Our modern building practices and materials are not optimized for longevity. What incentive in modern times does a contractor have in building homes that last hundreds of years?
The average person is too ignorant to know or care anyway.
The average person is too ignorant to know or care anyway.
We prefer to build quickly (more efficient use of land multiplied by time) and prefer our buildings not fall over in earthquakes.
Also much of residential construction is wood frame (edit: US), which also has pretty bad longevity unless extremely overbuilt.
Why is this?
My feeling when I went to the US was that many houses felt incredibly "flimsy" as if you could just punch your fist through the wall.
one of the interesting tidbits about passivhaus construction is that it tries to minimize even more the wood content of a building (in favor of insulation), so studs can even go to 24" apart.
Also, wood houses can be built to much higher quality than what people are building new to sell on the open market. Square footage has a much higher profit margin than thicker and more insulating walls or better wood or more careful and accurate framing. Even putting in something highly visibly like way better windows and doors isn't going to get you jack shit of a return if you are building to sell rather than ever paying for heating and cooling costs or what not.
I mostly agree with the other points you make but not this.
Modern wood-frame and plywood construction with vapor barriers, Air-conditioning and impermeable facades are very sensitive to moisture. Once water enters, it has nowhere to go and this has to be addressed quickly and thoroughly or else there's a serious and relatively quick structural deterioration, mold issues and a downward-spiral of problems.
Mcmansion owners who want to keep their house in excellent condition better be on top of this stuff, or else they or the suckahs they sell to are going to be paying a hefty price. Avoiding this requires decidedly more than half-assed maintenance.
Like mold. If it appears, you got a moisture source that needs to be discovered and dealt with. Crawlspaces need to be encapsulated and have negative pressure. It's amazing how simple stuff like water leaking from a gutter can find it's way into a house with even the smallest gap at a window interface or if the drainage is bad where the house meets the ground.
No it isn't - if you ask the people actually building American wooden houses how long they think they'll last - they'll tell you almost what I did - just 60 years! Check national building standards 7543:1992. They increased it under pressure a few years ago, but that's what they were designing against until recently!
Of course some houses will survive longer (and 170 is a pretty modest age to be boasting about) but even the people building them don't have confidence that they will.
That's great, but that wooden house you live in is vastly better in terms of quality of wood than what is common today in USA construction. If OSB had existed 170 years ago, I assure you would have long ago turned to dust by today. You probably have magnificent wood beams and single-piece shipboards spanning all studs and joists.
It all comes down to material-quality, maintenance, design, expectations and weather. Sadly, all of those factors take a back seat to cost and speed where modern housing developers are concerned. Modern building techniques make it easy to fool unsavvy consumers into an illusion of durability and quality.