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I am just moving into a newly built house (November). I visited the construction site quite frequently in the last year. They built 33 semi-detached houses on a
by inglor_cz 4y ago
I am just moving into a newly built house (November). I visited the construction site quite frequently in the last year. They built 33 semi-detached houses on a single site at once.
The amount of human work that goes into the process is insane. Trucks help, but most of the work during the building itself is done with hands just like 1000 years ago (laying bricks), only there is a lot more work involved than 1000 years ago or even 100 years ago (all the internal networks in the walls etc.).
Something like that cannot be principally cheap. You cannot really scale up some of those activities. The electrician still needs to spend X hours per house, and hours of a highly paid specialist will show up on the total price tag. Etc.
Imagine a tech world where searches of the Web were done by hand instead of with robots.
- algo_trader 4y ago> during the building itself is done with hands just like 1000 years ago (laying bricks) I see you are from the Czech republic (congrats! a nice country!). Are these local or migrant workers? Also - whats the typical price for a Prague apartment compared to such a house?
- inglor_cz 4y agoMostly Czechs, partly Ukrainians. But a lot of Ukrainians have gone back to fight in the war. I saw the full buses departing from Florenc. There is some shortage of construction workforce right now because of the war. The house I mention is in Ostrava, a rust belt city I happened to be born in. Fortunately both me and my wife can work remotely. Prices there are still somewhat affordable, though worse than they used to be. Prague is, as far as housing prices to average income goes, one of the worst places in the entire EU. Bad.
- DubiousPusher 4y agoIn the U.S. this is a little different. Due to the popularity of timber frame houses, air nailers have significantly streamlined many aspects of house building here. However, increased sizes and increased equipmemt have eaten much of the savings from efficiency.
- peteradio 4y agoTimber frame would tend to refer to something a bit exotic, I think you mean stick framing.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoTimber frame is the common term in the UK for a house where the frame is made of wood. Nothing exotic about it.
- peteradio 4y agoOP pretty clearly referred to USA, however.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoTimber framing is a totally different animal than stick framing, in the US, which the comment was explicitly about. Stick framed buildings use 2x lumber joined together with nails, while timber framed buildings use heavy timbers joined together with bolts and other complex joinery. Japanese house construction (at least what I've seen on YouTube) can accurately be described as timber framing, because it uses timbers set in place by crane and connected with bolts and a lot of mortise-and-tenon joints.
- DubiousPusher 4y agoThe user I was replying to is located in Europe. I used the terminology I thought they would be familiar with.
- peteradio 4y agoNot to be a dick, bu that's just confusing, like referring to an American city's soccer match as a football game when there was an actual football game going on too. Of course you are correct though.
- analyte123 4y agoFraming is the easy part. Some 5-story apartments by me got framed in a month but took 8 months to be ready for move-in. I can’t think of an air nailer equivalent for wiring, drywall, insulation, sprinklers, flooring, trim, and so on. Painting has gotten easier with sprayers but that’s about it. And there is one startup with a drywall robot for commercial installations.
- bergenty 4y agoHonestly there really should be home scale concrete 3D printers. I know they exist but they should be better and more common by now. Create your model in software, concrete goes in one end and a house gets printed. It could even leave exposed channels for wiring and plumbing.
- freshpots 4y agohttps://www.cement.org/cement-concrete/paving/buildings-structures/concrete-homes/building-systems-for-every-need/insulating-concrete-forms-(ICFs) https://www.cement.org/cement-concrete/paving/buildings-stru... these are not uncommon but concrete is not as cheap as it once was and isn't as environmentally friendly as wood. However, it is very durable and provides great insulation.
- amluto 4y agoGreat insulation? Wood has 5-10x the R value per inch of concrete, and wood framing tends to be mostly void space that can be filled with even better insulation. Concrete has thermal mass, which is not a real substitute for insulation.
- bergenty 4y agoThis isn’t even what I was talking about. This is barely one step above cinder blocks. You still have to assemble individual pieces manually and then fill them with concrete manually.
- IgorPartola 4y agoThey exist and are pretty good. The problem is that concrete is more expensive than lumber.
- bergenty 4y agoIt’s much, much cheaper when you take labor out of the equation.
- 4y ago
- agumonkey 4y agoI believe hand work can be lightened by a lot. People do too much by bare mechanical force or repetitive gesture. Fordism can happen outside of a plant, and not to drive people sick. But improve things for all parties involved.