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The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers. The way I see it, some time rig

The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers. The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war". Examples of annoying trends in modern construction: - Low "hobbit" ceilings. - Short door frames. - Tiny windows. - Nearly non-existent noise/vibration insulation Even looking at materials used for construction today, I can't figure out why everyone thinks that drywall-on-sticks is acceptable? Literally every multi-story home I've been in felt hollow and shaky if you jump on the 2nd floor because there's no mass anywhere. This is clearly not a cost issue, I have taken tours looking at brand-new multi-MM homes in Austin, TX just for fun. While they all had top-notch appliances, finishes and a gazilion of square feet and bedrooms, they were also built using the same "toy" materials and used generally similar architectural patters as middle class homes. What caused this change? It's like our collective mind suddenly stopped caring about tall doors, 10ft ceilings and solid feel of floors we walk on.

djrogers 11y ago
re 'drywall on sticks' - not only does this construction technique provide for a huge amount of flexibility in interior layout, it's by far the most earthquake friendly construction for single family homes. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart. I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.
patmcc 11y ago
>>>This is clearly not a cost issue Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.
- hrktb 11y ago
  To chime in, even in places where people are willing to pay a premium for construction materials and architecture (like in sismic areas) there is numerous cases of the builder cheaping out and osometimes illegally trying to get away with fewer material. The last months there was again a case of a building constructor using less structural elements than it was legally required to, also violating the number specified in the blueprintS.
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    It seems like one of those cascading series of perverse incentives up and down the value chain. The subcontractors want to cut corners with the contractor. The contractor wants to cut corners with the developer. The developer wants to cut corners on the project in general, passing the headache onto the buyer at some point after the eventual sale. Almost no one in this mess has incentives aligned with doing things correctly. If buying and moving homes were a more frequent event, buyers would play more "rounds" of this game and eventually become wiser to the ground rules of it. Reputation would start to matter, and developers, contractors, et al., would need to work harder to ensure they didn't get dinged. As it now stands, except in the luxury market, really, where people custom build homes, no one cares about a developer or contractor's reputation. So they don't have any reputational risk on the line. So they happily cut corners wherever they can get away with it. (And I'm willing to bet that even the luxury/custom buyer barely has a clue when it comes to evaluating the quality of construction and materials.)
    - spc476 11y ago
      Back in 1999, an acquaintance of mine bought a $2.3MM home in an exclusive neighborhood. As he was driving me and a few friends through his neighborhood, he explained that all the houses could be knocked down and rebuilt if desired. The price included location, security (theater really, but hey, it sells), footage, looks and fancy appliances. Not quality.
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      Some of them "roll" their business over every few years - starting a new company, transferring to it all assets (and maybe some liabilities), rehiring the workers, and then shutting down the old company. This way they get a new name and reputation as often as most people get a new house.
bitanarch 11y ago
If you're talking about the Bay Area - then there's good reason why buildings are wood framed and light weight. Wood frame construction is generally more earthquake resistant. http://timber.ce.wsu.edu/Resources/papers/4-3-2.pdf http://timber.ce.wsu.edu/Resources/papers/4-3-2.pdf However, if you're not in an earthquake-prone area... then I agree I'd prefer to have a more solid construction.
- rsync 11y ago
  True, but a wood frame doesn't have to imply stick-built, green and wet 2x4 construction. Even in modern times where big timbers are scarce, you can still get straight, true, kiln-dried douglas fir in large (8x8, 8x12) sizes relatively cheaply.
  - spronkey 11y ago
    I think one of the issues with the better woods in particular is sustainability of growth. Basically every house built today in NZ will be using Pinus Radiata, which is a less dense wood that grows very very quickly, and is very sustainable. In the past, e.g. 1960 and earlier, houses used Rimu, and potentially Kauri - both of which are very hard, very dense woods that will test even the best drill bits - but they're not sustainable.
    - k_sze 11y ago
      There are two approaches to sustainability: 1. Use quality material that is slow to come by, but build stuff that lasts for decades, or even centuries. 2. Use "sustainably" produced material, but build utter shit that doesn't last and that you expect to throw away in a few years. For stuff like houses, I prefer the first approach.
      - mreiland 11y ago
        sustainable implies you can continue doing it indefinitely, but the first approach is more likely to fail that test due to increasing demand.
