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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

#91

Post by joezydeco »

latchkey wrote: post #60
joezydeco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an area where the plumbing is soldered copper and the wiring is all in steel conduit. PEX, ProPress, Sharkbites, Romex... it's all just a little scary to me.

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.

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

#92

Post by wil421 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #21
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…

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.

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

#93

Post by fortylove »

hindsightbias wrote: post #2

> number of houses or total square footage built per employee Average house size has probably doubled in the last 50 years. Nail guns can't make up for building code and higher finish work demands. It's not uncommon to see 6 or 7 layers in sheathing today.

>6 or 7 layers in sheathing today.

What do you mean by this?

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

#94

Post by lotsofpulp »

nemo44x wrote: post #67
lotsofpulp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of inferior material?

I can: - Vinyl windows compared to old growth wood windows from 100 years ago. - Vinyl siding compared to cedar shakes. - Extremely poor wood quality in the lower end 2x4 and 2x6 lumber. - Sheathing that's essentially cardboard in really cheap builds. - Flooring is sad today in cheap to moderate homes. Thing is there were really badly built homes 100 years ago and they just aren't standing any longer. We do get a but…

> You can build an awesome home today out of excellent materials like engineered wood, high quality OSB/ply/ZipSystem, and of course whatever you want to spend on flooring, siding, windows, etc.

Of course, there will always be different quality materials available at different prices.

But I would bet the lowest quality house with the lowest quality materials and build quality 100 years ago is much worse than the same today.

> Flooring is sad today in cheap to moderate homes.

I never understood this lament. It has never made a lick of difference to my quality of life if the hard flooring under me was tile/real wood/granite/LVT. Whether or not it is a heated floor is the only thing that has increased the utility I get from the floor.

Otherwise, the LVT I can buy at Costco gives me better utility than some fancy real wood floor. I can not give a shit about it, not spend a dime or second maintaining it, and fix it in 15 minutes. And you can change the whole look for much cheaper, and get it in whatever design/color you want.

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

#95

Post by goodSteveramos »

nxm wrote: post #62
alexfromapex wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing

But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too

Immigrant labor does not carry their own housing on their backs. It competes in the housing market for homes built by past generations of the native born.

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

#96

Post by potatochup »

sokoloff wrote: post #53
rqtwteye wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Although it's very surprising to me that the efficiencies of mass production haven't gone to housing. They are often still created by manual labor instead of assembling prefabricated modules. I think it should be possible to build panels that are well insulated and have all the needed wiring and everything else already built in.

Housing is a mass customization market more than a mass production one. Most people don’t want to live in a modern Levittown. They want some space, but they don’t want the exact same set choices in their house as 1000+ other people have made.

In older areas it's also that the plots are not identical. The land cost is so high that it makes sense to spend extra on building customization to better utilize the land rather than plonk down a cookie cutter house that doesn't make good use of the views/sun/space/etc

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

#97

Post by seanmcdirmid »

arcticbull wrote: post #81
nxm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too

Affordable housing is just a zoning issue. The cost of construction is a tiny fraction of the cost of a new house in major metros. The cake you can't have and eat at the same time is: "I want affordable housing" and "I want my house to be a good investment."

> Affordable housing is just a zoning issue. The cost of construction is a tiny fraction of the cost of a new house in major metros.

No it is not. Construction costs (material, labor) are sky high even if property costs are as well. Building high-end housing has always been more profitable than otherwise, low-end housing is simply high-end housing 20 or 30 years in the future.

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

#98

Post by thereddaikon »

nxm wrote: post #62
alexfromapex wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing

But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too

Affordable housing has little to do with the cost of building the house.

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

#99

Post by tristor »

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/...

I think this is one of the major impacts. My experience (family in construction) is that day labor / undocumented workers often don't have construction skills, and so have to be trained on the job, and each crew has mostly new/unskilled folks with a few skilled folks to guide them and keep them on track.

Over time, these folks become skilled, and generally end up running crews. It's very commonplace to find the more experience undocumented workers being the ones running small subcontract crews under the table with day labor, because they speak fluent Spanish.

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

#100

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

sokoloff wrote: post #58
alexfromapex wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing

It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).

All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation

Either way its a pay drop.

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