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The Pretty Good House

prettygoodhouse.org

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Re: The Pretty Good House

#311

Post by simonebrunozzi »

orthoxerox wrote: post #233
itsoktocry wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go look at 2-3 houses that they finished - you pick them, don't let them pick. Does this work in practice? How can you "pick them" without the builder telling you which houses they built? Do you expect people living in the houses to let you wander around their homes looking for contractor flaws?

You ask them for the last X houses they've built and pick randomly. People are generally happy to do this: this proves to them their house is good enough for their contractor to show to others and most people don't move into a finished house right away anyway.

Exactly.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#312

Post by topkai22 »

rascul wrote: post #302
topkai22 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wood has really good longevity- in the US it’s not hard to find 100+ year old houses all over the place in older settled areas. In Buffalo, NY about half the single family homes for sale are over 100 years old, and they mostly appear wood built. My unscientific observation is that buildings are more often replaced due to changes in land use and taste than structural failure, and the structural failure modes include f…

> Anyways, plenty of regions use concrete (what most 3d printed houses are made of) heavily in residential construction. Outside of apartment buildings, concrete isn't used much for residential that I've seen, except for the foundation. Not sure what you mean by "heavily" though.

I've lots of concrete houses on journeys to tropical climates- in my case, some Carribean islands and to a lesser extent SE Asia. The older ones were typically block built rather than panel built. I could also be confusing concrete/cement as I find it impossible to keep those straight.

Rare in North America though.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#313

Post by Gravityloss »

dkarl wrote: post #308
Gravityloss wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All apartments and houses by law must have an energy certificate here. There's a high level EU directive but the details are by country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Building... However, it has its pitfalls and critics. Anyway, there the energy consumption is calculated from areas and insulation U values and so forth. Don't know what would be the actual biggest problems against launching someth…

Estimates done from the design are pretty common, and BIM programs (Building Information Management) like Revit integrate all of the construction details into the design model, so they are able to automate some of those calculations. But BIM programs are not great design tools (not sure if that's an inherent conflict or if there simply aren't any good ones) so they are not popular for smaller jobs like single-family…

Drawing estimation, outside vs inside temp + heating energy monitoring, heat camera pictures and some kind of other measurements could probably create a reasonable certificate that would be reassuring to house buyers. Or even if the owners are the same but there was some significant renovation being done, one could do that to see if the renovation was done properly.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#314

Post by Gravityloss »

sagebird wrote: post #303
Gravityloss wrote: post #236

Here double pane has been the standard for about a century and triple pane after the eighties. No problems whatsoever. I don't even know what's the standard nowadays. Newer windows also quiet down traffic well and reduce the drafty feeling. So there are really very few excuses to not use them. But I don't know what's the name of the phenomenon when someone who uses some primitive technology comes out with all kinds o…

What would be some concequences if someone installed two old single pane windows a few inches from each other into a wall. IE - pseudo double panes via single panes. Would it fog up like double pane glass with a broken seal? Could you put a desiccant in there? Is there a cheap way to be able to open it if you need to? Could it be worth it because it is more repairable than a broken double pane system -- even though i…

Nothing bad, it's the way double pane windows were done here for about 60 years. My current windows right in front of me are just like that. It's impractical for triple pane, then you combine multiple panes to one frame.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#315

Post by rascul »

topkai22 wrote: post #312
rascul wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyways, plenty of regions use concrete (what most 3d printed houses are made of) heavily in residential construction. Outside of apartment buildings, concrete isn't used much for residential that I've seen, except for the foundation. Not sure what you mean by "heavily" though.

I've lots of concrete houses on journeys to tropical climates- in my case, some Carribean islands and to a lesser extent SE Asia. The older ones were typically block built rather than panel built. I could also be confusing concrete/cement as I find it impossible to keep those straight. Rare in North America though.

Ahh, perhaps I should have specified in the US.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#316

Post by seb1204 »

topkai22 wrote: post #91
alanwreath wrote: post #27

Love this new resource. I've been geeking out over what seems to be some near term changes on what it means to build a home. For the longest time it seemed to mean (in the US at least): - wood - waste - lifelong high expense - manual and with the sudden explosion of - 3D printed houses (https://communityimpact.com/austin/georgetown/housing-real-estate/2022/11/17/3d-printed-homes-in-georgetown-offer-new-approach-to-bu…

I was talking to a (housing) developer friend who is also into many of these technologies last year. In short, 3d printing and modularization can reduce cost, but not as much as I would have thought 10 years ago. Framing is only 1/6 of the construction code of the average house, with another 1/6 going to roofing and siding. The other 2/3 of constriction costs are things like design, permitting, dirt work, plumbing, e…

I heard that prefab components required a lot more rigor and accuracy of the foundation so they go together as planned. This in turn does not go well together with builder that prefer to work hourly rates and cut to suit on site.

A timber frame alone is not really much prefab? Should we not make whole walls with internal and external cladding (whatever tech selected), cables and pipes or a least conduits?

