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The wonder of modern drywall

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#151

Post by kbelder »

fractallyte wrote: post #27

There are reasons not to like gypsum drywall: > Some buildings standing today still have wattle-and-daub panels from 700 years ago. Will any drywalled building survive even a tenth of this time? > The plaster mixture used then was a homegrown concoction, with recipes matching the climate needs and vernacular material availability. The wonder of wattle-and-daub (clay) and plaster-and-lath (lime) is that the materials…

I was just reading how it's common to pulverize gypsum drywall to mix into dense clay soils to loosen it up.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#152

Post by teruakohatu »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #58
xnx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. I wonder if supply constraints will make drywall recycling profitable.

I don’t know about other countries, but in New Zealand there’s already recycling of leftover bits of drywall (we call it ‘gib board’ after a brand name). All the big building companies will accept leftover bits of gib board, but small bits can be thrown directly in your garden beds to help break up clay. The gypsum used in New Zealand is mined locally.

I was just wondering where our gypsum came from, I always assumed it was mined. Thank you for the information.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#153

Post by ragall »

loandbehold wrote: post #150
ragall wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever done a mold spore count in your house ? There's a hypothesis that, due to living in stick frame houses, a large part of the American population might be suffering from a low dose chronic mold intoxication which shows up as a heightened state of inflammation. > I may be biased, because I live in a city filled with houses over 100 years old, and we get incessant rain. They seem to hold up fine I wouldn't…

In places like Boston there are many 100+ years old stick frame houses. They hold up just fine. Properly built wooden houses don't get any mold.

Very few are properly built, especially in the last decades. Asymptotically to zero.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#154

Post by epcoa »

badc0ffee wrote: post #42
epcoa wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you're thinking of poly-B, not PEX.

No, Uponor AquaPEX.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#155

Post by idiotsecant »

willis936 wrote: post #101
trollbridge wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or AI’s thirst for power will bring coal back.

Why would heightened electricity demand increase the use of the most expensive energy source?

Coal is expensive, but it's still cheaper than nuke and peaker thermal. If you want power fast and your state and federal government aren't worried about a few pesky environmental regulations you might see coal come back. Part of coals attraction is that it takes a lot of people to run a coal plant, and people need jobs. Those people vote and politicians like votes.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#156

Post by turtlebits »

pibaker wrote: post #82
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…

I suspect the prevalence of "flimsy" wood and drywall constructions to be part of the reason why Americans dislike apartment living. They provide little sound insulation, are prone to water damage, have a shorter lifespan than the average person and once they catch fire they burn the entire thing down. Concrete or brick buildings are much nicer to live in, but expensive, so they are not very common among new construc…

Wood isn't flimsy. Drywall is fine, it's cheap and easy to repair. If built correctly can last 100+ years.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#157

Post by turtlebits »

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.

Everything costs money. It's not like drywall doesn't allow you to soundproof, 2x layers of 5/8" is a common method as well as staggering 2x4's in a 2x6 wall.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#158

Post by turtlebits »

hedora wrote: post #131

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 /…

It's more important to control moisture than buy moisture resistant materials.

Drywall is great, its cheap and easy to repair.

I would not want to live in any water damaged house without remediation due to the risk of mold.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#159

Post by bombcar »

_alternator_ wrote: post #126
glitchc wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that common knowledge, that plastics aren't feasible without fossil fuels?

This is different—the cost of plastic goes up if fossil fuel consumption goes down because currently it uses a waste stream. Not sure if it’s true, but it’s different than my prior intuition about fossil fuel and plastic.

Exactly - a common understanding of fossil fuels is that we could just "use them for planes and plastics" but there would be an unexpected cost there - because the plastics are basically "free" waste products of processing for other needs.

It's similar to how car heaters work on waste heat from ICE and have to be accounted for in electric cars.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#160

Post by turtlebits »

moduspol wrote: post #59
enobrev wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I've wired my old house with speakers in every ceiling, and cat-6 in every room. I've had a small pipe burst and a couple leaks behind a bathroom. I've patched quite a bit of drywall, and I'm about mediocre at it. But it seems so silly and unnecessary to me. Everything else in this world that requires maintenance comes with access panels and other means of easy access. In our living spaces, some of which sh…

I'm with you. I can read a post like OP and appreciate that drywall is a lot better than what came before, but I find it difficult to understand how we haven't come up with something better. Something less heavy, easier to fix without expertise, doesn't require applying some surface pattern to hide imperfections when used on a ceiling. I guess something conceptually like a drop-ceiling (which has a "finished" look, b…

Because drywall is cheap, incredibly tolerant of movement and irregularities. It's also super easy to repair. It can also act as an air barrier for energy efficiency. A drop ceiling is terrible for that and is ugly AND expensive.
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