19 ms·

I don't know what to call it on the consumer end, but on the builder side, it's often just laziness and greed. If they don't know how to work with a material, t

by dkarl 4y ago

I don't know what to call it on the consumer end, but on the builder side, it's often just laziness and greed. If they don't know how to work with a material, then it sucks. If it's hard to hire subs that know how to build something, then it doesn't meet code and won't pass inspection. If they misbid it, it will never work and needs to be redesigned. In short, building contractors are a lot like software developers. There are some who keep up with the new materials and building systems and are excited to see new design techniques, and there are others who feel a sense of personal grievance that what they learned before they were thirty won't carry them all the way to retirement.

Gravityloss 4y ago
If energy was predictably more expensive, that would be one way to sort it out. You wouldn't buy a house or an apartment without analyzing living costs. Contractors would suddenly get very interested in building more energy efficient housing. I've also heard that in Russia, pensioners get a free amount of energy per month. That leads to a lot of wastage. For example if the pensions could be in cash, then the person would be motivated to save energy. You do need cultural change too though. One way is to just demand visibility, not make any demands on actions. We have a published "energy class" for apartments and houses here. Our current apartment is class F or so - so we know our living cost is more sensitive to district heat prices than a class B apartment would be (those are newer and have in general higher purchase price).
- dkarl 4y ago
  You can measure the air-tightness of a house, and in the U.S, it has become more common to do so. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything else you can do to measure the quality of a build after the fact. The best way to monitor quality is for somebody knowledgable to keep an eye on construction.
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    All apartments and houses by law must have an energy certificate here. There's a high level EU directive but the details are by country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Buildings_Directive_2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Building... However, it has its pitfalls and critics. Anyway, there the energy consumption is calculated from areas and insulation U values and so forth. Don't know what would be the actual biggest problems against launching something similar elsewhere like in USA. Probably one could build a software product to estimate these things. Especially easy during construction if the drawing data can be used directly. If things are drawn with CAD that is. But it might be relatively easy to estimate even from photos of paper drawings...
    - dkarl 4y ago
      Estimates done from the design are pretty common, and BIM programs (Building Information Management) like Revit integrate all of the construction details into the design model, so they are able to automate some of those calculations. But BIM programs are not great design tools (not sure if that's an inherent conflict or if there simply aren't any good ones) so they are not popular for smaller jobs like single-family homes where you can use drawings produced directly from a tool that provides a better user experience for design. Unfortunately, the drawings don't give you any assurance that the construction details are done correctly. Corner-cutting aside, a contractor may depart from the design with good intentions and accidentally create a thermal bridge that sucks heat in or out of your house.
      - Gravityloss 4y ago
        Drawing estimation, outside vs inside temp + heating energy monitoring, heat camera pictures and some kind of other measurements could probably create a reasonable certificate that would be reassuring to house buyers. Or even if the owners are the same but there was some significant renovation being done, one could do that to see if the renovation was done properly.
acjohnson55 4y ago
To be a bit more charitble, I think there are builders who choose mastery of an older skillset over good enough with an evolving set of new skillets. I don't think that's such a bad thing, to be honest. Compared to software, in a building, it's a lot more expensive if you mess up.
- dkarl 4y ago
  I agree, that's cool, but some contractors take it a step too far and bid projects on the assumption that they can replace unfamiliar techniques, materials, and design details with alternatives they can do more cheaply and easily, and then they make themselves into a problem much later in the project when the client doesn't agree to the alterations. I think it's something that contractors even do in good faith. They read drawings and think, "Oh, I know a lot of ways to speed this project up, they're going to be super happy with my bid." They can see it'll be easier if they use a different material, move a door twelve inches this way, move the electrical to another wall, replace a difficult detail with an easier one, etc. They've probably worked on projects where those details are chosen without much care, and the client is delighted if they can speed up the project a bit by changing them.
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    Yep, I can relate to that.

by dkarl 4y ago

Gravityloss 4y ago

If energy was predictably more expensive, that would be one way to sort it out. You wouldn't buy a house or an apartment without analyzing living costs. Contractors would suddenly get very interested in building more energy efficient housing. I've also heard that in Russia, pensioners get a free amount of energy per month. That leads to a lot of wastage. For example if the pensions could be in cash, then the person would be motivated to save energy. You do need cultural change too though. One way is to just demand visibility, not make any demands on actions. We have a published "energy class" for apartments and houses here. Our current apartment is class F or so - so we know our living cost is more sensitive to district heat prices than a class B apartment would be (those are newer and have in general higher purchase price).

dkarl 4y ago
You can measure the air-tightness of a house, and in the U.S, it has become more common to do so. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything else you can do to measure the quality of a build after the fact. The best way to monitor quality is for somebody knowledgable to keep an eye on construction.
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  All apartments and houses by law must have an energy certificate here. There's a high level EU directive but the details are by country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Buildings_Directive_2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Building... However, it has its pitfalls and critics. Anyway, there the energy consumption is calculated from areas and insulation U values and so forth. Don't know what would be the actual biggest problems against launching something similar elsewhere like in USA. Probably one could build a software product to estimate these things. Especially easy during construction if the drawing data can be used directly. If things are drawn with CAD that is. But it might be relatively easy to estimate even from photos of paper drawings...
  - dkarl 4y ago
    Estimates done from the design are pretty common, and BIM programs (Building Information Management) like Revit integrate all of the construction details into the design model, so they are able to automate some of those calculations. But BIM programs are not great design tools (not sure if that's an inherent conflict or if there simply aren't any good ones) so they are not popular for smaller jobs like single-family homes where you can use drawings produced directly from a tool that provides a better user experience for design. Unfortunately, the drawings don't give you any assurance that the construction details are done correctly. Corner-cutting aside, a contractor may depart from the design with good intentions and accidentally create a thermal bridge that sucks heat in or out of your house.
    - Gravityloss 4y ago
      Drawing estimation, outside vs inside temp + heating energy monitoring, heat camera pictures and some kind of other measurements could probably create a reasonable certificate that would be reassuring to house buyers. Or even if the owners are the same but there was some significant renovation being done, one could do that to see if the renovation was done properly.

acjohnson55 4y ago

To be a bit more charitble, I think there are builders who choose mastery of an older skillset over good enough with an evolving set of new skillets. I don't think that's such a bad thing, to be honest. Compared to software, in a building, it's a lot more expensive if you mess up.

dkarl 4y ago
I agree, that's cool, but some contractors take it a step too far and bid projects on the assumption that they can replace unfamiliar techniques, materials, and design details with alternatives they can do more cheaply and easily, and then they make themselves into a problem much later in the project when the client doesn't agree to the alterations. I think it's something that contractors even do in good faith. They read drawings and think, "Oh, I know a lot of ways to speed this project up, they're going to be super happy with my bid." They can see it'll be easier if they use a different material, move a door twelve inches this way, move the electrical to another wall, replace a difficult detail with an easier one, etc. They've probably worked on projects where those details are chosen without much care, and the client is delighted if they can speed up the project a bit by changing them.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  Yep, I can relate to that.