How long will the houses we see in GD last? Week after week we see the inevitable "wooden pre fab bits constructed off site" appear on the back of a lorry. They appear to be made of offcuts compressed together with an awful lot of glue. A bit of water and they'll surely fall apart?
So these houses which, without fail, emphasise low fuel use and green credentials, are they going to fall apart? Will they still be around in 100 years like some of the draughty old brick things, which have at least earnt some green credibility just by lasting this long? Or are they just superficially "green", the Toyota Prius of the house world?
John
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John, I think you've hit the N right on the H with that last sentence.
The local bunnyhuggers - god bless them - make a big thing of cleaning oily penguins. But give two hoots to the local TB-infested squatter camp.
They give it large about eco-issues, but turn up one-person-one car in their decatted Beemers!
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Foundations down, 16 weeks to completion. Lots of Scottish homes are timber framed/brick outer skinned - my son paid £430K for 2500 sq ft home just 3 mths ago. Spacious YES but there are lots of creaks.
They are safe as homes but I would not want to live in 3/4 storey blocks of timber framed flats - fire can spread too easily within the brick /timber frame cavity.
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>> YES but there are lots of creaks.
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It will settle down if it has been built properly, mine does not "creak".
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I live in a timber framed "kit" bungalow and the factory assembly is done on jigs for accuracy, all the walls are absolutely vertical, all the right angles are exactly that. The walls, floor, and roof are insulated, and the wall studs are exactly 600mm apart, so heavy or built in items can be attached to the structure, and having the factory drawings helps identify the locations of the studs. If there is a problem the plasterboard can be removed in the area affected and the timber replaced.
I am absolutely convinced it will outlast me, and probably my kids.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 9 Oct 10 at 18:46
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Will definitely outlast the Kia :-)
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:-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 9 Oct 10 at 19:46
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>I live in a timber framed "kit" bungalow..
Mate of mine in Texas built a full timber ranch house. He'd given sketches to a company in New Zealand who produced an "Artist's impression" and then fabricated all the sections.
A couple of months before it was shipped they'd sent him drawings of the concrete foundations that they needed, complete with the location of all pipework etc.
Unfortunately all the dimensions were metric not imperial. Texas does not do metric!
I spent my two week holiday converting to imperial and checking every measurement so that the (Mexican) labourers could get the slab and pipework ready.
The arrival and assembly of the sections was filmed by Discovery Channel.
Kevin...
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Grand Designs - how long? - Ian (Cape Town)
