|
I've heard that with a lot of houses (or additions to houses) constructed in the 1950s in North America, the attitude was "unlimited cheap, clean atomic energy is just around the corner!" so adding insulation was considered a waste of time and money because you would soon be able to have your very own nuclear furnace in the basement. I don't know how true that is, but it's a nice story to believe anyway.
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 04:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 23:34 |
|
|
They mostly didn't insulate houses older than that either, my place was (judging by the age of the work done after insulating) only insulated in the 60s or 70s, and only had insulation in the attic and exterior walls wherever it fell down from the attic. Insulation is mostly a modern invention. E: and it was built in 1890 so no atom craze involved. kastein fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jan 26, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 05:15
|
|
|
Sagebrush posted:"unlimited cheap, clean atomic energy is just around the corner!" Clean, safe, too cheap to meter.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 15:45
|
|
|
This whole, "Atoms will negate the harshness of winter" was never a thing in Canada, and especially not a consideration in 1928 (when my house was built). Houses here have insulation, be it straw/sawdust in the early days or commercially available solutions later.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 16:25
|
|
|
Sagebrush posted:I've heard that with a lot of houses (or additions to houses) constructed in the 1950s in North America, the attitude was "unlimited cheap, clean atomic energy is just around the corner!" so adding insulation was considered a waste of time and money because you would soon be able to have your very own nuclear furnace in the basement. I think that is an after-the-fact rationalization applied by the people who were selling the places. The real truth is that they just cut corners and costs while throwing up as many ticky tacky houses as humanly possible. Very similar to the building "quality" you saw in the late 90s-2007 mcmansion boom. My neighbor, a PE with construction experience, has introduced me to his habit of wandering through in-construction-but-almost-done houses in the neighborhood (with permission of course) and it is a parade of crappy design tales. Yesterday we walked through a house that is being renovated but was the same original model as the house I'm living in. They took it all the way down to the foundation but for god knows what reason kept the room layout in one area of the house. The combination of modern floorplan everywhere else with this one section of the original 50s mini-hallway pseudo-ranch abomination was just so strange. If you take it down to the foundation why not start fresh?
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 17:03
|
|
|
Probably permitting reasons, if you remodel it is easier and cheaper than rebuilding. E: and if you are lucky they let you knock down everything but one room/wall, start rebuilding, then knock down that room/wall. Bureaucracy is great ain't it? kastein fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jan 26, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 19:08
|
|
|
kastein posted:Probably permitting reasons, if you remodel it is easier and cheaper than rebuilding. That's not out of the realm of possibilities and it's usually the "move" you pull when you have property line issues (existing building closer than zoning allows so a complete teardown would require compliance with current zoning as opposed to a "remodel").
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
Motronic posted:That's not out of the realm of possibilities and it's usually the "move" you pull when you have property line issues (existing building closer than zoning allows so a complete teardown would require compliance with current zoning as opposed to a "remodel"). Heh, my Mom's old house was so small on such a small plot that the property line setbacks overlapped like a camera iris. It was the clerk's office for the gold mine a little down the road, built when there was actually gold in it about 125 years ago. The only possible remodel was maybe "up", and even that would've had a lot of flags attached. I think it was probably the size of the living room I'm currently sitting in.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 17:05
|
|
|
A lot of people around my area buy smallish cabins built in the 40-50s that are super close to the lake (talking 50 feet or less sometimes). I'm not sure the exact distances, but I believe that any new structures have to be built at least 200 feet from the high-water marks. So what happens is they "renovate" the small cabins (under 700 square feet) and after the work is done they have 2000+ square feet McMansion-Cottages. I've seen instances where one 15' wall was all that was left after a renovation, and the entire thing was enveloped in a new structure. As soon as the walls surrounded it, it was taken down.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 17:23
|
|
|
