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The wonder of modern drywall

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#131

Post by hedora »

Drywall is terrible vs. modern plaster.

Modern plaster has backing boards that are similar to drywall, so you get most of the construction advantages (except for the labor intensive step of plastering), and can hand pictures / toggle bolts in the same way. Unlike plaster, drywall gets moldy + needs to be replaced after water damage. I think this is why films with old buildings set in Europe often show peeling paint / water damaged plaster, but people are still living in them, and it seems fine. In the US, buildings with that level of wear would be so moldy they'd need to be gutted to studs, at minimum.

The article touches on mold resistant drywall, but I'll believe it when I see it. Also, apparently, it is much easier to create long-lasting patches for plaster than drywall.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#132

Post by hedora »

c0nsumer wrote: post #107
andwur wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's inaccurate for standard thickness drywall sheet, which is usually a 20kg maximum parallel load (e.g. vertical for a wall) regardless of fixing method. Orthogonal load is even less. You might be able to attach a TV or cabinet but it would definitely not be safe, any additional weight or dynamic load would quite likely rip it off the wall with no warning. The recommended approach for anything with moderate weigh…

I suspect they are meaning because it's uniform you can easily find the studs through it and fasten things directly into them. An uneven wall material (plaster on lathe, or even plaster on drywall as we have in most of our house) can be quite a hassle to find the actual timbers/studs behind.

Modern plaster has the same properties, and works well with stud finders.

On a related note, if you can find a strong rare earth magnet, you can use it as a stud finder. It'll be attracted to the nails used to hold up the drywall / plaster backer boards. They sell purpose built ones with felt backs + built in bubble levels if you want to get fancy.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#133

Post by hedora »

ragall wrote: post #112
nkrisc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a drywall problem, but a drawback of the usual construction method. If you insulate the interior walls then noise isn't really a problem. Of course, most builders are not insulating or noise-proofing interior walls, so there you have it. I suppose with other building materials (bricks, concrete blocks) you get the solution "for free", so to speak.

It's a problem because with stick frame and drywall, the builder has to take special effort to noise-isolate a house, which in effects ensures that not even 0.1% of housing has those properties. European regulations make for a much higher noise isolation by default.

Noise barriers are incredibly cheap. They're a tiny fraction of the cost of putting up a drywall or plaster wall. Codes say how far apart the studs should be, so you just buy a roll of batting, and unroll it into the gap between the two walls. You have to cut it to fit, but that's not a big deal.

It costs a few thousand bucks to do a whole house (during construction), even in areas with high labor costs. You can usually tack it on to the cost of insulating the exterior walls (which is basically the same process, but with a more expensive material).

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#134

Post by hedora »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9

Picture rails are a kitschy and twee feature that few people today even know their purpose, but anyone who tells you that they’re just as good for hanging things on are committing perjury In my humble opinion, they are significantly better than pounding a nail into drywall. Of course, I also have an absurdly large collection of framed photographs and other art, all of varying sizes, and I love swapping frames around…

We've had great luck with the removable 3M velcro picture hangers. (Each corner is held with two pieces of velcro that face each other. The velcro has double back tape on the back, which affixes to the wall and the picture. The double back tape is stretchy, and can be removed by pulling a tab. The tape is single use.

No damage to paint so far, though we've only had them on the walls for about a year.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#135

Post by hedora »

epcoa wrote: post #39
enobrev wrote: post #3

I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure. Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?

Rarely do pipes, wires, or ducts just outright fail even in 50 years. Usual case for tearing out drywall is for voluntary renovations. Shit behind the wall just doesn't "fail" if it is left undisturbed or you were unlucky like those that got defective PEX or similar installed.

Rodents love PEX. If we knew, we'd have used copper. It would have been cheaper in the long run.

It just takes one rat.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#136

Post by SoftTalker »

epcoa wrote: post #39
enobrev wrote: post #3

I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure. Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?

Rarely do pipes, wires, or ducts just outright fail even in 50 years. Usual case for tearing out drywall is for voluntary renovations. Shit behind the wall just doesn't "fail" if it is left undisturbed or you were unlucky like those that got defective PEX or similar installed.

(C)PVC gets brittle and can crack. Been there done that.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#137

Post by rkomorn »

lmz wrote: post #128
rkomorn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you and OP just have different definitions for "apartment building". I've lived in pretty large buildings (eg dozens of units and four floors high) that were largely made of wood in both the northeast of the US and California. They aren't high-rise buildings but I wouldn't argue they aren't apartment buildings, and they're far from uncommon.

AKA the 5-over-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

Didn't know those had a name but that only applies to half the wood frame buildings I lived in. The other ones had no "1" (I assume the foundation/slab was concrete though).

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#138

Post by hedora »

enobrev wrote: post #3

I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure. Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?

If we ever build another house, it's going to be attic-free with exposed conduits + hvac ducts / pipes on the ceiling. Every electrical box is going to have a 2" conduit (embedded in the wall) running up to a conduit that runs on the ceiling (if there's a basement, then down to the basement ceiling).

This would let us avoid stapling electrical lines + network cables to studs inside walls. Fixing shorts, adding circuits and upgrading network lines would be trivial.

We'd have to buy what, 1000' of conduit? There's no way that's a sufficient fraction of the cost of a house.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#139

Post by bravoetch »

briHass wrote: post #87
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #67

As a German I always found North American houses and their drywall and wood constructions incredibly odd. It always felt flimsy to me. From my experience we just started using drywall for some interior walls on some newly built homes. But throughout my life I was used to very massive walls. I recently saw some house building videos and it is somehow fascinating how different the building materials and methodologies a…

Drywall gets maligned, but it is a pretty remarkable building material. Inexpensive, easy to fix/finish, and very fire-resistant, especially for its weight. The timber-stud and drywall model also works well for the modern world, where layout preferences and in-wall technology changes often. It was only about 20-25 years ago where having POTS lines/jacks in multiple rooms was cool, and now they're mostly useless.

My home, built in 2011, has 36 ethernet ports throughout the house. Some in closets, some above the trim, some where a TV would be mounted. The TV mount areas also have conduit specifically for HDMI and other cords. And there's speakers and speaker wire going all over the house. All of it terminates in the garage at a single panel.

It's mostly unused. I have PoE wifi access points around the house. And the sound system I hardly use.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#140

Post by ragall »

hedora wrote: post #133
ragall wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem because with stick frame and drywall, the builder has to take special effort to noise-isolate a house, which in effects ensures that not even 0.1% of housing has those properties. European regulations make for a much higher noise isolation by default.

Noise barriers are incredibly cheap. They're a tiny fraction of the cost of putting up a drywall or plaster wall. Codes say how far apart the studs should be, so you just buy a roll of batting, and unroll it into the gap between the two walls. You have to cut it to fit, but that's not a big deal. It costs a few thousand bucks to do a whole house (during construction), even in areas with high labor costs. You can usua…

Nobody does it. Not even supposedly "luxury condos". And that's assuming it's really that cheap, which it isn't because to be effective, one needs to stop all sound transmission, not just for walls, but floors too, as well as interrupting the noise transmitted through the house's wooden structure. It's quite expensive.
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