Businesses tear down perfectly good buildings only 25 years old. Why can't homeowners? It makes no sense to pay top dollar for a building 100 years old no matter what repairs. What does make sense is to buy the house reduced for each year over
Over 100 should be an autonatic tear down. After all it is the land you are buying. Remodeling is a good business now but would be even better if the building was a tear down. Resale stores would benefit, all new businesses would be created feeding off the tear down. Yes, there would have to be new landfills and that is something counties want to avoid but the upside is an entirely new house, Banks wouldnt get to keep recyling a house that sells every few years. You would get an honest house that would still be worth the money 25 years later. Rich people do tear downs and get written up in the home section; ordinary people deserve a home that will last not a Pandora's Box of problems that costs the same. So it seems to me that governments need to stop the refinancing of homes over 25 years for current value just like it was new. There must be a recognition that tear downs are the way to go, without the bank expecting another 30 year morgage.
Someone buys a 25 year old house and upgrades the insulation and installs new kitchen cabinets, a new shingle roof and a full bathroom in the basement, and then when they want to sell it, they have to sell for less than they bought it for because it's older than it was when they bought it?
Over 100 should be an automatic tear down? What about those houses where the owners have invested in upgrading the insulation on those homes, replacing the old steam heating with hot water heater, replacing the old iron water supply piping with copper and upgrading the wiring to modern copper wiring? Tear those houses down along with the ones that are boarded up?
Wait, don't tell me... You work for the government, right?
My (ex)brother-in-law is a wealthy Chicago executive who lives in a large mansion. It's basically a huge cardboard box. I'm sure I could easily punch a hole right through the wall. the drywall is so thin.
OTOH: My own house was built in 1898 and the walls are real plater and lathe. It would take my 16 pound sledge to get through one of these walls and still not easily.
Only is one spends a fortune can one still get that old world quality.
I was once fortunate enough to be invited to a house in the Hollywood area where the work was done by Harrison Ford (prior to his acting career) and /that/ house was quality...but beyond the price range for even many wealthy people.
I'd rather have a 100 year old home than a new one. At least the ones that are still around seem to have been better constructed and have a charm tha t you can't get from new. Plus things like hardwood floors made from wood that is completely unavailable today.
It seems to me you should stop asking for government to screw up markets that are working. Buyers and sellers set the price for homes, figure out what they want to do with them. And who says anyone has to pay top dollar for a home that's 100 years old? If the 100 year old home is in great condition, been renovated, etc, it's worth what the market will pay. If it's in poor condition, never been updated, then it's worth what the market will pay and that is going to be a lot lower. And some of those ARE sold as tear downs. basically for the value of the lot minus the cost of tear down. And if you don't want a 100 year old house at all, there are plenty of new houses or houses of any age available. So, what exactly is the problem again? Good grief.
Even that wouldn't save it if it didn't fit the needs of a new owner. Perfectly fine houses are commonly razed around here, and replaced with McMansions that fill the lot.
The house I live in was built in 1835. It has original windows, which I wouldn't want to replace because
1) replacement windows are ugly unless one spends a small fortune for them and 2) replacement windows are basically disposable plastic junk unless one spends a small fortune for them. The rest of the house is similar. It's a wonderful house with a wonderful atmosphere -- 9" baseboards with 2" moldings, ceilings
8'+, old pine floors made with wood that was properly dried. Every detail of most new construction is intended to save a buck: low ceilings; skimpy baseboards made of junk particle board; flakeboard sheathing that will only last as long as the glue/plastic holding the chips together; no ceiling lights, to save on wiring; minimal design to save on architect's fees; poor planning for windows -- where older houses tend to have good cross ventilation, newer houses minimize on window costs. (I know of condos with exterior french doors that open to a railing. No deck. They did it to get the 8% window area requirement that Massachusetts law specifies, while still making rooms too small and with too little exterior wall exposure to be livable. So they met the
8% requirement but defeated the whole purpose: One can't open french doors on a cool day for "a little fresh air".) Crappy wood floors. (100 years ago it might have been quarter-sawn oak where now it's junk-grain oak with green and even burnt parts. Or worse, wood veneer on plywood that can't be resanded and is actually a disposable floor.)
It gets worse all the time. That's why old houses often sell for more than newer houses. The equivalent labor and materials to make a similar house now would be very expensive. The newer houses are increasingly disposable. So it's somewhat the reverse of what you're suggesting. Unfortunately, that's not likely to change. The older houses were built at a time when both materials and labor were cheap -- at least to the people owning the houses. Monarchy supports craftsmanship. Democracy, not so much. :)
"katsisco" wrote in message news:920dd$5466afe1$cf3aab60$ snipped-for-privacy@news.flashnewsgroups.com... | Businesses tear down perfectly good buildings only 25 years old. Why | can't homeowners? | It makes no sense to pay top dollar for a building 100 years old no matter | what repairs. What does make sense is to buy the house reduced for each | year over 25. Over 100 should be an autonatic tear down. After all it is | the land you are buying. | Remodeling is a good business now but would be even better if the building | was a tear down. Resale stores would benefit, all new businesses would be | created feeding off the tear down. Yes, there would have to be new | landfills and that is something counties want to avoid but the upside is | an entirely new house, Banks wouldnt get to keep recyling a house that | sells every few years. You would get an honest house that would still be | worth the money 25 years later. | Rich people do tear downs and get written up in the home section; ordinary | people deserve a home that will last not a Pandora's Box of problems that | costs the same. | So it seems to me that governments need to stop the refinancing of homes | over 25 years for current value just like it was new. There must be a | recognition that tear downs are the way to go, without the bank expecting | another 30 year morgage. |
It's the fact that real plaster and lath is so much heavier than drywall that makes your house a quieter place to live.