Blistex posted:A lot of people around my area buy smallish cabins built in the 40-50s that are super close to the lake (talking 50 feet or less sometimes). I'm not sure the exact distances, but I believe that any new structures have to be built at least 200 feet from the high-water marks. So what happens is they "renovate" the small cabins (under 700 square feet) and after the work is done they have 2000+ square feet McMansion-Cottages. I've seen instances where one 15' wall was all that was left after a renovation, and the entire thing was enveloped in a new structure. As soon as the walls surrounded it, it was taken down. That is SOP for getting around building codes regarding set backs and existing buildings. It happens everywhere.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 17:57
|
|
|
Man I really hate setbacks, specially when they were "upgraded" in the 60's to suburbanize urban areas. You'll have these whole neighbourhoods of dense row-houses and things built only a couple meters to the sidewalk all technically illegal under the new bylaws that was big stupid front yards and poo poo. So any time anyone wants to fix up their old house it's a nightmare because of the setbacks and historical designations. Sometimes the legal/red tape costs most than the reno.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 18:14
|
|
|
There's a small corner lot near me that used to have a house and a barn. They tore down the barn and built a new house. Then they tore down all but the front wall of the old house. It's really bizarre. Either it's for setback issues, or my other theory is that it still has an electric meter on it, and maybe they are just running electric to the other building from it. Which seems crazy, but what do I know. Before photo: 
smackfu fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jan 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
Well the backroom renovation is getting interesting. Seems that there was a wood stove in that room and they never bothered to seal the hole properly. I found an old masonry cutting disc covering the hole, so that's going to be another can of worms when I redo the outside of the house. . . whenever. The entire addition is so poorly made (walls with a mismatch of insulations, studs in random places, and an uneven floor, that I'm not afraid to take a bath (showers are still on the table) because the bathroom is directly overhead, and I have a large soaker tub. I'm just afraid that it's going to fall through the floor is the ceiling in the addition (have not revealed yet) is to the same standards as the rest of it. As soon as it gets a little warmer, I'm going to suit up, crawl under it, and see what I can do to get the floor flat. No sense mudding drywall if I'm going to end up cracking everything in the process. Old houses are a scavenger hunt of problems. Address one issue, and it leads you to the next issue to be resolved.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2014 22:55
|
|
|
Shifty Pony posted:I think that is an after-the-fact rationalization applied by the people who were selling the places. The real truth is that they just cut corners and costs while throwing up as many ticky tacky houses as humanly possible. Very similar to the building "quality" you saw in the late 90s-2007 mcmansion boom. One of my good friends is a draftsman who was working for Regency Homes back in 2003, and I was working delivery for Sherwin-Williams for the summer. Man, the poo poo I saw going up in $250k houses, I wouldn't put in a barn, and he's shown me the plans he got called to work on. Half of these houses aren't going to be standing in twenty years. Of course, that company went bankrupt and ran with something like a quarter billion in debts in 2008. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jan 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 22:28
|
|
|
As I understand it, arrested development is basically a documentary regarding the american housing development industry.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:One of my good friends is a draftsman who was working for Regency Homes back in 2003, and I was working delivery for Sherwin-Williams for the summer. Man, the poo poo I saw going up in $250k houses, I wouldn't put in a barn, and he's shown me the plans he got called to work on. Half of these houses aren't going to be standing in twenty years. I'm right in the heart of Toll Brothers territory. The kinda of things that were hitting the paper back in the early 2000s was just incredible. My favorite was the new homeowner who couldn't understand why he was using $1200 worth of gas a month to heat his McMansion when it got cold out that first winter. Turns out they forgot to insulate the attic. At all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 22:42
|
|
|
After I purchased my condo I came to realize that the insulation in the attic was extremely subpar. I paid a good amount of money for someone to come in and spray foam it all down. Nice tax rebate from that too.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 22:55
|
|
|
It's absolutely amazing how expensive cheap housing is. We gently caress our selves over driving the upkeep costs of buildings up just to save a few thousand on purchase cost. Yet we keep rewarding the industry because people are so dumb they rather save 10k off their purchase price even if it means spending 20k more on upkeep. Even just simple poo poo like upgraded insulation pays for its self in just a few years. poo poo like that really should be mandated in building codes because otherwise builders just have a race to the bottom to keep initial prices low.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 23:41