alricb 11y ago
re: shaking, it's not necessarily mass; it's rigidity, or lack thereof. It's more expensive, but you can build a more rigid floor by using deeper joists and spacing them more closely. You also need to make sure the floor is well anchored to the walls, but these days it should be done as a matter of the course to get good seismic performance.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
Agreed, and wouldn't mind if my city (Los Angeles) bulldozed most, if not all of the buildings built around the 60's. This is also the time when suburbs became fashionable, for a double-whammy of craptastic design. These two factors, among others contribute immensely to the uninviting, ugly, even amateurish feel to much of the city. > 10ft ceilings These were no longer necessary once air conditioning was invented. However high ceilings and window awnings are more energy efficient and therefore should probably make a comeback.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
A combination of three things, IMHO: 1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later. 3. Minimum standards for housing construction. The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the construction industry aims to build the cheapest thing that they are legally allowed to sell (ie, meets building codes). While building codes do mean that there's a quality floor, competitive pressure means that nobody can consistently exceed the floor without getting out-competed by people who aim to barely meet it.
- dazc 11y ago
  >"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference" True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on it. The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for quality. A typical buyer will have a 90-95% mortgage and the completed house is signed off by a surveyor who is engaged by the mortgage provider. The only real concern is if the house will still be standing in 25 years time and nothing else. In effect it's a rubber stamping process. The buyer is often too emotionally involved in the concept of owning a home to care less. No sane person would complete the purchase of a new car if defects in build quality were so glaringly obvious but the same people do it with houses every day?
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    I think a key difference is that you drive the car everyday. Even if you have no clue about the inner workings of the car, you have a direct, frequent, operating relationship with it. You understand its basic principles and functionality in a hands-on way (literally). If unseen defects are present in a car, they'd reveal themselves to you in short order. The same cannot be said for houses. You live in a house everyday, but you don't have a true working or operating relationship with it unless you're very handy (which many home buyers these days are not). The car has a direct input/output operating cycle that you control; the house does not. It's harder to suss defects out because the house doesn't 'run' on them per se. You only learn about the defects when the house fails in one way or another. That may be two days into the inspection period, or it may be two years after closing.
adevine 11y ago
This is not just an issue with housing. Virtually EVERY product is built with less long-term quality. I collect antique espresso machines. Some of these are highly sought after because they use big, heavy, high quality components: big brass boilers, copper piping, stainless steel enclosures and big brass groupheads. Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today (which rarely last more than a couple years), and it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.
- peteretep 11y ago
  > Virtually EVERY product Well not just physical products. Flights are another good example. > Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today ... that are available at a cheap accessible price. It's still entirely possible to buy espresso machines that are built like tanks, or ones that have lots of expensive electronics, and so on. The high-end of the market has not disappeared... > it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines. Market being the operative word here. We've seen a spread in the market to where the cheap end is now affordable by everyone, and the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago. Hard to see how this isn't a good thing, except from an environmental perspective.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    > the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago I'm not sure about this part, unless you are very careful in what you're shopping for, and knowledgeable about it. One Achilles heel of a lot of current appliances is that there are now circuit boards everywhere, which are a common point of premature failure. If the computerized part of your appliance fails (due to a power surge, capacitor aging, etc.), the device is effectively bricked in a difficult-to-repair way, even if all the mechanical parts are still fine. One option is to buy all-mechanical high-end models, which works with some appliances (espresso machines) but is basically impossible with others (washing machines).
    - peteretep 11y ago
sotojuan 11y ago
> The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. You could extend this to a lot of other things. Pre-war and post-war America look way more than five years apart.
ams6110 11y ago
The main thing is the drywall. Interior walls in homes used to be plaster, troweled onto lathe or wire backing in several coats. Plaster is a LOT heavier than drywall: it's basically like having 3/4-inch cement walls. Plaster walls lend a sense of solidity and quiet to the entire house. The basic framing of houses is not that much different.
