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Comment by Avalaxy | Hacker News Reader

> Oh, and the cheapness an often obvious design mistakes even in new buildings, mostly due to the boom/bust nature of the housing market: projects grind to a halt during bust, only exploding in a hurried frenzy when the market would happily buy anything as long as it has a roof (leaky.)

I don't agree with this at all. The houses here in the Netherlands seem to be built a lot more solid, better insulated and come with more luxurious features than the houses I've seen in almost every other country in the world.

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I think that climate plays a huge role in the quality of housing. I remember visiting a few homes in California and rented one in Florida and was shocked at how little there is to a house. Then I remembered they don't have to worry about things like a tonne of snow sitting on the roof.

With winter climates you have to dig into the ground for a while and put in a real solid foundation. Proper insulation and vapor barrier and such. For our cottage we actually had to explode away about 4 ft * 1100sqft of bedrock to pour a foundation into. I wonder if without winter we'd just sit it on the bedrock.

I doubt my experience is broad enough to consider it a representative sample but that's generally what my perception has been.

That's interesting - I wonder where you are? Our ca. 1800 cottage has no foundation (it's literally just rocks sitting on dirt) and is in a pretty wet climate (Ireland). Though the room that had a screed put down is drier than the others.

East of Lake Huron in Canada. I think the difference is that the average winter temperature in Ireland is above freezing (correct me if I'm wrong). It's about 20C lower here. It's the freeze/thaw action that we are building deep to protect against.

I'm not an architect, but my understanding is that the foundation has to be far enough down that the ground does not freeze under it, which is why houses in the Northeast US and Canada have basements.

6 ft so the ground does freeze/melt and the structure become uneven.

It's actually calculated based on the frost line for the area. I don't think when building on solid rock it matters, since the point is to avoid expansion and contraction of freeze thaw cycle pushing the house up.

This depends enormously on where you are: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/infrastructur...

Go farther South and it gets down to eventually nothing. Go far enough North, to permafrost country, and you not only need to dig down to the permafrost but you need to have insulation so the permafrost doesn't melt.

Yes, you want to go low enough that frost heave will not affect your footings. But if you anchor into bedrock then shallow is fine.

Neat. I lived on lake Huron too (just East of Sault ste Marie, on St. Josephs' Island). Brutal winters. Amazing nature.

> For our cottage we actually had to explode away about 4 ft x 1100sqft of bedrock to pour a foundation into.

I don't see why you would need to do this? You can build right on top of bedrock; it's not going to give you frost heave.

Yes, the foundation depth varies based on the frost line [1]. Also in warmer areas, termites can be a problem and foundations will be designed to prevent termites from getting in.

From reading about home construction I was surprised by how local the design considerations can be.

[1] https://www.engineeringexpress.com/wiki/frost-protection-con... [2]

It makes complete sense when you think and read about it, of course.

One thing that surprised me (but makes complete sense) is that all the construction lumber I've grown up with is completely different species than the construction lumber used elsewhere. Dimensions vary, too.

I agree with you entirely. The majority of Dutch houses are very well designed and built, and extremely comfortable. It's a world away from my native New Zealand.

The low quality of buildings in New Zealand amazed me when I visited.

It was like my understanding of the poorest parts of the UK, or my impression of the UK before I was born (e.g. 1970s).

Many buildings only had single-glazed windows, and some only had electric heating. The latter might be reasonable for an earthquake-prone region, but that should make double- or even triple-glazing more important. Walls were thin, and everywhere was draughty. I went from a summer of 36°C to a winter of 12°C, so I was probably going to feel cold anyway, but many people at the conference were wearing coats indoors.

On the other hand, the people seem pretty tough. It was the end of the winter holiday, and students were returning to their university, so many were wandering around the town. Around half were wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

You all must think Europeans are soft :-)

Completely agree with you. I am a Dutch citizen and have been living in the UK for over a decade; I would say the build quality of housing in the Netherlands is far better (if I had to guess probably because of stricter regulations). This is especially evident in apartment blocks.

It depends on the period of construction. Houses built in the 60's and 70's of the previous century were quite shoddy, quite a few of them (especially apartment buildings) have been demolished already. But older stuff, especially from the thirties and later built houses are of very good quality.

Another thing to remember is that a brick house is only as good as its foundations.

Uh let’s start: heating pipes routed outside walls. Walls made of single layer drywall, wide apart studs, no soundproofing, cheapest plugs possible (even in premium apartments), window frames installed without the necessary PU foam, just screwed on the brickwork.

The list goes on...

Are you sure you are talking about the Netherlands? Heating pipes routed outside walls I have seen in the UK, but never in the Netherlands. No soundproofing would NEVER pass building regulations in the Netherlands.

"Heating pipes routed outside walls I have seen in the UK"

Waste water pipes outside are fairly common in some places with lots of older buildings but I don't think I've ever seen outside heating pipes!

In my experience, water pipes (not sure about heating) routed outside the walls are pretty common in houses in Amsterdam build pre ~2000 (and not renovated since)

Depends on who did some renovation. Heating is usually routed trough the floor. Water sometimes in or against the wall, sometimes in the floor, and sometimes in sight, but never outside... In the past gas was routed out of sight as well, but that's not allowed anymore, so you see gas pipes usually in the corner of a ceiling. You can hide this with a facade.

