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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Wood framed condos. Ugh. Vancouver learned its lesson the hard way with these, and Seattle will too, in about 20 years. There's a reason the vast majority of buildings in Vancouver are now fully concrete or steel framed.

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Hmm, San Francisco obviously doesn't get as much rain as Seattle, but it has averaged about 24 inches a year for the past century, most of which falls in a few months. And over the summer, in many neighborhoods, it's foggy enough to be dripping. Also, many areas near SF, such as sonoma or santa cruz, also have old wood frame houses that get rainfall in the mid-thirties annually which is closer to Seattle level rains (though again, this is all in the winter, unlike Seattle).

Most of SF is wood framed housing, and much of this housing stock has been standing for a a century. It is redwood, which is unusually resistant to water damage, and you do have to be careful to keep your roof and exterior up.

Just want to be clear, I'm not advocating for wood framed SFHs, and SF doesn't as much rain as Seattle, but could this be more the result of poorly weatherized wood framed buildings than wood frame per se?

The old wood houses in SF "breathe" a lot more than the modern wood buildings that suffered the famous "Leaky Condo" problem in Vancouver. The problem is once water gets inside the walls and is trapped and causes rot. Those old SF houses built 80 to 110 years ago have a lot of air flow through. The sort that is not so terrible in an SF climate but would be a nightmare for winter heating bills if they were located in Detroit or Montreal.

Oh, so it's not purely a rainfall issue, it's whether you can get away with a deliberately drafty house.

That makes a lot of sense - SF may be cool, but it's rarely cold. SF heating bills, even in houses with a pretty ancient and inefficient system, are low.

Yeah, no way you'd get away with that in those other cities you mentioned.

As long as you don't do silly things like use low sloped roof without membrane roofing or stucco without an air gap (or really, any modern building without an air gap), wood frame buildings perform beautifully in rainy climates.

Worried about earthquakes? Or city-wide fire? Or termites?

None of the above (though Vancouver is very susceptible to quakes). I think OP was referring to the massive leaky condo scandal of the 90s where vast numbers of buildings couldn't stand up to simple weather. It wasn't just the wood framing, but widely used water sealing practices were shoddy and allowed moisture infiltration in a vast number of buildings.

The fallout cost billions and many homeowners were straight up screwed as contractors and builders went under one after another.

Noise through floors and ceilings. Creaks and steps and thumps. These buildings all loosen up over time, and if you walk through one under construction you will understand when you see the C grade plywood, particleboard and chipboard.

And the worst thing about Vancouver's 1990s lowrise condos: Water damage. Unfortunately someone imported building plans from southern California which had never been tested in a climate with six months of rain...

(But this problem at least Seattle can probably avoid, since it's entirely possible to withstand the climate; you just need a different design.)

If you read the article there's a whole section on how Seattle had a similar problem. That's why all the new condos look so similar, there are very few materials that don't leak.

Leaks are fine--they happen to all buildings sooner or later. The key is to let the leaked water out of the building, which synthetic stucco of the late 1990s was terrible at. Today, if you want stucco in a wood framed building in BC you have to include an air gap between the stucco and the building itself, and that setup has no issues.

Same with brick and stone facades. If you have a sprinkler system where water gets directed onto the building (intentionally or not), there's a phenomenon called "Vapor Drive" which is essentially capillary action. Without the air gap between the facade material and the wood framing, that moisture goes in there and rots the wood.

http://mattrisinger.com/understanding-vapor-drive-in-reservo...

Seattle's 90s condos all had water damage too (not exaggerating either). Let's see what happens in 10 years.

Vancouver's condos all started leaking within 5 years of construction. With it being 15 years since the building codes changed and not a single similar problem, I think it's safe to say that the new building codes fixed it.

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