- ngoede 11y ago
  Of course they also tend to fail for the same reason as gravity slowly pulls them off the lathe.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    How often do you think plaster should last? I've lived in Europe for almost 30 years, and have never seen the plaster fall off the wall/ceiling without some serious other cause, like a leaking roof or serious subsidence. My mum's house was built in 1908. A water leak in the summer meant part of the ceiling was ruined. The plasterer said it was original lath and plaster, and gave her a discount as he said it was a pleasure to work with. 21% of dwellings in England were built before 1919. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/6703/1750754.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
- cma 11y ago
  >The basic framing of houses is not that much different. Lots of the old houses people are pining for here used death-trap "balloon framing".
massysett 11y ago
Where are you? The new construction I see in the Washington DC area has none of these things, whether it's a new apartment in the city or a new house in the suburbs. The ceilings are quite high--typically ten feet. Even basement ceilings are quite high, in contrast to old homes where one often must bend over a bit while in the basement. Door frames are high. Windows if anything are too big, not too small! My city apartment has floor to ceiling windows which are difficult for window treatments. Suburban homes can have huge two-story family rooms. Noise is more a problem from adjoining units. Outside noise is sealed out quite well thanks to double-pane windows. Overall new construction is of quite high quality when it comes to what's important. New homes have smoke detectors, fire sprinklers, better electrical systems, more durable cladding on the outside, better insulation, more bathrooms, and air conditioning. As someone who has seen both old and new homes and has considered living in both, I do not get the nostalgia for old homes. Most home buyers around here agree as they are gutting old homes and renovating them, not living in them as is. I considered living in old homes, but only because they are in good locations. Their oldness in and of itself offered no benefits.
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  Maybe that's DC, then? I dunno. I live in Southern California, and I haven't seen a home built here in the last 30 years that was remotely well constructed. They're all made out of ticky tacky, as the song goes. And it seems to be getting worse year over year, especially in homes built after the Great Recession. The only exceptions seem to be the double-digit-million-dollar luxury homes. As for the pros and cons of old construction... Pros: generally more durable, more attention to detail, nicer materials used. Will suffer from age-related maintenance issues, but unlike modern construction, is unlikely to suffer from issues related to fundamental structural or design failure. Cons: design and layout choices that no longer fit a contemporary lifestyle (small or no closets; tiny bathrooms and kitchens; closed floor plans; etc.). Generally poorer insulation. Depending on the age of the home, it may also have issues with old plumbing and, having not been designed for central heating or A/C, will sometimes be a bear to deal with in that department. All things considered, having lived in a c. 1920s home and a series of c. 2000s and c. 2010s homes, I'd take the older house 9 times out of 10 and just gut/retrofit as necessary to remedy layout issues (not construction-quality issues). I don't enjoy living in a drywall box with a superficially nice looking kitchen. And I say all of this as someone who, all things being equal, greatly prefers a hyper-modernist aesthetic. I just have to accept that I don't get a Tony Stark house until I have Tony Stark money. :)
bhuga 11y ago
If you've ever worked in residential construction, there's one constant truth: everything you make will be redesigned away before it fails. Our desire for novelty is strong, and cheap construction lets us reconfigure houses affordably in ways that old, stronger construction didn't. Someone will want a new countertop because it looks pretty long before the old one will break, and the same goes for closet space and windows. That's no explanation for situation in the article, of course. One would expect that structural elements of large, dramatic investments of that sort would take proper care to last. But drywall-on-sticks is an economic reality that makes sense.
dclowd9901 11y ago
If you go around old homes in Portland, you will see lathe and plaster walls as smooth as a still lake built close to 100 years ago, not to mention lovingly crafted wood details. If you go into a modern home, you see sheet drywall with tons of shitty looking texture all over it to hide the deep imperfections with the hanging of the drywall, and nary a wood detail to be found. It's absurd that we've taken these woefully cheaper home construction standards with the prices of housing.
- ryuker16 11y ago
  I'd imagine all the cheap shanty towns and crap houses were bulldozed over a long time ago.
WildUtah 11y ago
