. In the 70s it was fairly normal to get some friends, call in some favors and build a summer house - illegally of course.
The old generation of houses has been legalized so the government got a fast influx of money, but a lot of them are ecological disasters and still stand.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#33This is completely badass. Construction is so overpriced and hard to get done. He's just jumping in and doing it. Good for him. Probably would cost $500,000 to build.
It looks like he’s not building a house for himself, he’s getting paid to build one for someone else. Still badass though.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#34In India, we mostly build using 100% concrete no woods -- I don't know why this difference.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#35It's not a good sign that the first three minutes of the first video contain a pointlessly dangerous technique.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#36In India, we mostly build using 100% concrete no woods -- I don't know why this difference.
Could it just be availability?
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#37My father rebuilt a 16th century house by himself on Saturdays. He used electricity and the house has modern features such as piped water and internet but no modern materials were used (concrete, aluminium, steel, etc.), only "old" granite and wood. It took him almost a decade but he builds houses for a living so it's not exactly a hobby despite the fact that he considered it as such.
Do you think people would like to watch videos about such things? My youngest brother now works for my father and he is tech savvy so it's something doable but would be in Portuguese.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this difference mainly caused by weather conditions or is it a cultural or economical consequence?
The US has, for practical purposes, an unlimited supply of cost effective, renewable timber (domestically + Canada). It makes tremendous economic sense. Also consider the renewable + cost + timber supply factor, when it comes to population. Germany's population has barely increased since 1970. The US population has increased by ~55% in that time, adding over 100 million people. Rarely building new structures for a st…
Historically, most people have built as much of their houses out of wood as they could, because it was easier to work with. Where wood was rare, only roofs were made out of it. Where wood was exceptionally rare, even roofs were vaulted.
Wood didn't last long, but until surprisingly recently, houses weren't meant to last. In Northern Europe, for example, even as late as the Iron Age, houses were rebuilt every few decades.
Exception: rich builders, like the church in Europe, and later on (roughly the thirteenth century) rich individuals, built out of stone.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has, for practical purposes, an unlimited supply of cost effective, renewable timber (domestically + Canada). It makes tremendous economic sense. Also consider the renewable + cost + timber supply factor, when it comes to population. Germany's population has barely increased since 1970. The US population has increased by ~55% in that time, adding over 100 million people. Rarely building new structures for a st…
That only answers one half of the question, doesn't it? Germany should also have the same unlimited supply of timber (it has the same percentage of forests of their land area), so why don't Germans build wood houses?
In the UK you struggle to get a mortgage on a wooden construction so have to be cash rich, you'd also struggle to get conventional housing insurance cover.
Re: How to build a house alone [video]
#40In my hometown it was very common for people to build their own house twenty years ago, ignoring all kind of permits. A lot of people worked in construction or were plumbers, painters... they worked patiently in the weekends and with a little help from friends, only sprinting at the moment of the concrete injection. Even if the houses were illegal (there's an interesting background on why people takes that risk) the…
> there's an interesting background on why people takes that risk
At least in some cases, the reason was that paying the fine was quicker and maybe even cheaper than going through the municipal bureaucracy. People would even denounce themselves once the construction was finished.