When a sound wave hits a wall, it doesn't pass through the wall as many people think. Instead, it actually causes the wall to move slightly, and that movement of the wall recreates a secondary sound wave on the opposite side of the wall. A person on the other side of the wall hears that secondary sound wave, not the original.
It's this manner in which sound propogates through walls, floors and ceilngs that gives rise to the MASS LAW of noise propogation. The Mass Law says that for every doubling of either:
a) the mass of the wall, floor or ceiling per square foot or meter, or
b) the frequency of the sound wave hitting the wall, floor or ceiling,
the amplitude of the secondary sound wave will be reduced by 6 decibels, or to 1/4 of it's previous value.
That's because the heavier the wall is, the more slowly it accelerates in response to a force acting on it. Since the intensity of a sound wave depends on the rate of air pressure increase, the heavier the wall, the lower the rise and fall in air air presssure, and hence the intensity of the secondary sound wave, and we hear that lower rate of pressure change as "quieter".
Also, every wall, floor or ceiling has some mass, and hence inertia to it. The higher the frequency of the sound wave hitting a wall, the more the inertia of the wall prevents the wall from reproducing that secondary sound wave exactly.
If you've ever lived in an apartment block where someone was having a party late at night or until early in the morning, and all you could hear coming from their apartment was the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of their stereo, you've experienced the Mass Law first hand. It was the mass, and hence the inertia of the walls, floors and ceilings of the building that were effectively filtering out all the midrange and high frequency noise, thereby leaving you with only the bass frequencies. This is the reason why you couldn't tell what songs were being played on their stereo until you were close enough to the offending tenant's apartment to knock on their door and complain about the noise.
One of the biggest problems with modern apartment blocks, condominiums and hotels is that they're built with light weight building materials, like 3/8 inch drywall over metal studs, and the result is that you can hear people talking in the next apartment condo or hotel room. That was never a problem years ago with plaster walls on wooden studs.
Hi, If old house is kept well to modern standard making it sound and, energy efficient for sure. My daughter's house was only built at beginning of 20th century but it is better than today's cookie cutter houses. Solid in every way. One piece solid wood entry door alone is worth a few G I heard. I never lived in old house but the houses I owned were custom built to our spec. under our supervision on a decent lot. Some buildings new or old has to be torn down due to safety reasons. When replacing is less costly.. it is all matter of economics. I just can't stand all man made materials they use on houses these days. For an example look at that vinyl sidings, Yuck! An eye sore to me.
Show me a new house that uses 2 x 10 joists with solid blocking over a steel I-beam , (long low 60's brick ranch in my case). Real plaster walls, oversize attached 2 car garage with covered breezeway between situated on a one acre corner lot in a great neighborhood. 3br, 2.5 bath and too big for just the two of us but I wouldn't trade it for the McMansions on tiny hilly lots that they have since built across the road from us.
Finished basement (man cave) and two wood burning fire places. Natural gas forced air heat and central AC. All new windows including two bow windows (one 5 lite and one 4 lite), The 5 lite is 10-1/2' x 5-1/4'. Yea those two along with all the others are custom made replacement windows, all casements, and no they were not cheap.
Insurance company thinks it would take $300k+ to rebuild it so you keep your *new* card-board house and I will happily live in my 50+ year *old* house that I purchased for 79K 12 years ago and remodeled for about the same amount.
Proof positive that a house with good bones in a good location is always worth the bother.
Oh by the way, its paid off, so if anything should break its fixed or replaced using cash.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it along with whatever else you been puffin on,
Sounds like a good deal to me. Refresh the kitchen and baths every 40 or 50 years and upgrade the heater and it can last and be a good value. No. make that an excellent value.
I recently saw one of the worst examples of what you get today on one of those $1mil houses. Right above the front entry door, they have a big decorative square feature thing, trimmed in molding. The molding was pieced together out of pieces 12 to 18 inches long, ie scraps. You can see the obvious joints. The idiot builder let the contractor get away with it. It speaks volumes about the builder and what kind of shysters he's using. I don't have that kind of crap on even the back of the house, where it would hardly be noticed.