"some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. " We stopped living in walkable villages and cities and started living in motorway dependant sprawling suburbs. Our buildings got uglier. Our built environment got worse even as we got richer. Largely this was a matter of public policy. The Roosevelt administration made new rules to plan new development to promote industry during the Depression and imposed it on banks and local planning boards. Still, there wasn't enough push to get the banks to allow anything to be built. Then after the war, those regulations had been in place for almost fifteen years and nothing had been built in the whole country for 16 years since the Depression began. So people took the rules as gospel and built using them. The only thing allowed was car dependant sprawl and the car companies -- an enormous political power right after the war -- loved it. So the whole country was redesigned. It still is. And if your community isn't worth loving -- as sprawl isn't -- then it isn't worth building beautiful buildings. That's why this is now the nation of NIMBYism. People can see that nothing has gotten built here but garbage since 1929 and they don't want more of it. Places like San Francisco are now like jewels and museums since nobody has been allowed to build like that in 86 years and won't be allowed to start tomorrow. The epoch when things could be new and beautiful has passed from living memory.
darkskyshades 11y ago
Re: Low "hobbit" ceilings. ...in many cases i have seen in NYC, homeowners are economically motivated to "lower" their ceilings (cheaper to heat/cool living space). I bought and still live in an early century Georgian, and the maintenance costs over the past two decades has been a very real challenge. If a pipe leaks, if there is a crack in the wall, if/when the floor eventually gets bowed, etc. It is an entirely different, time-consuming and expensive approach to maintaining everything. For the majority of homeowners, it is clearly and absolutely a cost issue.
AmVess 11y ago
It is very much a cost issue, although a small one in terms of the overall price of the house. However, money that goes into 2x6 vs 2x4 studs, drywall, doors, insulation, windows comes out of the overall budget. People shop by price because they have to. Fancy appliances vs sturdy floors? People will pick fancy appliances 99% of the time. I built a few dozen homes and only once had a client request 2x6 construction. I tried to sell it on all the others, citing sturdiness and better insulating properties, but everyone looked at the features it excluded and went for flimsy 2x4 builds. It gets important if you are a developer building subdivisions of homes. $10k saved on every house is $big profit. 25 home subs is $250k+ savings...very much an issue. My own house is 2x6, and properly insulated top to bottom. My neighbor's slap job summer cooling bill is not quite double mine. Close to same sqft and same interior ac temp setting.
- mavhc 11y ago
  Mostly I'm amused that Americans never got the end of the Three Little Pigs story and still build houses out of wood. I read once that buildings are the best thing to cheat on the construction of because each layer of underspecced materials is hidden by the next layer.
  - cobweb 11y ago
    Wood is a renewable and a carbon trap. On site, dirt is a good choice for a building material. You can also use it to bulk mass. You just need a digger and some grunt work. See building with rammed earth. I've a friend who has just added to his 17th century thatched cottage with like materials: oak timber frame, timber cladding and wattle and daub, which is dirt and wood/hay/hair. It's lovely and solid. Sadly planning officials insisted on an over the top concrete foundation that negated all his hard work with his sympathetic build. The wood is good!
- mistermann 11y ago
  What would you estimate is the payoff time in heating/cooling costs?
Asbostos 11y ago
>This is clearly not a cost issue Whenever something is done cheaply and it looks like it's not a cost issue because it's only miniscule part of the total cost of the product, it's usually actually is a cost issue. The buyer of the final product might not mind spending a little extra to have that one thing done a little better, but for the supplier of the sub-sub-contractor whose entire profit comes from doing that one thing, the "miniscule" part becomes 100% of the cost. Not only that, but this is only one of many things that could be done more expensively. What if you add better fire resistance, better insulation, more weather resistant paint, more carefully assembled parts, etc. it ends up becoming quite a lot more expensive. It's a bit like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. They both seem to be basically the same, but the Mercedes has slightly more expensive parts scattered all through it like a few dollars spent on fluid dampers on the adjustable seat backs compared to no damping.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  But the Toyota vs Mercedes-Benz is a poor comparison > The most reliable engines came from Honda, with a failure rate of just 1 in 344, with Toyota in second (1 in 171) and, maintaining some honour for the German brands, Mercedes in third (1 in 119). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9815860/German-cars-lose-out-in-reliability-survey.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9815860/German-cars...
  - threesixandnine 11y ago
    Probably because in recent years MB uses Renault engines.
cmarschner 11y ago
One main development might be the specialization of the construction industry and the advent of professional management after WWII. When homes are not built by home owners but by development companies, a totally different set of incentives might fall in place, and with professional management one might start looking for metrics and optimizing against them.

