4 ms·

Some requirements for long lasting house building in the climate I'm living in: Houses should be raised from the ground and the underside ventilated, to preven

Some requirements for long lasting house building in the climate I'm living in: Houses should be raised from the ground and the underside ventilated, to prevent mold and indoor air quality problems. Roofs should be strong so they can handle snow, and tilted so water and snow falls off. All seams on the roof should be made so that water doesn't go in there and freeze. Concave structures on the roof should be avoided, as they collect water that freezes. There should be eaves and rain chutes on the roof so that water from the roof doesn't touch the walls. Water should be diverted away from the base of the building, so the house should preferably be on a hill, or should have drainage built around it. Overall the building walls and base should stay mostly dry. Most materials of the house should be moisture permeating so that when water gets in, it can dry out. The outermost layer of the roof and the foundation are an exception. Anything that touches the ground should be stone like granite, or some other material that can be in contact with wet ground for centuries with no changes. Now, the house could be any shape you wish for, as long as it fills these requirements. I see a lot of the new ideas fail a number of these requirements - they seem to be fanciful dreams not taking the reality of local conditions into account. So, to turn it around, what if one started an innovative house design from these requirements? A house wouldn't necessarily need to look like old-fashioned houses that have been built for centuries here. It could be weird looking and could still not be a moldy and leaky health and financial problem, with either constant repairs or just bulldozing after a few decades.

jacquesm 5y ago
It is interesting that 'novel house designs' usually get dumped on unsuspecting prospects without taking all of your excellent points into consideration. Building a house is probably one of the skillsets that humanity has worked at for the longest, usually the set of criteria above would make for a good starting point modulated by available materials. But sometimes it helps to let go of that for a bit and to just see what kind of options the materials themselves give regardless of the real world criteria, with the hope of extracting something useful that can be made to fit into the real world environment, for instance by adapting it or by re-using some part of it. But for real world mass produced housing that is meant to work for the long time tradition is an excellent place to start, both for utility and cost efficiency.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  Yes, there is a lot of research, experiments, prototyping, measuring etc to be done. For example you can test materials for years, just put some tile outside and come back every year to see how it's weathered. Or you can research the past. For example with timber there's so many things that need to be done that are not obvious at first. Starting from how you choose the trees and when you fell them. It's important for climate reasons that we get better insulation for houses, or can replace concrete with other materials, but if it's done badly, it will cause those houses to be torn down after a few decades because of mold issues.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I see these as a curiosity, an interesting design study but probably not even well suited as emergency housing (we have better options for that, and likely much cheaper as well). The dome houses linked to below are more interesting (for instance a 'normal' house inside a dome to control the environment). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29302334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29302334 Buckminster Fuller pretty much exhaustively treated the 'dome' concept and the 1930's were open to all kinds of innovation that we consider settled knowledge now. Some of it remained, for instance large open span buildings, and Spaceframes (Octatube). But domes for everyday life are most likely not going to happen unless you're looking at space.
yholio 5y ago
Most of your requirements seem to be driven by local customs, culture and existing materials, not actual local conditions. The expectation that a non-ventilated underside will lead to mold and air quality problems is strictly a wood frame issue. A gravel base with a hard EPS insulator and a continuous hydro proofing membrane will prevent all the issues raised, and is a common construction technique even in rainy climates. As long as the floor level is elevated more than 30-40 cm from soil level, it will stop all seasonal floods; and if you live in a swamp where you regularly have floods over 30 cm, that's a rare situation that requires particular solutions, not relevant to 99% of the housing stock. Similarly, the idea that rain should not touch the walls. If the walls are hydro proofed and water resistant, the rain will simply run over them and into the ground. The goal is to have a durable house where water does not come in, we should not be prejudiced against any technical solution that achieves it. Why should a house built from polystyrene foam last centuries? Do you own any car that lasts centuries? Why can't a 50 year house be good enough, if it means you can provide very cheap housing to a destitute family for two generations, breaking the cycle of poverty and allowing the grandchildren to replace the structure with something more durable and up to date when they will be able to?
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  Good points. In general, water running down the sides will wick to places you don't want it to. Everything gets a lot harder. You have openings in the wall like doors and windows that now have to be designed for a lot more water coming in there. Is it really a good design choice? And then it will run down the side and get to the base of the building too... Believe me, flat roofs and no eaves have been attempted here with gusto for the last 60 years, with billions in investment and billions lost. So many apartment buildings have leaking roofs. It's absolutely a terrible waste and personal financial issue for a lot of families. For the last 10 years, buildings have started to have eaves and sloped roofs again. Basement renovations are not cheap or easy either. It's like software where you have one interface and then internal functions that operate on internal state. You don't suddenly do some reading of some config from disk deep down in some helper method. If the architecture is good, it's easy to reason about and easy to modify. About housing price, yes, sure, some styrofoam dome housing can work in a temporary matter. But even there, the design can make a huge difference. Water will come in or will go into cracks and there will be mold. If you design it with a bit more care, maybe that styrofoam house can last for 50 years instead of 10?
Quindecillion 5y ago
I've recently become interested in building a home that would last for a very long time, up to 10,000 years, inspired by this project: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190611-how-to-build-something-that-lasts-10000-years https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190611-how-to-build-som... They go into various details about the sorts of things they need to consider, such as keeping water out and managing it when they can't Your list is also provides some good pointers. Do you have any other ideas around building something that will last a long time? Whenever I look at photos of long-abandoned buildings I notice how plants and fungi take up residence and "quickly" (i.e. over hundreds or thousands of years) set to work in degrading the structure, so I've been thinking a lot about how to keep life at bay from "eating" any long lasting building.

