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The wonder of modern drywall

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#221

Post by ragall »

retired wrote: post #188
stevekemp wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years is nothing! I mean my local pub, for many years, was built in the 17th century. This is probably one of the European vs. American divides though.

I am from The Netherlands. Buildings from 19th century and before are incredibly rare. Maybe 1% of the total housing stock. Thanks to bombings in WWII and a rapidly growing population since. In my current Spanish town I don't know any building older than 1900. Rapid expansion of coastal towns due to European mobility caused that. It's not really a European vs American divide, it is more country specific than that. Ed…

I'm from Italy and buildings from the 19th century are pretty common at the center of the cities. They were rich people's residences and have massively thick walls that make them very comfortable to live in, both because of thermal mass and acoustic isolation. They're mostly used for commercial purpose now, as they're in high demand as office space for lawyers, medical practices. Only rich people can afford living there (in the upper floors).

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#222

Post by ragall »

turtlebits wrote: post #157
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.

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.

It's not just the drywall, for comfort you need to soundproof the floors and the structure as well.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#223

Post by ragall »

quickthrowman wrote: post #199
ragall wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're happy until the long-term effects hit them, as stick frame houses need repairs a lot more often. Nowadays, European companies have developed many modular building techniques that have reduced the labor considerably, from robots that 3D-print concrete walls, to LEGO-like hollow bricks.

> They're happy until the long-term effects hit them, as stick frame houses need repairs a lot more often. Please explain why you think this is true, I disagree and I work in construction. Once you get a roof and siding on a building, the framing material doesn’t matter. As long as it’s strong enough for the application, the building will remain standing, provided you maintain the roof and siding. I’m living in a bal…

The average quality of construction, due to use of low skill workers, is very bad. That's been my experience living and owning houses in Canada and the US.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#224

Post by enobrev »

hedora wrote: post #138
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 circui…

In Chicago, code requires EMT for all electrical, which can be annoying for adding a new run, but at the very least it makes it less likely for rodents to chew through or other interference.

After wiring my whole house with Ethernet and ceiling speakers, and now dealing with a couple leaky pipes and several problems from previous owners, I'm considering ways to make these things easily accessible/replaceable while keeping an eye toward aesthetics.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#225

Post by ragall »

retired wrote: post #209
Insanity wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never wanted to adapt a house that significantly. But yeah, I much prefer the cinderblock homes and miss them. Something about the wood and drywall houses just feels incredibly cheap, and I don't like the aesthetic (de gustibus et coloribus..) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Little_Pigs

Houses change over time. A house could have been build in 1920 without a toilet or central heating. Then over time it got a fireplace on the second floor, an indoor toilet, indoor bathroom, then central heating with gas, extra insulation, a couple decades later double paned windows, hybrid heating with a heat pump, then full electric heating, underfloor heating, solar panels, home battery. Houses change a lot over ti…

What you call "carving out" concrete or brick is not a big deal. You hire workers that will do it, period.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#226

Post by ragall »

retired wrote: post #212
ragall wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the unavailability of trees. European countries have wisely decides that cities built of wooden houses are prone to massive fires. USians haven't learned that lesson and the Los Angeles fire isn't going to be the last one.

A yes, the wise Europeans like the Dutch who have homes in Amsterdam that are sinking into the ground due to rotting wooden beams sinking in swamp ground and homes in Groningen with cracks all over due to the earthquakes that came with pumping gas out of the ground. Or the dozens of structures in Italy that came crashing down, like the various bridges over the past twenty years (250 bridge collapse events in Italy be…

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#227

Post by usrnm »

odiroot wrote: post #213
usrnm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nowadays, European companies have developed many modular building techniques It's so fun watching Europeans reinvent the Soviet approach to building that they used to mock and shit on

We shat on it (and still do) because of how badly designed and executed they were. Appalling quite and zero adherence to any norms or standards.

Any source? Because there were definitely norms and standards for buildings in the USSR

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#229

Post by ragall »

retired wrote: post #210
ragall wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people want stupid things. It's not difficult to hire masons that will redo internal walls. It's just a bit more expensive.

My father grew up in a home without central heating or an indoor toilet. Last time that home was listed on the market it had underfloor heating, two bathrooms, triple paned glass, an extension on the roof and various other modern amenities. Times change, houses should too. We are not longer pooping in an outhouse anymore. I guess at one point people would wonder why you would want to poop inside the home, and call it…

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#230

Post by ragall »

lazide wrote: post #219
ragall wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not any different from having to renovate a 40's house in the US. You'll have to redo all the plumbing and electrical system to current code. Corrugated tubes have been common since the 90s and mandatory shortly thereafter.

Most European housing is made of concrete, stone, or brick. It absolutely is different from typical US housing, because unless you want to run surface mount everything (which most people don’t in residential), it’s an insane amount of work to run new anything. ‘40’s homes in the US, you typically just tear down to the studs, re-run new stuff, and throw up new drywall. Boom, done. Unless you’re in a place that did blo…

To properly redo an old house, you'll have to redo the siding and probably the roof too.
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