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The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

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Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#141

Post by treeman79 »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #125
pirate787 wrote: post #39

In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction labor categories. Perhaps using undocumented subcontractors may play a role in lower productivity growth (cheap, unstable, and relatively unskilled labor) or maybe just distorting the statistics. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/...

What’s wild is that the entire concept, as we know it, of “undocumented workers” only existed for the past ~22 years.

[flagged]

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#143

Post by systems_glitch »

wil421 wrote: post #92
Der_Einzige wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copper is superior. I specifically went out of my way to find a house with large swaths of the plumbing done with copper. Pretty neat to have anti-microbial properties built in.

I just paid $8000 to get my copper redone in PEX. After the tenth pin hole leak and lots of shark bite fixes, I am not fond of copper.

Good chance the original work was done with a bad batch of pipe, or worse, some contractor used Type M (thinwall) pipe.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#144

Post by conductr »

latchkey wrote: post #76
matwood wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PEX is great. I highly recommend keeping some shark bites and spare pieces of PEX around, as it's easy to do repairs on your own if you have an issue.

From what I understand, while it is up to code, pro's don't put sharkbites in walls. I've gone with ss crimps instead of copper rings too. Mostly cause I live near the ocean and the ss crimps just seem easier to use. 200' of blue/red sharkbite brand pex b tubing is only about $70 on amazon right now, amazing.

If the walls are open, they shouldn’t. They should be using the minimum number of connections/joins because that’s always going to be a higher point of failure. However, When you/they need to patch something and don’t want to open up the whole room/house, then that’s the correct use case for these devices.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#146

Post by latchkey »

joezydeco wrote: post #91
latchkey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously can't recommend this guy enough for general repair/building work... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/vid... Friendly, super knowledgable, takes the fear out of the DIY. For electrical, I do a lot myself, but when it came to running a 50amp line + breaker panel inside my place (which also required outdoor ladder work) to replace the steel conduit indoors, I just hired a professional…

It's not the DIY aspect^, it's the idea of ProPress joint sitting pressurized behind a wall for a decade. ^ I'm knowledgeable enough to do my own wiring and plumbing, but pay for licensed/bonded contractors instead. I sleep better at night and my insurance company probably does as well.

Up to you, but it honestly really isn't that much of an issue and I'd trust a simple properly crimped joint (which is easily visually inspected with a simple tool) a heck of a lot more than a welded one that is impossible to see what the inside looks like... um, did I put the right amount of flux on? did I know to use the 1/2 of solder to 1/2 of pipe trick?

As far as insurance companies... I bought an old place... I'm finding all sorts of stuff that isn't up to code (hidden electrical boxes, in the floor!, with wire nuts and not even twisted together wire and not even grounded properly)... I'm bringing it up to code, with modern products... in a court of law, it is going to be hard for them to argue against me.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#147

Post by notch656c »

loandbehold wrote: post #127
CydeWeys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way. Most of the value of housing in expensive areas is the land itself, not the cost of the building.

You are wrong. For instance in Southern California the cost to build new house is around $350 per sqft. Building 2000 sqft house is around $700K. House like that may sell for around 1 million. So that would be 70% construction and 30% land.

How does that happen? For 700k I could hire 2 skilled persons and 5 undocumented immigrants to work an entire year.

How long does it take to raise a house?

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#148

Post by taeric »

javajosh wrote: post #137
pirate787 wrote: post #39

In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction labor categories. Perhaps using undocumented subcontractors may play a role in lower productivity growth (cheap, unstable, and relatively unskilled labor) or maybe just distorting the statistics. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/...

>undocumented workers [are responsible for the productivity drop] I am confused by this assertion. If they are undocumented, wouldn't they be excluded in the stats? And if they aren't included in the stats, shouldn't we expect an artificial increase in worker productivity? If there is a 4:1 undocumented to documented ratio, then that 1 documented person will get "credit" for the work of 5 people! Even if 4 of those p…

I'm inclined to take your side on this. By virtue of being undocumented, they should be boosting the perceived productivity, not dampening it.

If I was to steelman the idea, though; I would guess that removing incentives in the form of higher pay will lower the contributions of everyone involved?

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#149

Post by Kehvarl »

softfalcon wrote: post #30
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the real headline then that building construction technology hasn’t improved at the same rate as other manufacturing tech? For example, cars today are orders of magnitude more complicated than 50 years ago, but due to more efficient manufacturing technology, the auto industry has far higher productivity per employee than it did 50 years ago.

I believe this is why we're seeing some of the industry starting to experiment with pre-fabbed homes that are modular but can be constructed using the automation we see in car manufacturing. The weak link in creating ever more complex homes, with ever more stringent building codes, at faster rates, is to remove the "humans with nail guns and drills" from the construction process. At some point, us meat sacks are the…

Back in 2003-2007, I worked for a home builder who vertically integrated and went for maximized modularity. In '05 we expanded our truss yard to 2 large presses and 4 automated saws, and added a wall-framing yard what worked the same way as the truss yard. Add in that they bought a concrete company to do the slabs, and a 2-story house could go from pour to sheeting in 35 days. Plumbing, electrical, and finishing jobs could take as little as an additional 30.

Since the parent company dissolved them in '08, I haven't seen any of the other subsidiaries using the same techniques or scheduling, and it's always rather surprised me. They invested literally 10s of millions of dollars into us figuring out how to make it all work, then trashed the knowledge.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#150

Post by conductr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #7
latchkey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm remodeling my place right now. You're totally right, the building codes are a lot more complex and there is more 'work' to do as a result. No more just hiding electrical boxes in the walls. Heh. That said, the products being used have improved a lot. Things like PEX tubing for plumbing (instead of copper) and glue on walls for showers (over doing tile work), make some aspects go a lot faster. Edit: Oh, I forgot t…

The big builders like DR Horton and Lennar target build times of 100 days per home that meets minimum code requirements, which is pretty good productivity. A community of 100 homes can be up and running in 2 years.

Requires a ton of overhead at the planning / pre-construction phases. That’s only amortized out if you built a ton of volume which these do. It’s also why you may only have a choice of 8 floor plans even though it’s a neighborhood of 500 homes.
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