|
|
|
This is one of the hazards of large housing developments in general. Crews move through the development doing specialized jobs. So you'll have a crew doing grading, and then a crew laying sewers, then a crew doing foundations, then a crew putting up frames, then a crew putting in wiring, a crew doing exterior shells, a crew doing parts of roofs, and so on. And although there's usually no more than a half-dozen standard layouts, a lot of the houses have specific differences to them... especially if they're pre-sold and the buyers had optional upgrades. So potentially every house is a little different. And some crews are only going to be on-site for a few days, blitzing through everything blowing insulation into ceilings or putting up drywall or just spraying on a popcorn ceiling treatment, whatever. The potential for errors in that kind of situation is huge. The guys painting the walls don't know whether the guys doing the drywall hanging did their jobs right or not, and if they do find mistakes, there's probably a big incentive to just cover them up, because anything that delays one crew could cascade down the line and delay everyone else, which with a development with like 50+ houses in it could add up to millions of dollars of delays. There's a lot of pressure on each crew to get done to a tight schedule, so nobody really wants to hear the electrical crew putting in lighting telling them that hey, there's some shoddy framing on House Number 231 and really someone should tear down the drywall in the kitchen and dining room and fix it. You also don't have one specific person who is responsible for making sure each house is done exactly right at every step. Or if you do, that guy is in charge of so much that it's impossible to do it personally, it has to be delegated. It's the kind of situation that's ripe for mistakes, and since so many homebuilding mistakes become invisible once you put on the final paint, siding, and roof, well... that's why if you're me, you never even consider buying a cookie-cutter home built in a large development, especially since maybe 1980 or so when the process got far more "efficient" (read: cheap). Mind you, my home was built as part of a 1950s development, but it was a pretty small one, it would have taken longer to do, it's a smaller house with fewer features to go wrong, and it's been around long enough for any serious flaws to show themselves. And I got thorough inspections done. And even so, I'm sure it's not as high-quality a house as one that was built to spec as a one-off by a single contractor and their subcontractors. At least, potentially, since as we know, that situation has plenty of opportunities to go wrong as well... if the primary contractor is bad. It's also easy to discount modern tract-built housing because of the above, but we should also remember that building materials and products are way, way better today than they were even just 30 years ago. Modern plastic pipes, modern insulation products, modern framing techniques, modern wiring, modern appliances, modern infrastructure like sewer, water, gas, and electricity delivery... it's all more durable, safer, and in many cases just way nicer than before. There are legitimate attractions to preferring new construction over old. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jan 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 23:44
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:It's absolutely amazing how expensive cheap housing is. We gently caress our selves over driving the upkeep costs of buildings up just to save a few thousand on purchase cost. Yet we keep rewarding the industry because people are so dumb they rather save 10k off their purchase price even if it means spending 20k more on upkeep. Even just simple poo poo like upgraded insulation pays for its self in just a few years. poo poo like that really should be mandated in building codes because otherwise builders just have a race to the bottom to keep initial prices low. When it is mandated in building codes, everyone throws a fit over the draconian regulations and how impossible they are to implement. See: California. Related, the new CA Title 24 is insanely ambitious, surprisingly so. It presents absolutely massive changes to building energy use, and was so aggressive that they had to delay implementation for 6 months because no one was prepared for all of the design implications. I don't do residential so I don't know what all of the implications are there, but for commercial it has stuff like requiring that most outlets be controlled by the room's lighting controls (so auto shut-off from occ. sensors; you can have uncontrolled outlets but only if they're w/in 6 feet of a controlled outlet), basically requiring auto daylight dimming in most spaces, and much more aggressive triggers for when a renovation will force compliance (it used to be if you replaced fewer than 50% of lamps/ballasts in a space, you didn't have to do lighting T24; the new requirement is that if you touch any of the wiring between power source and ballast, you have to bring the entire space up to T24).