jacquesm 5y ago

It is interesting that 'novel house designs' usually get dumped on unsuspecting prospects without taking all of your excellent points into consideration. Building a house is probably one of the skillsets that humanity has worked at for the longest, usually the set of criteria above would make for a good starting point modulated by available materials. But sometimes it helps to let go of that for a bit and to just see what kind of options the materials themselves give regardless of the real world criteria, with the hope of extracting something useful that can be made to fit into the real world environment, for instance by adapting it or by re-using some part of it. But for real world mass produced housing that is meant to work for the long time tradition is an excellent place to start, both for utility and cost efficiency.

Gravityloss 5y ago
Yes, there is a lot of research, experiments, prototyping, measuring etc to be done. For example you can test materials for years, just put some tile outside and come back every year to see how it's weathered. Or you can research the past. For example with timber there's so many things that need to be done that are not obvious at first. Starting from how you choose the trees and when you fell them. It's important for climate reasons that we get better insulation for houses, or can replace concrete with other materials, but if it's done badly, it will cause those houses to be torn down after a few decades because of mold issues.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I see these as a curiosity, an interesting design study but probably not even well suited as emergency housing (we have better options for that, and likely much cheaper as well). The dome houses linked to below are more interesting (for instance a 'normal' house inside a dome to control the environment). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29302334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29302334 Buckminster Fuller pretty much exhaustively treated the 'dome' concept and the 1930's were open to all kinds of innovation that we consider settled knowledge now. Some of it remained, for instance large open span buildings, and Spaceframes (Octatube). But domes for everyday life are most likely not going to happen unless you're looking at space.

yholio 5y ago

Most of your requirements seem to be driven by local customs, culture and existing materials, not actual local conditions. The expectation that a non-ventilated underside will lead to mold and air quality problems is strictly a wood frame issue. A gravel base with a hard EPS insulator and a continuous hydro proofing membrane will prevent all the issues raised, and is a common construction technique even in rainy climates. As long as the floor level is elevated more than 30-40 cm from soil level, it will stop all seasonal floods; and if you live in a swamp where you regularly have floods over 30 cm, that's a rare situation that requires particular solutions, not relevant to 99% of the housing stock. Similarly, the idea that rain should not touch the walls. If the walls are hydro proofed and water resistant, the rain will simply run over them and into the ground. The goal is to have a durable house where water does not come in, we should not be prejudiced against any technical solution that achieves it. Why should a house built from polystyrene foam last centuries? Do you own any car that lasts centuries? Why can't a 50 year house be good enough, if it means you can provide very cheap housing to a destitute family for two generations, breaking the cycle of poverty and allowing the grandchildren to replace the structure with something more durable and up to date when they will be able to?

Gravityloss 5y ago
Good points. In general, water running down the sides will wick to places you don't want it to. Everything gets a lot harder. You have openings in the wall like doors and windows that now have to be designed for a lot more water coming in there. Is it really a good design choice? And then it will run down the side and get to the base of the building too... Believe me, flat roofs and no eaves have been attempted here with gusto for the last 60 years, with billions in investment and billions lost. So many apartment buildings have leaking roofs. It's absolutely a terrible waste and personal financial issue for a lot of families. For the last 10 years, buildings have started to have eaves and sloped roofs again. Basement renovations are not cheap or easy either. It's like software where you have one interface and then internal functions that operate on internal state. You don't suddenly do some reading of some config from disk deep down in some helper method. If the architecture is good, it's easy to reason about and easy to modify. About housing price, yes, sure, some styrofoam dome housing can work in a temporary matter. But even there, the design can make a huge difference. Water will come in or will go into cracks and there will be mold. If you design it with a bit more care, maybe that styrofoam house can last for 50 years instead of 10?

Quindecillion 5y ago

I've recently become interested in building a home that would last for a very long time, up to 10,000 years, inspired by this project: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190611-how-to-build-something-that-lasts-10000-years https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190611-how-to-build-som... They go into various details about the sorts of things they need to consider, such as keeping water out and managing it when they can't Your list is also provides some good pointers. Do you have any other ideas around building something that will last a long time? Whenever I look at photos of long-abandoned buildings I notice how plants and fungi take up residence and "quickly" (i.e. over hundreds or thousands of years) set to work in degrading the structure, so I've been thinking a lot about how to keep life at bay from "eating" any long lasting building.