djrogers 11y ago

re 'drywall on sticks' - not only does this construction technique provide for a huge amount of flexibility in interior layout, it's by far the most earthquake friendly construction for single family homes. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart. I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.

patmcc 11y ago

>>>This is clearly not a cost issue Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.

hrktb 11y ago
To chime in, even in places where people are willing to pay a premium for construction materials and architecture (like in sismic areas) there is numerous cases of the builder cheaping out and osometimes illegally trying to get away with fewer material. The last months there was again a case of a building constructor using less structural elements than it was legally required to, also violating the number specified in the blueprintS.
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  It seems like one of those cascading series of perverse incentives up and down the value chain. The subcontractors want to cut corners with the contractor. The contractor wants to cut corners with the developer. The developer wants to cut corners on the project in general, passing the headache onto the buyer at some point after the eventual sale. Almost no one in this mess has incentives aligned with doing things correctly. If buying and moving homes were a more frequent event, buyers would play more "rounds" of this game and eventually become wiser to the ground rules of it. Reputation would start to matter, and developers, contractors, et al., would need to work harder to ensure they didn't get dinged. As it now stands, except in the luxury market, really, where people custom build homes, no one cares about a developer or contractor's reputation. So they don't have any reputational risk on the line. So they happily cut corners wherever they can get away with it. (And I'm willing to bet that even the luxury/custom buyer barely has a clue when it comes to evaluating the quality of construction and materials.)
  - spc476 11y ago
    Back in 1999, an acquaintance of mine bought a $2.3MM home in an exclusive neighborhood. As he was driving me and a few friends through his neighborhood, he explained that all the houses could be knocked down and rebuilt if desired. The price included location, security (theater really, but hey, it sells), footage, looks and fancy appliances. Not quality.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Some of them "roll" their business over every few years - starting a new company, transferring to it all assets (and maybe some liabilities), rehiring the workers, and then shutting down the old company. This way they get a new name and reputation as often as most people get a new house.

bitanarch 11y ago

If you're talking about the Bay Area - then there's good reason why buildings are wood framed and light weight. Wood frame construction is generally more earthquake resistant. http://timber.ce.wsu.edu/Resources/papers/4-3-2.pdf http://timber.ce.wsu.edu/Resources/papers/4-3-2.pdf However, if you're not in an earthquake-prone area... then I agree I'd prefer to have a more solid construction.

rsync 11y ago
True, but a wood frame doesn't have to imply stick-built, green and wet 2x4 construction. Even in modern times where big timbers are scarce, you can still get straight, true, kiln-dried douglas fir in large (8x8, 8x12) sizes relatively cheaply.
- spronkey 11y ago
  I think one of the issues with the better woods in particular is sustainability of growth. Basically every house built today in NZ will be using Pinus Radiata, which is a less dense wood that grows very very quickly, and is very sustainable. In the past, e.g. 1960 and earlier, houses used Rimu, and potentially Kauri - both of which are very hard, very dense woods that will test even the best drill bits - but they're not sustainable.
  - k_sze 11y ago
    There are two approaches to sustainability: 1. Use quality material that is slow to come by, but build stuff that lasts for decades, or even centuries. 2. Use "sustainably" produced material, but build utter shit that doesn't last and that you expect to throw away in a few years. For stuff like houses, I prefer the first approach.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      sustainable implies you can continue doing it indefinitely, but the first approach is more likely to fail that test due to increasing demand.

alricb 11y ago

re: shaking, it's not necessarily mass; it's rigidity, or lack thereof. It's more expensive, but you can build a more rigid floor by using deeper joists and spacing them more closely. You also need to make sure the floor is well anchored to the walls, but these days it should be done as a matter of the course to get good seismic performance.

