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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

#321

Post by rsj_hn »

hindsightbias wrote: post #313
rsj_hn wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised. I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type o…

Generational vs 5-10X Generation events should not be treated the same. Soft-story retrofits are a thing and should be expanded with long-term State loans

1989 was, what, 34 years ago? This is a 5-10X generation event to you, I guess. I can't even begin to unwind all the innumerate assumptions, but motivated reasoning is powerful I guess.

There are fewer places where it is more reckless to build housing than coastal California.

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

#322

Post by RetpolineDrama »

matwood wrote: post #14
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…

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.

>PEX is great.

PEX is very very not-great. It's constantly leeching carcinogens and endocrine disruptors into your sitting water. Your modern home's recirculation system is making that even worse, cycling hot water and concentrating leeched petrochemical products in your hot water line. Some of them even boil before water which means they'll make it through a distiller.

Plumbers like it because it's easy/saves them time, and they'll love charging you big $$$ to rip it out in 20 years when it's banned.

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

#323

Post by CydeWeys »

baremetal wrote: post #253
withinboredom wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on the books, under "toilets" or something. That money has to go somewhere. Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes.

>Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes. Undocumented workers are sometimes paid in cash.

More than sometimes, I would say they are mostly paid in cash.

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

#324

Post by RetpolineDrama »

_Adam wrote: post #33
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.

My pipes are all copper, and the hot water contains a non trivial amount of lead (from the solder used to join the pipes). I had it tested - around 20 ppb. We don't drink or cook with the hot water, but in theory if the plumbing was PEX we could.

For new construction the ideal is solderless copper. You use pure copper pipes + ProPress. It's fast and the cleanest you can get outside of exotic glass plumbing.

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

#325

Post by rsj_hn »

toast0 wrote: post #300
rsj_hn wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised. I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type o…

> I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Earthquake insurance availability is mandated within the state. Why would we need a Federal mandate when we have an effective state mandate. It's not attractively pric…

Last time I was in the housing market in San Francisco, earthquake insurance was not mandated. Can you point me to the law mandating it now? Perhaps you mean it's mandated by your bank when taking out a mortgage? That's a private sector decision that depends on your bank and your loan.

Anyways, you are confusing the issue of whether insurance is mandated with the fact that no private insurer will cover it, and so the risk is socialized and the only providers are government.

That's what people are complaining about -- that private insurers walked away from covering flood/earthquakes in regions prone to the same, and so the government has to step in to insure the correlated risk. This causes no end of outrage for Florida but is somehow just fine in California. And my only point was to point out this hypocrisy and argue that there are good reasons for government to cover correlated risks and that there is nothing wrong with either state or those who choose to build in either state. They can accept risk or they can purchase government insurance.

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

#326

Post by CodeWriter23 »

pixl97 wrote: post #225
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have to re-anchor your safety harness to move 5 feet it's kind of difficult to maintain efficiency.

When you have to close the site and scrape someone's brains up it's really difficult to maintain efficiency.

Indeed. BTW my comment was not anti-safety.

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

#327

Post by RetpolineDrama »

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.

Well I hope you plan to move/sell, in my opinion PEX will be banned in 20 years and you'll have a hard time selling without remediation. PEX is absolutely loaded with carcinogenic compounds and endocrine disruptors that actively leech into your water, especially if you have a hot water recirculation system (standard/code on new homes)

>After the tenth pin hole leak and lots of shark bite fixes, I am not fond of copper.

It's my understanding that the vast majority of pinhole copper leaks are caused by poor solder jobs. Solder gets inside the pipe and causes a vortex that can eat through the copper.

The solution to this is to use solderless copper ProPress fittings for everything. Not only is this much more clean and faster to install, but the inside of the pipe is flush/smooth with the fitting.

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

#328

Post by latchkey »

mindslight wrote: post #310
yamtaddle wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shark bite is awesome for capping a broken pipe until you can get around to a proper fix. Love those shark-bite caps. IMO every home owner should have pipe cutters for the pipes in their house (whatever materials those may be), and a set of those caps ready to apply for every size of pipe they've got. Ought to be as common as having a screwdriver and hammer. They're absolute life-savers when a leak or pipe burst happ…

If you've got a significant leak in a supply pipe, there should be a valve on the branch that will allow you to shut off just that branch rather than the whole house. You might need to shut off the whole house first while you figure out where that valve is, but you probably won't have to do ad-hoc plumbing to get most of the house back on. But yes, in general I'm always for people becoming familiar with tools and DIY…

My place has no master valves in the bathroom branch for the cold water feed. I can shut off the hot water though since that comes from an on demand unit that I installed. I have to shut off the entire condo building (14 units) to do any work in there. You can be sure that I'm going to add a master valve to that branch...

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

#329

Post by gruez »

yamtaddle wrote: post #284
lotsofpulp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of inferior material?

Some finish materials are much worse. Small (by modern standards) ordinary middle-class homes in, say, the 1950s, had the kind of interior and exterior doors, and baseboards/molding, that'd be considered luxury-tier today. Even big expensive McMansions usually don't have doors and molding that nice, now. The higher end might get the luxury-tier front door... maybe. But any back or side doors won't be that nice, and u…

Could this be survivor bias at work? All the nice 1950 stuff you see are only around because they're nice enough to keep around. If they're junk they'd be replaced in a reno or something.

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

#330

Post by gruez »

jedberg wrote: post #56

They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. Also, does this paper take into account increased regulations? Both the time spent complying with new building codes…

>They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work.

I don't see the point you're making. Houses are twice as big, so they require twice the amount of finishing work. If productivity was growing or staying the same, you shouldn't get less productivity as a result of that.

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