Walls here are made from brick. The newer buildings are either normal or aerated concrete, and sometimes split up using drywall. This totally depends what the requirements are, and the past years, construction has been more and more drywall instead of brick etc. I've never seen a single layer of drywall, and I've lived in all type of housing in Amsterdam.

To me that's a very surprising view. Ample space does not seem to be one of those luxurious features, that's for sure.

My wife and I were hunting for a new apartment a few years ago, and after looking a few houses in a village around 30km from Amsterdam we stopped at the local pub for a drink. Got to talking with an old local and explained that we were torn whether to live closer to the city, or get a place here that has a lot more space. He said to us, "More space? What's the point of that? All you'll do is put useless things in it. Move to the city."

He was right of course.

Well, as far as I have seen space in the Dutch sense is not about functionally rather for show. Living room. A lot of living room, something you could play soccer in (or have many friends for dinner.)

Bedrooms, studies, bathrooms as small and cramped as feasible

It's not for show. It's design 101. You spend the most time in the livingroom, diningroom or kitchen, so it makes sense to use the most space for that. There's only so much space you can divide up.

The Netherlands is densely populated. There isn't as much space available compared to most other countries.

There is though. It's just (mainly) used for agriculture.

What? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Populati...

That blackish blob in Europe is the Netherlands.

When I am abroad, I tend to describe it as Bangladesh on the Rhine. Your map proves my point ;)

That's showing the average across the entire country - sounds a bit like the UK where average population density figures for the entire country are a bit misleading as there are substantial chunks of the country that are pretty empty:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...

Have a look on Google Maps instead. What's north of Amsterdam-North? Fields.

It's a political choice, a matter of spatial planning, to live this densly.

There’s also a big toxic waste dump that makes that area verboten for the foreseeable future https://www.volgermeer.nl/Geschiedenis/Stortplaats/

Averages are misleading when applied countrywide. Just drive through Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe etc. (all provinces) and you will get a totally different picture.

I actually just landed at Schiphol on a clear day and you can see the country just has so much sparsely populated areas peaking out the window on approach

That's on purpose. You are not allowed to build outside of the core areas. We do this because we don't want it to end up looking like Belgium.

Even Groningen (the Province) has a population density of 252, about 7 times as high as the US's average of 33.6/km2.

This is mainly the case in the cities, other area's offer more space that is similar to other countries.

Also Amsterdam is the peak of tiny spaces here. Single bedroom 25 m2, with shared toilet/kitchen for sale can cost you €100.000,- easily.

I just checked funda.nl, one of the most popular property websites, and that amount currently doesn't even buy you half that space anymore.

A lot of people have come to the conclusion that lots of space in the house is not really luxurious but just space that you have to keep clean and pay the bills for. I know a few middle aged couples who begun to regard 800ft² of living space as maximum (not including basement etc.), some even with 2 kids, and plenty of older people who like to have less. And that's certainly not the tiny house guys. It's similar to the stuff Marie Kondo talks about. Plenty of space in the garden is different, obviously.

If you're living in a small house it can be a little hard not to be envious. Our house is 517 square feet (48 square meters) interior space and it's challenging when the baby's crying wakes the toddler.

Without kids, though, it would be plenty (tbf I have a big shed outside for projects and bikes which helps a lot)

Most (contemporary) Dutch houses are somewhere in the 100-160sqm range. How is that not generous?

The house I grew up in in the US was considered on the small side at 2600 sqft (240 sqm). Partly the size of your family matters, but mostly I think it’s just cultural expectations.

(Speaking from experience) Those American house sizes look good on paper until you have to do maintenance/cleaning etc.

Unless you have a specific need for more space (maybe a workshop, etc) I would avoid the bigger sized houses.

Big houses get less dirty. If you’re not religious about cleaning up a small place it gets hard to manage. (It’s like swapping to HD. You have to move stuff so you can move other stuff to get stuff into place.)

This is true. Once you have the minimal set of things you need for your lifestyle, having more space for those things makes it easier to keep everything clean. This breaks down if you acquire new things to fill unused space though.

Energy for heating and cooling is really cheap in the US too. Garages are far more common too (not sure if you're including that)

That's the average house size in the US now, not on the small side. 45 years ago the average house was around 1600 sqft.

For apartments, the average size is 941 sqft, which is down about 5% over the last 10 years.

Yes. Land is cheap (in most places) and you are used to long commutes by car.

> ...on the small side at 2600 sqft...

That's actually large by many standards across the world but also for older urban dwellings in US cities. I suspect those 2600+ ft^2 numbers are average sizes for new construction?

For whatever reason, new construction of single family homes consists almost entirely of structural wood framing and plywood, then tyvek and non-structural brick facade. That kind of construction makes building larger volumes feasible. I don't know when the change-over in the USA from structural brick to wood occured, but I suspect it was in the 50-60's. In old urban neighborhoods in the North East, 2500+ ft^2 is definitely considered "big".

Unfortunately, I doubt that modern wood frame homes will last 100+ years without serious interventions. Brick also deteriorates, but more slowly and it's possible to work on it piecemeal.

there never was a change-over from structural brick in the US: at least 90% of houses have been wood since the Europeans colonized it.

I'd say there was more a change-over to structural brick in urban areas after several massive urban conflagrations in the late 1800s.

What about NYC or any other densly populated area?

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