this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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We seem to be on the same page and I get where your coming from on new constructions. But I don't fully agree with you on modern housing. Even like 60 years ago they barely knew what a joist hanger was. It was all still dimensional lumber and thus not straight. The late 1800s to early 1900s housing stock is croooooooked as shit. Sure the lumber was thick, it still bent because it wasn't supported properly. There was plenty of plywood which I'm sure is just as bad on VOCs (btw you can get no VOC OSB), but also they had lead paint, asbestos tile, asbestos joint compound, asbestos tile glue, asbestos ceiling insulation (I live near the mines, you should see the tailings piles); insulation if you had any was basically 4" of fiberglas, housewrap if there was any was tar paper (I'm sure also great on VOCs), radon was just as much of an issue but wasn't mitigated at all. So yeah.... Is there a lot of shoddy jobs in the new construction business? Hella. But are modern homes by definition worse than they were? I don't think that is true at all. Modern building science is inarguably better.
PEX is sketch though ;)
Anyway, you're alright, you don't live near me do you? I need a GC ;P
Timber framing, and all Amish framing, is actually done with green wood. Attention is paid to grain of the beams and they are put up so as the wood dries and ages it'll twist into itself making a more cohesive unit.
Sure it makes remodeling a bitch, but plum straight and true were never part of a remodelers lexicon to begin with.
Oh man, the quest for plum straight and true. Rick was well within his right to wipe Morty's brain of it. It was probably the single greatest act of compassion we've seen him do. I wish he'd wipe mine.
Meh I disagree, it's not just remodeling, it's also fixing shit. And stuff like large format tiles which frankly I think are super in terms of maintenance (less grout, less failure points, less maintenance, etc). I dunno if you've ever lived in an Edwardian apartment building, they are very common in Montreal. A 2" drop over 2' is not uncommon. It sucks. The floors creek like all hell. They are drafty af. Fire ratings between two town houses? Ain't never heard of it! Sure some stuff was built better back in the days, but it's foolish to think we can't build stuff properly now a days. I'd take a properly engineered, built with care by a good GC, house any day over anything built in the past short of a stone castle. Traditionalism is dumb. Capitalism pushes the lowest bidder to become the standard, but it doesn't mean that the craft hasn't evolved for the better.
Oh I'm with you, believe me. Theres some great building tech now, things like aircrete and the hundred variations and uses of lime. And if course just caluz it's old doesn't mean better, there was definitely a gradient to build quality back then, same as today.
We can look at churches in Uppsala that were built with pine and have stood for 1000 years...in Sweden...and it's clear we're missing something in our knowledge today that they had (it was their harvesting practices, btw, fucking germ theory levels of brilliance). Or how the Japanese have relied on coppacing for lumber for 500 years and that's why Japan still HAS trees and didn't go all Rapanui/Easter Island. The Amish and green wood timber framing is another example - practices that take the future into account. It's the planting of trees who's shade you'll never sit in.
It's easy, and incorrect, to point at history and say it was ALL better then, because only the cream of the crip has survived. Survivorship bias, clear as day. Of course we can build with the same mindset today - we just DON'T.
For a substantial group of people building their own home, to their own standards, towards sustainability or fingerprint reduction is their main driving goal. Earthships are an attempt. Buckminster Fuller made his entire career building off such ideas. Fuck I want to live in a geodesic dome SOOO BAD. Only have to deal with rain when I have to brave society. (I figure where the segments meet I can channel the rain to irrigation channels for the foliage and trees in the inner biodome...and then I'm raising free range sugar gliders.)
I'm in the middle of building my redoubt now. Everything by hand, it's tedious, requires a ton of knowledge and physically taxing, but it also screams of character, uniqueness and craftiness. I take a lot of fun making things intuitively crafty if you know, but invisable if you dont know. Microprocessors can be a part of that (Im a huge electromagnetism fanboy, I've spun up my own generators from magnet wire for custom windmills, and I'm debating doing it again for some microhydro but currently leaning stepper moters), hidden magnetic locks are fun. shit my firearm safe is a Rube-Goldman-machines worth of steps to open, and that's if you even noticed it was there.
I love the new tech. Don't get me wrong. Maybe it's that I'm a xennial, and that I had an analog youth, idk. I own all the power tools - I also own the hand tool analog version and know how to use them. I've always maintained the position that I had to level up into power tools. Electric planers save a SHITTON of time but if I can't plane by hand...then it's just a crutch. I don't even want to get into metal working by hand, I've done it, i prefer metal to wood so that entire attitude applied to metal before wood.
Anyway. I think we have more in common here than not, lol.
Xennial here too ;)
I'm right there with you, for the most part.
But like you said what survives of the past is the cream of the crop, and not sustainable to build at the incredible scale we need to get out of this crisis we find ourselves in.
I lived all my life in century old buildings, most of them sucked one way or another. I live in a half century old building now, it's better, but clearly nowhere near modern standards. And even if I tried to bring it to modern standards, it will never be quite as good as what could be achieved starting from scratch.