Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

I suspect they’re both correct. House building standards seem to have been trending downwards for at least 100 years if not more. Some things have gotten better of course (fire safety, insulation, etc), but the construction itself tends to be optimised for cost over quality these days.

View on HN

Remember that there's a survivorshio bias in the 100 year old buildings you see still standing today. In many cases they are impractical for modern standards too - my home has 2ft thick external sandstone walls, and all the internal walls are brick. It's massively overengineered for the use of the building.

At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable.

There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls.

Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.

In my experience I like living with stone walls a lot more than in a cardboard. It’s true though that doing any changes to the stone wall is a lot harder than with drywall, but it kind of proves the point that current construction techniques are optimized for cost (I like to say they optimized for the builder a lot more than for the ones living in that building).

I think this is very much subjective in the end though. Also because current building techniques still make use of stone, bricks and concrete which all have the same downsides. But as you said they can be an overkill for some people who don’t mind the walls being quite soft for instance.

> but it kind of proves the point that current construction techniques are optimized for cost

I don't think that's a fair takeaway - drywall lets you do things like insulate, run cabling, provide moisture barriers, easily change room layouts. These are all things that people want to do in their homes today that are straightforward (mostly) with drywall, and borderline impossible for a DIY'er in an older building.

Stone is unsuitable for most climates since it is a poor insulator. You have to build walls on the inside to insulate it. In effect building another house inside the stone exterior walls

Standards have been trending up. Modern houses are much more likely yo survive a hurricane, and have much better insulation. Most people have no idea what makes a house good and so are impressed by things that don't matter. A lot of this is because the important parts are hidden inside the walls where you can't see them.

I’m starting to appreciate this more as I age. Quite by accident - I purchased a new-ish (2004) house made by an incredible builder (T. W. Lewis). Compared to friends living in houses built around the same time, maintenance on this property is lower. Things are just “built better.”

My in laws just built a new home with an average builder. I got to watch the house go up - know what’s in the walls, etc. Their house is higher quality than mine. New construction seems to be better than buying old homes on average, and prices reflect that - new costs more and you get less.

This lead me to a somewhat startling revelation: houses do not appreciate in value. The house looses value but is offset by the dollar losing buying power in the housing market.

As other person said it’s a survivor bias as well.

From 100 years ago most of the houses that you see are either stone/brick houses, or timber-framed houses (thick post and beam, not what people in the UK call timber framing today). Those houses are always impressive compared to todays 2”x4” frames

Reply on news.ycombinator.com