201–210 of 339 posts
From wood? Good one Americans, really good one, ha.
Wood is a perfectly fine for homes. You can build long lasting and efficient homes using it and in fact engineered wood is showing up in some high rise construction. Wood is historically cheap here where as in parts of Europe it is quite costly.
My wife and I have entertained the idea of a bigger house for quite some time. Well, that boat has sailed. Building has pretty much become unaffordable for us, unless we'd move way out to the country side. And I mean WAY out - we would spend a lot more time every day driving everywhere). We'd also have to build a rather modestly-sized home to fit it into our budget. The thing is, the only reason we've started thinkin…
> Except that the old one will be, at its core, still an old house Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I like the idea of the core of my house being true 2x4s made of hardwood, instead of scam “2x4s” where they say it’s because of their sawblades but I’d say it’s because the mills squeeze too many “2x4s” out of a log.
And I don't think dimensional lumber is really a scam? You can go to a mill and buy rough cut wood still. Its cheaper but it also has its own possible drawbacks, you might need to dry it out, the boards will not have exact sizing like dimensional lumber and depending on your building code and the mill you buy from, you may need to get it graded and stamped for inspections. Ignoring recent price spikes, wood and framing are only a small part of the cost to build.
Is this true? Shipping things from where its more efficient to produce them I thought was better? The scale of ships and shipping containers means the carbon involved per item is pretty small.
> Even the best windows and doors on the market perform much worse than even an average wall New windows here in Norway are often triple or quadruple glazed, and they have a pretty good R-value; so they are not that much worse than average walls at least.
But aren’t average walls in Norway much more insulated? So the statement is still true? What is the R-value of a Norwegian wall?
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You will save on heating, though. If it's 10C outside and that cold creeps in, it's going to be pretty cold inside unless you run lots of heaters or a fireplace all the time. Not everyone is bothered by this though, but I think a house should have at least 21C in winter.
In Sweden, because of the crazy electricity prices, everyone is discussing right now how warm they should keep their houses. The idea is that a good citizen should save energy and therefore let the house get colder (also, to be "green" of course - but nothing like 5x more expensive energy to get people saving). They asked some politicians, most of them were saying between 19C and 21C.. one guy even said 15C, which ev…
Discussion should focus on energy budgets or total energy use, but that may be hard to conceptualize for the average Sven.
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Our Architect in Ireland did this for us. He found the builders and also hired a QS and other people to manage cost. It was not at all cheap but well worth it as we were in no position to supervise ourselves. Even for a modest build, it was well worth the cost. I can't understand how people can spend $$$ on building a new house but try to go cheap on the Architect... All you get is a McMansion.
I just had a house built in Ireland. Our architect was fairly cheap but it was that or nothing. It was a kit house and the builders still half-assed most things (they HATED the idea of making a house reasonably airtight for one) so I've been cleaning up their mess.
> Local is good. While we can get materials from nearly anywhere on earth, buying locally typically keeps the carbon footprint smaller. Is this true? Shipping things from where its more efficient to produce them I thought was better? The scale of ships and shipping containers means the carbon involved per item is pretty small.
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You will save on heating, though. If it's 10C outside and that cold creeps in, it's going to be pretty cold inside unless you run lots of heaters or a fireplace all the time. Not everyone is bothered by this though, but I think a house should have at least 21C in winter.
In Sweden, because of the crazy electricity prices, everyone is discussing right now how warm they should keep their houses. The idea is that a good citizen should save energy and therefore let the house get colder (also, to be "green" of course - but nothing like 5x more expensive energy to get people saving). They asked some politicians, most of them were saying between 19C and 21C.. one guy even said 15C, which ev…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ROI should absolutely be a part of calculation, else it would be easy to spend (even) more money on a home that's not desirable or enjoyable. The return is just not limited to money only. You likely want to get most house for your money, by various metrics. I don't think that homelessness has much to do with construction costs: homeless people are usually not those who have $70k lying around which is not sufficient e…
> ROI should absolutely be a part of calculation, else it would be easy to spend (even) more money on a home that's not desirable or enjoyable. ROI is being used in it's economics section, literally as return on investment. > I don't think that homelessness has much to do with construction costs No, but it does have to do with ROI, which you hand waved away above by redefining ROI to be non-financial rewards such as…