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Homebuilding

2024-07-05

I've spent a few months helping a crew build a house so that I can learn to build my own one day. The most important thing I've learned is how ridiculous it is to build the conventional North American home.

The owner of this house I'm building has a sawmill and lots of big, straight oaks on his land. Despite having the ability to provide his own lumber from his back yard, the lumber industry has lobbied hard enough to convince the state that no board that has not been stamped by an engineer should make its way into a home. The cost of paying a specialist to come out and inspect every board would drive the cost far above the cost of using regular old spruce-pine-fir lumber from the big box store. So here we are in the false economy of importing soft, flimsy, warped wood from far away that frequently spliters or snaps when a nail is driven through it rather than using extremely local hardwood that is a much better fit for the job.

Framing the house was an interesting exercise. Taking a bunch of crowned and bowed 2x4s and coaxing them into a square shape is an art form.

I always assumed that it took "a lot" of nails to put a house together; I didn't realize how much of an understandment that was.

Then, because the stud framing only provides a skeleton, OSB sheathing is attached to the outside. Because the OSB sheathing has no weather resistance and will balloon when exposed to moisture, we wrap the house in Tyvek. Because the Tyvek is only a thin membrane, we then have to attach siding. The product count really multiplies here with a complex interplay of starter strips, flashing, j-channel, soffit, corner pieces, and the siding itself. The roof is also multi-component, comprised of OSB, tar paper, and shingles. That structure provides no insulation value, so add some more synthetic or imported materials. Finally, everything is exposed, so we need to cover it with drywall (another multi-component process).

Plumbing and electrical seemed more straightforward, functional, and less wasteful to me, but I'm not an expert by any means. The price of materials is wild, though.

All of this put together is relatively uncomfortable in most climates, so we need more machinery to heat and cool it. Materials like the OSB are full of glues that release VOCs, and yet the building codes demand air-tightness for energy efficiency.

I feel like the fire codes are a funny band-aid because the glues in the OSB accelerate fire. Someone took the time to come up with a bunch of rules to mitigate fire when the entire house is made of wood and plastic? Come on.

Now that I have seen the whole process and had my hands on it every step of the way, I get a strong feeling that the entire thing is designed by corporations and lobbyists to sell an enormous load of products, each with many weaknesses that can be addressed with yet another product. Each material is rife with offcuts and waste. The building codes cater to all of this crap and leave smarter, healthier, and more sustainable techniques outlawed or unacknowledged. The general public knows no different either.

My wife and I will finally be in a good place to build a house in the coming years, and we'll be doing rammed-earth or something like it. I will certainly share details here.