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People talk about a housing crisis in Britain but in Venezuela they don't just talk, they build.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/V ... -0029.html

split from an unrelated topic about "shelters for the 1%"

That's pretty good going but I would think that the spec is far below what would be expected in the UK.

The tropical clime requires less insulation

But no doubt the spec is far below what would be expected in the UK in other respects too. And maybe that's part of our problem; our building practice has evolved into a very expensive creature that supplies a great deal of stuff that many would happily do without if it allowed them to actually have their own home.

biffvernon wrote:But no doubt the spec is far below what would be expected in the UK in other respects too. And maybe that's part of our problem; our building practice has evolved into a very expensive creature that supplies a great deal of stuff that many would happily do without if it allowed them to actually have their own home.

No doubt all your immigrant friends would be happy to slum it but Parker Morris standards were introduced for a reason and those standards should be maintained. The space standards of modern private housing are abysmal compared to those of 70s houses or even modern HA housing. As you have said before we are a rich country and our poor should not be disadvantaged to provide housing for large numbers of immigrants. If we are short of money for housing the government can always print some.

You've missed my point, Ken. My daughter lives in a house that I built from timber, straw and mud for less than £1000 material cost plus free helper labour. Everyone who sees it agrees that it is far better to live in that the 30000 mobile homes on the nearby Lincolnshire coast that cost a few tens of thousands of pounds and have a short lifespan.

Modern prefabs can be built for far less cost than the average new-build in the UK and still be desirable homes for most people.

kenneal - lagger wrote:If we are short of money for housing the government can always print some.

I can point to a number of examples of where large scale governmental printing of money resulted in hyperinflation. Can you point to contrary examples (accepting that M0 is going up each year anyway).

biffvernon wrote:You've missed my point, Ken. My daughter lives in a house that I built from timber, straw and mud for less than £1000 material cost plus free helper labour. Everyone who sees it agrees that it is far better to live in that the 30000 mobile homes on the nearby Lincolnshire coast that cost a few tens of thousands of pounds and have a short lifespan.

Modern prefabs can be built for far less cost than the average new-build in the UK and still be desirable homes for most people.

That brings up the question of how long a house should last. Can the average Joe afford to buy a new house built to last two hundred years? Or is something that lasts a decade beyond the mortgage a better plan.
Here in Vermont a good portion of the new home market is being supplied by factory built modular homes. Insulation and other standards can be as high as you want and quality control is quite high. Except for rooms being restricted to 14 feet wide in one direction you can get any floor plan desired and two story 28X40 houses on a full basement are common. Prices tend towards five to seven times a middle class salary.

johnhemming2 wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:If we are short of money for housing the government can always print some.

I can point to a number of examples of where large scale governmental printing of money resulted in hyperinflation. Can you point to contrary examples (accepting that M0 is going up each year anyway).

There is a subtle distinction between 'printing money' and 'quantitative easing' but it does rather seem as though we've got the hang of hyperinflation.

vtsnowedin wrote: That brings up the question of how long a house should last. Can the average Joe afford to buy a new house built to last two hundred years?

I don't suppose Americans know much about buildings that last. In my neck of the wood we have quite a few houses that are over 500 years old (my own is about 300). The materials and techniques used meant that they are really really cheap to build, not requiring stuff that comes from factories and mines or imported. Houses should be grown and dug up close to their site.

biffvernon wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote: That brings up the question of how long a house should last. Can the average Joe afford to buy a new house built to last two hundred years?

I don't suppose Americans know much about buildings that last. In my neck of the wood we have quite a few houses that are over 500 years old (my own is about 300). The materials and techniques used meant that they are really really cheap to build, not requiring stuff that comes from factories and mines or imported. Houses should be grown and dug up close to their site.

Well the Abanaki long houses that were here before 1620 are all gone but they were just wooden poles and moose hide so that has to be expected.
My Fifth Great Grand Father's house was built about 1650 and now serves as a library and museum so I think knowing how to build them to last is not the issue just the local historical time line. I framed my own house with lumber sawed at the local saw mill five miles down the road. Baring a structure fire there is no need to expect it to last less then 200 years unless changes in lifestyles make it's floor plan obsolete.
How did the plumbing and wiring retrofits go in your 300 year old house?

Excellent. And the great thing about the traditional building materials and methods is that repair and renovation are easy so there is no real end to the possible lifetime of such a building.

(And timber performs much better in a fire than steel - you get a long time to evacuate before the structure fails. Steel goes weak as soon as it gets hot.)

John, if the government loans itself the money to build houses, a capital project, then takes the rental/mortgage payments back and wipes the original loan to itself off the sheet that is no more inflationary than borrowing from a bank. It is better for the country because there is no interest to pay to a thieving banker.

I say "thieving" because nine times out of ten the banker is screwing interest from borrowers on something that they didn't have in the first place. Charging interest on "magic" money is fraudulent as far as I and many other people are concerned. Yes, they are entitled to an administration fee for magicking the money out of nowhere but to charge interest is going too far. I know it's a new concept but *ankers should get used to the idea because the current system is not sustainable.

vtsnowedin wrote:

biffvernon wrote:You've missed my point, Ken. My daughter lives in a house that I built from timber, straw and mud for less than £1000 material cost plus free helper labour. Everyone who sees it agrees that it is far better to live in that the 30000 mobile homes on the nearby Lincolnshire coast that cost a few tens of thousands of pounds and have a short lifespan.

Modern prefabs can be built for far less cost than the average new-build in the UK and still be desirable homes for most people.

That brings up the question of how long a house should last. Can the average Joe afford to buy a new house built to last two hundred years? Or is something that lasts a decade beyond the mortgage a better plan.
Here in Vermont a good portion of the new home market is being supplied by factory built modular homes. Insulation and other standards can be as high as you want and quality control is quite high. Except for rooms being restricted to 14 feet wide in one direction you can get any floor plan desired and two story 28X40 houses on a full basement are common. Prices tend towards five to seven times a middle class salary.

I'll take your point there Biff for the long term but in the short term we have a requirement for hundreds of thousands of new, highly insulated basic houses, especially if we are to take in the hundreds of thousands of refugees that some people seem to want to accommodate. The straw for that many houses would be better reincorporated into the soil to increase fertility and sequester some carbon while we're at it.

Regarding VT's point about longevity of houses, in a fuel constrained future we won't be able to afford the time and materials to be forever building new and altering existing houses. So much fossil fuel energy goes into the finding and winning of the materials, their conversion into something useful, transporting them sometimes hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of miles and finally building them into a structure that we won't be doing much of it in the future.

Unless, of course, as Biff says it is using local materials to build small houses for new families. Even then the energy used to build and heat even these will mean that many people will be quite happy to share with a parent or sibling. These houses will be made to last hundreds of years just like some of the most attractive housing in the UK has done.

kenneal - lagger wrote: The straw for that many houses would be better reincorporated into the soil to increase fertility and sequester some carbon while we're at it.

Currently most of the straw from Lincolnshire is burnt at Drax. Building houses with 1% of it would at least sequester the carbon on that 1%.

biffvernon wrote:
(And timber performs much better in a fire than steel - you get a long time to evacuate before the structure fails. Steel goes weak as soon as it gets hot.)

Your math and physics is off there mate. Wood begins to burn at 455 Fahrenheit and steel doesn't get red hot until 1400 F and doesn't melt until about 2600F.