We once stayed at a hotel [seemed fairly high end, too] where the sounds were so audible from the next room(s) that it felt like there was only a 'curtain' separating the two living areas! I was livid, by the time we were done, we had stayed the night for free, but still the cost of feeling like someone is 'in the room' with you was, frankly, a bit perverse.
Also, during first trips to Europe, we discovered that Europeans have much better 'hotel ettiquette' when it comes to talkig in their rooms. They would talk in hushed tones to not disturb people. American tourists would bellow at each other like they were outside, or something.
However, in defense of what the world perceives as 'loud Americans'... We started in a primitive forest like area. To keep animals away, simply make a lot of noise. Try it next time out in the wilds. It actually works, even predators will avoid you. Thus, our background culture has been, be boisterous! It's a form of defensive safety.
| > OTOH: My own house was built in 1898 and the walls are real plater and | > lathe. It would take my 16 pound sledge to get through one of these | > walls and still not easily. | > | | It's the fact that real plaster and lath is so much heavier than drywall | that makes your house a quieter place to live. |
Drywall is plenty heavy. And at least where I live there is no 3/8" on walls. 1/2" drywall is the minimum allowed.
3/8" for ceilings. Usually the noise problem is due to gaps. Even a tiny gap can transmit sound clearly, such as the gap around an electrical outlet. In my house (1835 side- by-side duplex) I can hear when the young girl in the tenant side talks in her room. She's on the other side of my office wall. It's plaster and lath. There is an outlet, at least on my side, but actually in this case the sound is coming through the floor. Both sides have pine boards on widely spaced subfloor boards, with no fireblocking in between. When the neighbor drops something like a marble it sounds as though it's rolling across my floor. There's no total block of air flow, thus no total block of sound waves, such as a carpet would provide.
Another example: I once did a job for a couple in a newish, junky condo. They had a noisy gay couple next door and the master beds were head to head. We opened up the wall and found a space of about 3' between the two unit walls, with woodstove zero-clearance vents going through. So I insulated and added an extra wall inside. But we also then sealed the outlets. With outlets in both units there was direct air transmission from one unit to the other. The sound would have at least been very muffled if not for that. Two separated drywall surfaces, with no contact between the framing of each, makes for very good sound insulation.
While I fully agree that singing, talking loud or otherwise making noise while hiking in the bush is a good way to avoid contact with wildlife, bears (for example), because animals would prefer to avoid a confrontation with people if at all possible, it's gotta be a stretch to say that's the reason for Americans having some sort of international reputation for being loud and boisterous.
As part of my business I regularily have to phone people in the USA to buy things I want or need, and I find that the Americans I talk to don't talk any more nor any louder, on the phone at least, than anyone else. Perhaps they start yelling to each other after they get off the phone with me, but I have no evidence of that.
Maybe on your next trip (even to another city), try to book a room in an older hotel that will have been built with plaster walls, and you shouldn't have any problem with a lack of privacy. In my own building, as part of the building code, there are concrete block interior walls separating each "stack" of 3 apartments. That's so that a fire cannot spread laterally to engulf the whole building; only vertically. As a result of those concrete block fire separation walls, I never get noise complaints from tenants about the people living next door to them. The few complaints I do get are always about the people living above or below them making too much noise. And, it's because concrete block walls are too massive to move in response to sound waves, and that means there's no reproduced sound waves to annoy tenants in adjacent apartments. If I ever sell my building and move into a condo, I will make sure that it's a building built with preformed concrete slab floors and concrete block fire separation walls between the condos. QUIET enjoyment of one's own property is something that will NEVER lose it's value.
Haven't you noticed in restaurants? When we traveled; we would dress not like tourists but like successful business people, me in a 3 piece business suit, Ms. macy elegant, sometimes in a fur coat, depending on season. We were often mistaken for British or Russian but almost never Americans. Thus, at a restaurant by the casino in Monaco, we were seated in a front section actually by a huge window, very nice. As the level of sound increased [noise upsets digestion]; I asked the waiter if there was a quieter section away from all these Americans. He laughed uproariously then said, "We put ALL the Americans in the back room section, and believe me, you don't want to go THERE!"
While at the Amstel Hotel, beautiful old hotel; we went to their dining room. It was full of people dining and having intense conversations, yet I swear you could hear a pin drop in there!. Very conducive to good digestion. What a welcome difference from the din we're usually subjected to in American restaurants.
While staying in Italian Hotels, never heard adjacent rooms or while walking down corridors any natives, but always heard the occasional Americans.
In France we asked why they didn't think we were Americans and was told, "you dress well, speak calmly, and don't bicker between you. American couples are always bickering." While in the background was a husband and wife bickering over what they were planning to do that day.
Probably all changed now.
PS: we went to that restaurant just to eat veal, Amsterdam is famous for veal. When she didn't see what she wanted, Ms Macy asked the waiter if the chef had a ?? [can't remember what she called that slab of meat] and could he spice it with the following spices and serve. The waiter said he'd check if the chef had the ingredients, he came back and said yes, and she had the most delicious veal dish I ever got to taste a little of! The chef ended up putting her dish on the menu.
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