mixmastamyk 11y ago

Agreed, and wouldn't mind if my city (Los Angeles) bulldozed most, if not all of the buildings built around the 60's. This is also the time when suburbs became fashionable, for a double-whammy of craptastic design. These two factors, among others contribute immensely to the uninviting, ugly, even amateurish feel to much of the city. > 10ft ceilings These were no longer necessary once air conditioning was invented. However high ceilings and window awnings are more energy efficient and therefore should probably make a comeback.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

A combination of three things, IMHO: 1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later. 3. Minimum standards for housing construction. The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the construction industry aims to build the cheapest thing that they are legally allowed to sell (ie, meets building codes). While building codes do mean that there's a quality floor, competitive pressure means that nobody can consistently exceed the floor without getting out-competed by people who aim to barely meet it.

dazc 11y ago
>"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference" True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on it. The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for quality. A typical buyer will have a 90-95% mortgage and the completed house is signed off by a surveyor who is engaged by the mortgage provider. The only real concern is if the house will still be standing in 25 years time and nothing else. In effect it's a rubber stamping process. The buyer is often too emotionally involved in the concept of owning a home to care less. No sane person would complete the purchase of a new car if defects in build quality were so glaringly obvious but the same people do it with houses every day?
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  I think a key difference is that you drive the car everyday. Even if you have no clue about the inner workings of the car, you have a direct, frequent, operating relationship with it. You understand its basic principles and functionality in a hands-on way (literally). If unseen defects are present in a car, they'd reveal themselves to you in short order. The same cannot be said for houses. You live in a house everyday, but you don't have a true working or operating relationship with it unless you're very handy (which many home buyers these days are not). The car has a direct input/output operating cycle that you control; the house does not. It's harder to suss defects out because the house doesn't 'run' on them per se. You only learn about the defects when the house fails in one way or another. That may be two days into the inspection period, or it may be two years after closing.

adevine 11y ago

This is not just an issue with housing. Virtually EVERY product is built with less long-term quality. I collect antique espresso machines. Some of these are highly sought after because they use big, heavy, high quality components: big brass boilers, copper piping, stainless steel enclosures and big brass groupheads. Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today (which rarely last more than a couple years), and it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.

peteretep 11y ago
> Virtually EVERY product Well not just physical products. Flights are another good example. > Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today ... that are available at a cheap accessible price. It's still entirely possible to buy espresso machines that are built like tanks, or ones that have lots of expensive electronics, and so on. The high-end of the market has not disappeared... > it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines. Market being the operative word here. We've seen a spread in the market to where the cheap end is now affordable by everyone, and the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago. Hard to see how this isn't a good thing, except from an environmental perspective.
- _delirium 11y ago
  > the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago I'm not sure about this part, unless you are very careful in what you're shopping for, and knowledgeable about it. One Achilles heel of a lot of current appliances is that there are now circuit boards everywhere, which are a common point of premature failure. If the computerized part of your appliance fails (due to a power surge, capacitor aging, etc.), the device is effectively bricked in a difficult-to-repair way, even if all the mechanical parts are still fine. One option is to buy all-mechanical high-end models, which works with some appliances (espresso machines) but is basically impossible with others (washing machines).
  - peteretep 11y ago

sotojuan 11y ago

> The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. You could extend this to a lot of other things. Pre-war and post-war America look way more than five years apart.

ams6110 11y ago

The main thing is the drywall. Interior walls in homes used to be plaster, troweled onto lathe or wire backing in several coats. Plaster is a LOT heavier than drywall: it's basically like having 3/4-inch cement walls. Plaster walls lend a sense of solidity and quiet to the entire house. The basic framing of houses is not that much different.

ngoede 11y ago
Of course they also tend to fail for the same reason as gravity slowly pulls them off the lathe.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  How often do you think plaster should last? I've lived in Europe for almost 30 years, and have never seen the plaster fall off the wall/ceiling without some serious other cause, like a leaking roof or serious subsidence. My mum's house was built in 1908. A water leak in the summer meant part of the ceiling was ruined. The plasterer said it was original lath and plaster, and gave her a discount as he said it was a pleasure to work with. 21% of dwellings in England were built before 1919. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/6703/1750754.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
cma 11y ago
>The basic framing of houses is not that much different. Lots of the old houses people are pining for here used death-trap "balloon framing".

