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[Lord Shonus]

My POV is the UK, where one in six buildings are <1900s and a Georgian house offers a price premium because of the quality. They haven't been "rebuilt." That's what destroying and rebuilding a building is, which is what you favour in the name of not wasting. But if you don't destroy it, it doesn't need to be rebuilt. Which is not wasteful.

"One in six of current buildings are more than 123 years old" =/= "We could easily have all our buildings last a thousand years if we weren't so gosh darn lazy". Survivorship Bias doesn't mean "oh, those are just the ones that got lucky", it means "you think they were all super high quality because the only ones you will ever see are the ones that were fundamentally sound enough to stay up". That doesn't mean that they were intended to last that long. It means that those particular buildings had the little bit extra (and generally were occupied by somebody well off enough to fix any minor problem instantly ) that they didn't get cascade failures rendering the structure untenable. Equally important, there's a good chance that the per-building carbon footprint is and will increasingly be far higher than a new-build structure of the same size, because they were built in an era that didn't care about such things.

[Maximum Spin]

You could make a house right once

What do you even think it means to "make a house right", when our needs change over time? Hundreds of old buildings in Germany are currently planned to be gutted at no small expense to install ventilation suitable for using now regulatorily required heat pumps. Were they built wrong?

[MorleyDev]

Were they built wrong?

I mean, yeah? Rightness and wrongness isn't a permanent state of being, things change. What was right can become wrong and what was wrong can become right. Purpose changes, and nothing is eternally fit for purpose. The only thing that never needs to change is something that is never used.

[Maximum Spin]

Were they built wrong?

I mean, yeah? Rightness and wrongness isn't a permanent state of being, things change. What was right can become wrong and what was wrong can become right. Purpose changes, and nothing is eternally fit for purpose. The only thing that never needs to change is something that is never used.

... right, which implies they weren't wrong when they were built, but became wrong... which is what I was saying...

[dragdeler]

Thousands is excessive, what's really a big boon to the pyramids is their simplicity and the climate poor in rain an erosion they're in.... 250-500 instead of 25-75 is not excessive.


1/6 isn't low at all given that the population density was quite different, less people overall but more crammed into fewer houses... And as I said, many prefer new. Surely in areas where space comes at a premium, some of them were destroyed while still being fine.







Gigashrug, we keep telling you we grew up in such houses, and allmost everybody has seen work on it done in their lifetime... My father's house had simple windows when I was a kid, now it has windows so thick you don't hear through them at all, and a new roof, for way, way less than a new house. It's work and filth and you keep having to deal with stuff that's laughable these days like "yet another layer wth?"


It's so surreal to have grown up in a house with oversized walls and people tell me that's kind of a unicorn. Man I seen those walls open, this shit was done by poor farmers who probably quit school before 13 and it will still outlive us all.

[TD1]

Then, we built a House; now we build houses.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's not the same in mainland Europe but I do find building quality of new buildings in UK and Ireland to be surprisingly bad. It's something I've found puzzling; old houses have old-house quirks but the quality *is* consistently better.

In fact my current house was built in 1927 and its brobably the best place I've lived in during my stays in Ireland and the UK. Meanwhile the kitchen extension built in the 70s is largely shit and bringing down the energy efficiency of the house all by itself.

[TD1]

Yea, my family home is half-400 years old and half new-build (say ten years).

The new-build has had many, many more issues in that time.

[Egan_BW]

Maybe extensions are just always shitty. Whatever thermal design was present is probably going to be messed up a bit by bolting more house to your house.

[ChairmanPoo]

Nah, it IS the quality of the build. The old house is made of some sort of ashen mortar and the isolation is incredibly good. Meanwhile the extension has fairly flimsy walls and roof.

The old house floor is also elevated some 5-10cm over the building's foundation.


As a side note: I love my garden

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[scriver]

It's a very nice garden but I'm seeing a distinctive lack of tomatoes and/or beets

[dragdeler]

No, gooseberries and ribes!

The old house floor is also elevated some 5-10cm over the building's foundation.

If I had to guess the builders of that particular building were smart enough to understand that drainage wasn't at the top of it's game back then. Yeah that's kind of stuff that can cause unexpectedly more work during renovations, but also, it's totally fine for the moment.

[martinuzz]

Now that's a fairly decent sized garden!
Personally, I'd get rid of more grass in favour of more trees, shrubberies and wildgrowth longrass/flowers. Hide them concrete fences with greens.

[ChairmanPoo]

I want to do that evenrually. I'm planting mint and plan to plant more stuff

[MrRoboto75]

shrubberies

ni