Stick vs. Concrete / Construction Quality Issues

[exiled_antipodean]

This discussion is ironic/hilarious to me having grown up in an earthquake zone where of course it's safer to build with wood than concrete.

[John]

This discussion is ironic/hilarious to me having grown up in an earthquake zone where of course it's safer to build with wood than concrete.

Yes. Thanks for the comment. I suppose most of us are speaking from a very regional perspective. I definitely wouldn't want to live in a concrete or brick exterior building in an earthquake zone. But earthquakes can also cause serious fires in densely populated areas and perhaps the materials used in construction contribute to this. I guess the moral of the story is not to live in a place with earthquakes.

[Anondson]

Wasn't the greatest cause of death in the Great Kanto and San Francisco quakes the fires, not the collapsing buildings?

[mulad]

Again, those structures would not be up to modern codes. There are some stats here

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca ... alties.php

The number of fatalities is unclear due to initial manipulation/miscounting of people, particularly in the Chinatown area. They reference some book from 1989, but I don't know if there's a good place to get a summary of it. The majority of buildings were ultimately destroyed by fire (about 25k wood vs. 3k "brick"), but I don't know what the initial ratios of wood to brick were.

[exiled_antipodean]

Yes, fire following earthquake can be a hazard. Gas lines and the like. But most deaths in earthquakes in developed countries (Pacific Coast of North America, Chile, New Zealand, Japan etc) in the last couple of decades have been in poorly built masonry and concrete structures, typically constructed from the 1960s through the 1980s.

We do live in a seismically stable part of the world, and not building for the very rare chance of a structure destroying, life endangering quake is an acceptable thing to do given the risks, costs and value of life.

But I wouldn't want to be in a tall building in this state if there was a magnitude 6.0 or greater!

http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/59 ... hquake.pdf

[Anondson]

New engineering techniques about to bring us timber towers? "Plyscrapers"?

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/ ... CMP=twt_gu

[Chava]

Interesting read,especially considering that my building just turned about a year old.
My building is concrete base with wood construction on top and is finally "dry." I found out that there is some settling that occurs which can cause very small shifting in the drywall.

I wonder if some of that tension adjustment technology mentioned in the article might be used to mitigate that kind of settling in wood construction. I'm no engineer so maybe I misunderstood how it works.

[Nick]

Question: What are these little ropes? They're everywhere on new projects.

[MNdible]

They are weeps. They allow any moisture that makes it way into the wall cavity behind the brick a path to escape before it causes any damage.

[seanrichardryan]

Yep. They usually rot away over time so you don't see them on older work.

[TommyT]

We had condensation build up in the windows and mold grew last winter at Lime. Lovely, right?

[FISHMANPET]

Minnesota Daily takes on the six stick: http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2014 ... ilt-sticks

[ProspectPete]

I live in a what I believe is a stick contruction... about 10 years old. Yes lots of exterior water problems as well as noise through the ceiling above. The entire siding had to be replaced at a big cost to the owners of the units (isn't that why people choose to live in condos? To avoid surprise big ticket repairs?)
Same thing in the building across the street. Cheap looking stick construction, less than 10 years old and already looking pretty bad. All the stucco and siding has been removed from that building. It's like the cheap suburban construction has come to the city. I see it all over the place and cringe to think about what some of these stadium village places are going to look like in 10-20 years.

[seanrichardryan]

You must live in Emerald Gardens?

[ProspectPete]

Bingo.

[bus14]

This past summer the Western Row condominium building in Cathedral Hill (million dollar units, and only just finished in 2007 ) was also getting its exterior repaired. It had the same general contractor as Emerald Gardens, Bor-Son. So if you know of other folks living in their buildings, watch out.

[nate]

The construction techniques we use today require lots of specialized labor, and are unforgiving of errors. For a stick-built apartment building, you have one crew of workers erecting the studs, another installing insulation, another installing the vapor barrier, another installing the weather barrier, another installing windows, and still another installing the finish cladding. The person paying them is the General Contractor, who is incentivized to take the low bid in order to maximize his profit. The person paying the GC is the developer, who is incentivized to pay the GC as little as possible in order to maximize his profit.

Coordination is a problem (the weather barrier guys installed incorrectly around the windows, but they're gone and a 300 windows are on site, so....get moving). Last-minute substitutions are a problem (the contractor got a deal window X, when the building was designed with window Y....but there's 300 windows on site so...get moving)

Problems like this happen in large commercial buildings that built of concrete and steel, as well. Shoddy construction is the main problem, not necessarily wood framing. However, wood framing is a symptom - as in, if the developer chooses it, they're probably not thinking long term, which lays the groundwork for the problems described above.

[lordmoke]

Presented without comment: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/massive-fir ... ns-towers/

[seanrichardryan]

There's probably a better place to put this: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/291885281.html

[xandrex]

Fisher had me on a lot of his argument, but I'm skeptical of his "let people vote with their feet" for something as permanent as a building. Does anyone want 100% cement board? Eliminating rules like this would need to come with some sort of design oversight (which we should probably have anyway).