massysett 11y ago

Where are you? The new construction I see in the Washington DC area has none of these things, whether it's a new apartment in the city or a new house in the suburbs. The ceilings are quite high--typically ten feet. Even basement ceilings are quite high, in contrast to old homes where one often must bend over a bit while in the basement. Door frames are high. Windows if anything are too big, not too small! My city apartment has floor to ceiling windows which are difficult for window treatments. Suburban homes can have huge two-story family rooms. Noise is more a problem from adjoining units. Outside noise is sealed out quite well thanks to double-pane windows. Overall new construction is of quite high quality when it comes to what's important. New homes have smoke detectors, fire sprinklers, better electrical systems, more durable cladding on the outside, better insulation, more bathrooms, and air conditioning. As someone who has seen both old and new homes and has considered living in both, I do not get the nostalgia for old homes. Most home buyers around here agree as they are gutting old homes and renovating them, not living in them as is. I considered living in old homes, but only because they are in good locations. Their oldness in and of itself offered no benefits.

jonnathanson 11y ago
Maybe that's DC, then? I dunno. I live in Southern California, and I haven't seen a home built here in the last 30 years that was remotely well constructed. They're all made out of ticky tacky, as the song goes. And it seems to be getting worse year over year, especially in homes built after the Great Recession. The only exceptions seem to be the double-digit-million-dollar luxury homes. As for the pros and cons of old construction... Pros: generally more durable, more attention to detail, nicer materials used. Will suffer from age-related maintenance issues, but unlike modern construction, is unlikely to suffer from issues related to fundamental structural or design failure. Cons: design and layout choices that no longer fit a contemporary lifestyle (small or no closets; tiny bathrooms and kitchens; closed floor plans; etc.). Generally poorer insulation. Depending on the age of the home, it may also have issues with old plumbing and, having not been designed for central heating or A/C, will sometimes be a bear to deal with in that department. All things considered, having lived in a c. 1920s home and a series of c. 2000s and c. 2010s homes, I'd take the older house 9 times out of 10 and just gut/retrofit as necessary to remedy layout issues (not construction-quality issues). I don't enjoy living in a drywall box with a superficially nice looking kitchen. And I say all of this as someone who, all things being equal, greatly prefers a hyper-modernist aesthetic. I just have to accept that I don't get a Tony Stark house until I have Tony Stark money. :)

bhuga 11y ago

If you've ever worked in residential construction, there's one constant truth: everything you make will be redesigned away before it fails. Our desire for novelty is strong, and cheap construction lets us reconfigure houses affordably in ways that old, stronger construction didn't. Someone will want a new countertop because it looks pretty long before the old one will break, and the same goes for closet space and windows. That's no explanation for situation in the article, of course. One would expect that structural elements of large, dramatic investments of that sort would take proper care to last. But drywall-on-sticks is an economic reality that makes sense.

dclowd9901 11y ago

If you go around old homes in Portland, you will see lathe and plaster walls as smooth as a still lake built close to 100 years ago, not to mention lovingly crafted wood details. If you go into a modern home, you see sheet drywall with tons of shitty looking texture all over it to hide the deep imperfections with the hanging of the drywall, and nary a wood detail to be found. It's absurd that we've taken these woefully cheaper home construction standards with the prices of housing.

ryuker16 11y ago
I'd imagine all the cheap shanty towns and crap houses were bulldozed over a long time ago.