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2014 23:51
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:that's why if you're me, you never even consider buying a cookie-cutter home built in a large development, especially since maybe 1980 or so when the process got far more "efficient" (read: cheap). As if I needed more reason to avoid the sterile, "every house has the same aesthetic", completely locked-down HOA "communities" you see cropping up all over the place. I got a 1950's house that was originally part of military housing, so they just built hundreds of A-frames to the same plan...but they all have different paint jobs, different yards, many have been remodeled, etc. so it actually feels like you're in a place where people live.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:01
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:It's absolutely amazing how expensive cheap housing is. We gently caress our selves over driving the upkeep costs of buildings up just to save a few thousand on purchase cost. I just spent more on insulation than siding and lumber for an addition I put on to my pole barn (as a full time heated/cooled space). I went "overboard" and did things like aluminum taping every last joint in the rigid foam board (had to be at least $100 worth of tape), lots of insulation under the slab and on the sill plates + radiant heat loops. People just don't DO things like that typically. Some of my contractor friends who were by at various times to lend a hand during my construction were floored at the lengths I went through (none of them my own ideas - plenty of universities who research exactly this kind of thing have free information online for you to read - it just takes some research). It's been bitterly cold recently (for here....8-10 degrees F) and I'm only hitting 55 overnight (from a set temp of 65 during the day) on an 18x12 space with three windows and three outside walls. I'm pretty sure that money will cover itself inside of 2 heating seasons. It just seems foolish to me NOT to do these things.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
It's going to be a tough decision when I finally sell this place (side note, I purchased my condo for 100k. The city just revalued it at 50k  ) because I don't want an old house due to having to fix everything but new homes tend to be built as cheap as possible.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Papercut posted:for commercial it has stuff like requiring that most outlets be controlled by the room's lighting controls (so auto shut-off from occ. sensors; you can have uncontrolled outlets but only if they're w/in 6 feet of a controlled outlet), California is going to ban oscillating fans, aren't they 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:18
|
|
|
Devor posted:California is going to ban oscillating fans, aren't they You can keep it but you have to aim it at a wind power generator.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:28
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:It's also easy to discount modern tract-built housing because of the above, but we should also remember that building materials and products are way, way better today than they were even just 30 years ago. Modern plastic pipes, modern insulation products, modern framing techniques, modern wiring, modern appliances, modern infrastructure like sewer, water, gas, and electricity delivery... it's all more durable, safer, and in many cases just way nicer than before. There are legitimate attractions to preferring new construction over old. other materials are significantly better, insulation being the first that comes to mind, but others are on the list. I think there was a tendency to over engineer in days past whereas todays developments are done by a large corporation that hires a structural engineer not to ensure safety, but to shave as many dollars off of the cost as possible. They also buy cheaper materials in bulk for some projects, like the chinese drywall that can turn into sulfuric acid in high humidity. There is a neighborhood in my town that went up about 10 years ago, and numerous homes there have siding and roof problems. Most likely they are the result of a Monday house, but they could be poor material choice as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
Devor posted:California is going to ban oscillating fans, aren't they Their intention is in the right place, right? They're trying to combat the energy vampire phenomenon, get people to shutdown their computers when not at work and all that. But in practice I think you'll just end up with twice as many outlets, or in every duplex one outlet will be controlled and the other will be uncontrolled (guess which one people will actually use?). They're butting up against major sociological/behavioral impediments here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 01:29
|
|
|
adorai posted:There are a lot of nice things about the way homes are built today over how they were built in the 70s and 80s, but I really have a hard time agreeing with the idea that any new construction house is going to be more durable than a reasonably well maintained home built 30-40 years ago. Siding and roofing would have been replaced with newer products over the years, bringing them up to the same quality that you would see today. Framing, sheeting, and drywall products are not significantly different, though the framing methods used today may use less material in different configurations (plywood I beams or 2x8s instead of 2x10s floor joists, as an example). Oh, I'm sure in some cases things are basically the same, and I'm not an expert on vintage building materials. But stuff like drywall that has a longer burn-through time, or drywall that has better noise insulation; framing techniques that are safer in an earthquake (I'm in California so earthquake safety is a big deal here); separation of the garage space from the house space with fireproof materials to slow or prevent spread of fire from the most common ignition source into the living area; to just basic poo poo like double-glazed windows, caulk that lasts longer, or even just bothering to put any insulation at all in places like floors and interior walls. (My 1958 house has no insulation at all between the crawlspace and the floor; it's a mild climate, but we still lose a