Re: The Pretty Good House

#317

Post by dan-robertson »

HPsquared wrote: post #168
dan-robertson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I’d thought the voids were usually evacuated but that doesn’t really make sense with the pressure involved. Apparently it is possible to have a vacuum inside but uncommon and harder to manufacture (and you need support pillars to separate the panes). https://www.glassonweb.com/article/vacuum-insulating-glass-p...

You'd still have radiative heat transfer, even if there is a vacuum between the panes. For a given budget, you're probably better off adding more regular panes.

Aren’t new windows often coated with something opaque to IR, that way they keep heat in during winter and don’t heat up like a greenhouse in the summer?

Re: The Pretty Good House

#318

Post by nextos »

jaclaz wrote: post #154
nextos wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huf Haus is just an example, there are several alternatives in the EU. I'm not familiar with the American market, but I'm willing to bet there are some similar options.

I don't know, from experience Huf Haus is (while being very expensive) offering a level of quality (both in the construction and in the details/personalization) that I haven't seen in other EU firms, it is very possible that there are US firms at the same level, though from the little I have seen they are on par on the "other" EU ones (possibly good, but not exceptionally good). If I recall correctly, Huf Haus is aro…

I agree with everything you said, this is why I think pre-fab is the way to go. It's like ordering a car, high industrial quality and few/no surprises. Other readers should keep in mind the pre-fabs we are talking have nothing to do with park homes. It's more like a Lego that is assembled onsite.

Regarding Huf Haus alternatives, there are a few German brands that are quite similar. Baufritz for instance is also old, and manufactures outstanding houses: https://www.baufritz.com/uk. The problem is that, unlike Huf Haus, they are not willing to do cheap (For smaller stuff, in the UK there is https://wudl.co.uk, which builds pretty nice things. I also love https://www.echoliving.co.uk, although this is just a high-end cabin builder. Very different.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#319

Post by dan-robertson »

maratc wrote: post #137
dan-robertson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a ntuple-glazed window is going to have a lot less thermal mass than a wall (though presumably depends on the wall material too – thick stone walls will have more mass than wood+plaster). But I’ve little idea what the right amount of thermal mass is for a building.

Thermal mass is usually not a factor you're looking at when choosing windows; thermal resistance is. In a nutshell, stone, concrete, metal, and glass are very good at transmitting heat, so the inside of your house will quickly be as hot (or as cold) as the outside. Plastic, wood, and especially air are very bad at transmitting heat (or good resisting to heat transmission) and this is what you want for your house. Bac…

I know how double glazing works but if you put a window somewhere then you aren’t putting a wall there. So I’m wondering if having a much higher % window (is less wall and more glass) will cause the building to have an importantly lower thermal mass. But I don’t really know if modern buildings would want a large or small thermal mass.

I’m confused by what you write about stone and concrete being good at transmitting heat. I thought the point was that (a) they act as an accumulator regulating the temperature because they take a lot of energy to heat up and (b) they conduct heat poorly (or worse than a window would be mm of thickness but they are much thicker) which is insulating.

Looking up random values from the web, it seems a the low numbers for a thin concrete wall (single wythe means no cavity insulation) are about 2.5x those of a coated double glazed window. A wall which is thicker or has insulation will perform much better. And this doesn’t count any insulation from plaster or cladding or whatever.

Concrete: 0.8 W/m^2K for 10cm solid dense concrete. https://ncma.org/resource/rvalues-ufactors-of-single-wythe-c...

Window: 2.1 W/m^2K for a coated especially insulating window. https://www.justrite.com.au/products-and-services/double-gla...

I wrote about conductivity here because that’s what your comment seemed to be about. Maybe I misunderstood your comment because it seemed to me that you were implying that windows transmit less heat than eg concrete walls (reading carefully, you don’t write that) and I thought it was a given that they transmit more heat. But my question isn’t about adding windows making a building require more heating but about adding windows making a building’s temperature harder to maintain because there are not a load of big (eg) concrete blocks in the wall releasing their heat into the air after you open the door and let a load of cold air in.

Re: The Pretty Good House

#320

Post by acjohnson55 »

dkarl wrote: post #250
Gravityloss wrote: post #236

Here double pane has been the standard for about a century and triple pane after the eighties. No problems whatsoever. I don't even know what's the standard nowadays. Newer windows also quiet down traffic well and reduce the drafty feeling. So there are really very few excuses to not use them. But I don't know what's the name of the phenomenon when someone who uses some primitive technology comes out with all kinds o…

I don't know what to call it on the consumer end, but on the builder side, it's often just laziness and greed. If they don't know how to work with a material, then it sucks. If it's hard to hire subs that know how to build something, then it doesn't meet code and won't pass inspection. If they misbid it, it will never work and needs to be redesigned. In short, building contractors are a lot like software developers.…

To be a bit more charitble, I think there are builders who choose mastery of an older skillset over good enough with an evolving set of new skillets. I don't think that's such a bad thing, to be honest. Compared to software, in a building, it's a lot more expensive if you mess up.
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