WildUtah 11y ago

"some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. " We stopped living in walkable villages and cities and started living in motorway dependant sprawling suburbs. Our buildings got uglier. Our built environment got worse even as we got richer. Largely this was a matter of public policy. The Roosevelt administration made new rules to plan new development to promote industry during the Depression and imposed it on banks and local planning boards. Still, there wasn't enough push to get the banks to allow anything to be built. Then after the war, those regulations had been in place for almost fifteen years and nothing had been built in the whole country for 16 years since the Depression began. So people took the rules as gospel and built using them. The only thing allowed was car dependant sprawl and the car companies -- an enormous political power right after the war -- loved it. So the whole country was redesigned. It still is. And if your community isn't worth loving -- as sprawl isn't -- then it isn't worth building beautiful buildings. That's why this is now the nation of NIMBYism. People can see that nothing has gotten built here but garbage since 1929 and they don't want more of it. Places like San Francisco are now like jewels and museums since nobody has been allowed to build like that in 86 years and won't be allowed to start tomorrow. The epoch when things could be new and beautiful has passed from living memory.

darkskyshades 11y ago

Re: Low "hobbit" ceilings. ...in many cases i have seen in NYC, homeowners are economically motivated to "lower" their ceilings (cheaper to heat/cool living space). I bought and still live in an early century Georgian, and the maintenance costs over the past two decades has been a very real challenge. If a pipe leaks, if there is a crack in the wall, if/when the floor eventually gets bowed, etc. It is an entirely different, time-consuming and expensive approach to maintaining everything. For the majority of homeowners, it is clearly and absolutely a cost issue.

AmVess 11y ago

It is very much a cost issue, although a small one in terms of the overall price of the house. However, money that goes into 2x6 vs 2x4 studs, drywall, doors, insulation, windows comes out of the overall budget. People shop by price because they have to. Fancy appliances vs sturdy floors? People will pick fancy appliances 99% of the time. I built a few dozen homes and only once had a client request 2x6 construction. I tried to sell it on all the others, citing sturdiness and better insulating properties, but everyone looked at the features it excluded and went for flimsy 2x4 builds. It gets important if you are a developer building subdivisions of homes. $10k saved on every house is $big profit. 25 home subs is $250k+ savings...very much an issue. My own house is 2x6, and properly insulated top to bottom. My neighbor's slap job summer cooling bill is not quite double mine. Close to same sqft and same interior ac temp setting.

mavhc 11y ago
Mostly I'm amused that Americans never got the end of the Three Little Pigs story and still build houses out of wood. I read once that buildings are the best thing to cheat on the construction of because each layer of underspecced materials is hidden by the next layer.
- cobweb 11y ago
  Wood is a renewable and a carbon trap. On site, dirt is a good choice for a building material. You can also use it to bulk mass. You just need a digger and some grunt work. See building with rammed earth. I've a friend who has just added to his 17th century thatched cottage with like materials: oak timber frame, timber cladding and wattle and daub, which is dirt and wood/hay/hair. It's lovely and solid. Sadly planning officials insisted on an over the top concrete foundation that negated all his hard work with his sympathetic build. The wood is good!
mistermann 11y ago
What would you estimate is the payoff time in heating/cooling costs?

Asbostos 11y ago

>This is clearly not a cost issue Whenever something is done cheaply and it looks like it's not a cost issue because it's only miniscule part of the total cost of the product, it's usually actually is a cost issue. The buyer of the final product might not mind spending a little extra to have that one thing done a little better, but for the supplier of the sub-sub-contractor whose entire profit comes from doing that one thing, the "miniscule" part becomes 100% of the cost. Not only that, but this is only one of many things that could be done more expensively. What if you add better fire resistance, better insulation, more weather resistant paint, more carefully assembled parts, etc. it ends up becoming quite a lot more expensive. It's a bit like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. They both seem to be basically the same, but the Mercedes has slightly more expensive parts scattered all through it like a few dollars spent on fluid dampers on the adjustable seat backs compared to no damping.

SixSigma 11y ago
But the Toyota vs Mercedes-Benz is a poor comparison > The most reliable engines came from Honda, with a failure rate of just 1 in 344, with Toyota in second (1 in 171) and, maintaining some honour for the German brands, Mercedes in third (1 in 119). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9815860/German-cars-lose-out-in-reliability-survey.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9815860/German-cars...
- threesixandnine 11y ago
  Probably because in recent years MB uses Renault engines.

cmarschner 11y ago

One main development might be the specialization of the construction industry and the advent of professional management after WWII. When homes are not built by home owners but by development companies, a totally different set of incentives might fall in place, and with professional management one might start looking for metrics and optimizing against them.