lot of heat through the floor, and when I can afford it, crawling around down there installing a vapor barrier and insulation is on The List.) Durability of the overall structure is also affected by things like site preparation before building, and I'm convinced we're better at that than ever before. A lot of 50+ year old houses have areas where the foundation has settled over time, and that's just not going to happen as much for modern (say, 1990's+) houses where the site was compacted, drainage was better understood, geologists identified the flows of water, all that stuff was done to modern standards. I do think a lot of new developments have been allowed without adequate infrastructure planned (things like water supply in arid environments and sufficient transportation to get people to work). Suburban sprawl is a terrible blight not only because it's ugly and because it consumes prime farmland around cities, but also because the low density distribution of the population makes it more expensive and inefficient to deliver utilities and public transportation. A lot of big modern suburban developments are possible only because there's a big chunk of undeveloped land that gets bought and developed, and those big chunks are almost always former farmland on the outskirts of a metropolitan area. I'm really happy that I can walk from my house to the main commercial center of my town in about fifteen minutes, and my wife can walk to BART in about ten. I think it makes the plot of land my house is on more sustainable for the long term (say 100+ years) than some house twice as big on twice as much land that's out in the exurbs.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 02:13
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:This is one of the hazards of large housing developments in general. Crews move through the development doing specialized jobs. So you'll have a crew doing grading, and then a crew laying sewers, then a crew doing foundations, then a crew putting up frames, then a crew putting in wiring, a crew doing exterior shells, a crew doing parts of roofs, and so on. And although there's usually no more than a half-dozen standard layouts, a lot of the houses have specific differences to them... especially if they're pre-sold and the buyers had optional upgrades. So potentially every house is a little different. And some crews are only going to be on-site for a few days, blitzing through everything blowing insulation into ceilings or putting up drywall or just spraying on a popcorn ceiling treatment, whatever. How about a friend who, decades ago, was part of a crew that was installing insulation in a subdivision. After the house passed inspection and the drywall was allowed to be put up, it was his job to take out the insulation from the walls and put in up in the next batch of houses that were still being built. He quit after three days because he felt terrible about it. I have no idea if he reported the scam or not. This type of blatant scamming combined with rampant alcoholism and other substance abuse on the job is no small part of why modern houses are built so drat poorly.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 04:12
|
|
|
/\ Wow! That's the shadiest thing I have ever heard! Insulation is pretty much the cheapest thing you can do in a house (assuming you're talking about fiberglass insulation). Speaking of my insulation woes. I finished re-insulating the back room of my house and just noticed that two of the windows are not properly supported. They are missing the headers and the 2x4's above them are being held up by the actual window frames! One of them is just a plate window with a 1x6" pine board, and the other one is a new window I installed two years ago that I couldn't see what was wrong because of the walls. Both have a noticeable sag in the windows themselves, and the last thing I want is one of my new windows cracking when I jack up the floor. I'm guessing that this addition was done by the owners and not a contractor given their liberal use of repurposed materials. loving old houses!
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 05:33
|
|
|
Papercut posted:for commercial it has stuff like requiring that most outlets be controlled by the room's lighting controls (so auto shut-off from occ. sensors; you can have uncontrolled outlets but only if they're w/in 6 feet of a controlled outlet) So this means that unless you plug into the special uncontrolled outlet, all your computers and poo poo will have their power cut when you've been working late at your desk and no one's walked past the wall sensor in fifteen minutes? Gee, how could that ever go wrong?
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 07:10
|
|
|
Sagebrush posted:So this means that unless you plug into the special uncontrolled outlet, all your computers and poo poo will have their power cut when you've been working late at your desk and no one's walked past the wall sensor in fifteen minutes? The outlets are labeled. I work in a corporate office sometimes and this is pretty normal. You'll have a color-coded outlet that's attached to the light sensor and switch, and another one right next to it that is always on. Basically the idea is, wherever you might plug something in, you have the option, so you can plug things like desk lamps into the one that's on the room motion sensor and they'll only be on if someone is in the room. You plug your PC into the always-on outlet. It can be annoying when the lights switch off because you were sitting too still, but that happens with the room flourescents too and everyone just deals with it. I expect the net savings my company gets from having all those sensors, just on electricity bills, runs into at least the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, maybe millions.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 07:30
|
|
|
Blistex posted:/\ Wow! That's the shadiest thing I have ever heard! Insulation is pretty much the cheapest thing you can do in a house (assuming you're talking about fiberglass insulation). Well, not putting it in is probably even cheaper.  I wonder what the break-even is between paying a guy to remove it (and delaying the drywall crew) vs. the money saved from buying a single "legacy" insulation set. I guess an inspector's countermove would be to Sharpie a line down every piece in each house? Ugh.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 07:52
|
|
|
Indolent Bastard posted:This type of blatant scamming combined with rampant alcoholism and other substance abuse on the job is no small part of why modern houses are built so drat poorly. My in-laws had a house built in Kiev and after I showed up and found a ton of problems and just started working there my self we got most everything sorted. After I went home they said they were cleaning up the pile of construction waste and realized the mound was just construction waste on the outside, the core was almost solid vodka bottles.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 07:57
|
|
|
All the superior modern materials, engineering, and preparation in the world doesn't make up for the fact that construction crews now just give zero fucks about the workmanship on their sites. My rental townhome was built in 2005, has already had the tile floor replaced for severe buckling, the showers have maybe another five years before a total renovation is going to be required, due to poo poo tile work allowing water between the tile and water barrier, and the upstairs balcony is sloped TOWARDS the house, so all the rainwater sits against the wall, and is starting to leak into the bedroom floor and downstairs ceilings. This isn't mentioning the electrical system that was seemingly installed by two blind retards with no concept of circuit distribution. Also, I challenge you to take a builders square into a house built in the past twenty years and find a single 90 degree angle. The greatest pleasure in my life is that I don't OWN this shitbox. Meanwhile, the houses in my parents neighborhood have stood up to sixty years of hurricanes, have practically exquisite workmanship, and have pristine original bathrooms. Oh, and every goddamned wall is plumb and straight, the roofs don't leak, because they didn't let some rear end in a top hat up there go nuts with a nail gun, and the electrical systems, while old and obsolete, aren't literal crimes against humanity.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 12:16
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:All the superior modern materials, engineering, and preparation in the world doesn't make up for the fact that construction crews now just give zero fucks about the workmanship on their sites. Biggest reason for this is that these are guys who are working on a crew, usually for a large contracting firm. So no matter how lovely their work is (unless there is a criminal investigation), nobody is ever going to know it was their lovely work that caused the roof to sag or the drywall the crack. Add to that schedules and budgets, and you have a recipe for lovely work.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 15:54
|
|
|
There's a chance I'll be building a house in the next 5 years. How do you avoid crazy poo poo like this? I mean, look for reviews on the contractor and all, but that only goes so far. Does it help or hurt that if I did build a house, it wouldn't be one that's going up in a tract of a hundred other matching houses being built at the same time? I don't have a problem with the "choose your blueprint" practice, but it wouldn't be an assembly-line home. Probably not a one-off custom deal, though, although that's also not outside the realm of possibility. Just curious.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 15:59
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:My in-laws had a house built in Kiev and after I showed up and found a ton of problems and just started working there my self we got most everything sorted. After I went home they said they were cleaning up the pile of construction waste and realized the mound was just construction waste on the outside, the core was almost solid vodka bottles. I worked at a liquor store years ago and we had regular clients of painters and drywallers (you can spot them more easily than other trades) that arrived when we opened, and bought a mickey of vodka and two king cans of cheap beer. Each and every day these guys would self-medicate with booze and I can only guess that their work didn't get better when they were drunk. The number of stories about the puke-wagon drivers (coffee and sandwich trucks) being dealers of coke and weed only make me more leery of modern builders. Yes there are good ones, but I fear the lovely ones.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 16:03
|
|
|
Bad Munki posted:There's a chance I'll be building a house in the next 5 years. How do you avoid crazy poo poo like this? I mean, look for reviews on the contractor and all, but that only goes so far. Does it help or hurt that if I did build a house, it wouldn't be one that's going up in a tract of a hundred other matching houses being built at the same time? I don't have a problem with the "choose your blueprint" practice, but it wouldn't be an assembly-line home. Probably not a one-off custom deal, though, although that's also not outside the realm of possibility. If you are hiring a contractor yourself you are already sidestepping a shitload of issues! The best thing to do is find people he/she has built for and talk to them. Find the local building inspector and ask him/her about that contractor. Do a web-search and see if anything shows up. Ask another contractor if they are willing to talk about them. The construction industry is somewhat tight, so most contractors know the competition and their reputations, and are surprisingly honest and willing to share info. If you really want to keep a contractor honest, have the building inspector show up (if he is willing) on the day before your home is getting sheeted, so he can see all the studs and such. Hell, offer to pay another contractor a few hundred to do an inspection once of twice. If your contractor knows that you are keeping tabs on him/her, they will keep in line.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 16:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 23:34 |
|
|
How annoyed off would a contractor be if an owner he was building a house for showed up at the build site from time to time to have a look around? I'm not an inspector but I'd sure feel a lot better if I could actually watch the house go up in person. Maybe with a case of beer for the crew?
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2014 16:32
|
|