Re: The Longevity of High Tech Materials in Woodworking

[Ed Pawlowski]

I was watching This Old House recently and noted all the high tech

>materials being used today in home building, tapes, adhesives, foams, >plastics, tec.. In the same show, they had a segment where they were >repairing a stone foundation of an 100 year old house, replacing the >cement and mortar. > >I have a question for the group...in your opinion how will the high >tech materials age in comparsion with the 100 year old mortar? > >I do know that adhesives, plastics and forms degrade over >time...ceasing to do what they were intended to do. > >Is their usage in home building and to a lesser extent woodworking in >the shop going to come back to haunt us? > >TMT

Perhaps neither is very good. The place I stayed at a couple of times in Italy was originally built in the 1100's and rebuilt in the 1500's. The stonework is still in great shape. Interior has been upgraded, of course.

IMO, some may haunt us. Vinyl siding is good for 30 to 50 years so it is a given that replacement will be needed and you can plan ahead. I don't think that is as much of a concern as the hidden items that we don't see and can be very costly to replace. Plumbing, adhesives in laminated beams and the like can be costly to repair or replace.

[dpb]

On 11/12/2011 11:12 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote: ...

How much of the original plumbing is left in that villa, Ed? :)

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[dpb]

Just as lead plumbing and other previous practices have, undoubtedly.

The problem is that if don't use modern materials and methods, the cost to achieve a presently acceptable standard of energy efficiency and functionality would be completely prohibitive.

There will be some products/techniques that will prove their mettle and others that will turn out to have been mistakes just like there have been from the time the first cave had a rock rolled in front for a door.

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[Ed Pawlowski]

We won't really know for another 50 or 100 years on some items. We often build what may be disposable housing compared to what was done centuries ago. I'd have to think it would be better to build a house with 75 year life and affordable rather than 500 year life but impossible for most of us to ever own.

The place I stayed at in Italy has only had a half dozen owners over the centuries. It is left down to the family over the generations, thus affordable to live in. Looking at those buildings and available materials, tools, transportation, I wonder how it was done and who had that much money.

In the past decade or so, many small non-descript houses have been torn down to build McMansions. Some were probably serviceable and affordable for another 50+ years. They just were not up to yuppie standards.

[Larry Blanchard]

What plumbing? The garderobe would still work (if it's still there) but crapping into the moat (probably not there) is frowned upon nowadays.

[dpb]

Precisely the point...

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[Robatoy]

Some things make me chuckle as to how innovative we can be, like when converting from gaslight to electric light we just ran wires through the gas lines. In fact, all those thread and fitting sizes used in electric lamps are a spillover from the gas era. I also remember taking a short-cut through the boiler room in my high school in Holland. Lead pipes, asbestos, coal dust and all that shit would shake loose when they fired up that bad boy when winter came. A little water- hammer never bother anybody either. That old Ichtus school building is gone now but I remember every smell and the bullet holes courtesy from the British as they were strafing the railway, some 300m away from the school during WW2. I would pay a lot for one those 150+ year old (maybe even 200?) students desks with inkwell and a slot for a slab of slate. All of us students had to rub the desk down with linseed oil the day before we started De Grote Vakantie for the entire summer. But I digress..... One observation I recall was that there wasn't an initial or a deep scratch carved in any of those desks.

[Lew Hodgett]

----------------------------- For everything there is a season,

Turn, turn, turn.

Lew

[Father Haskell]

The Pantheon is 1885 years old, yet still in excellent condition. Roman concrete was quality stuff.

Shame hide glue isn't weatherproof. Fantastically stable stuff, won't degrade over hundreds of years.

OSB will rot faster than the glues and hardware used to cobble it together.

[-MIKE-]

How is OSB going to rot? And don't say, when it gets wet. It's neither designed nor intended to get wet. Any wood will rot when wet.

[J. Clarke]

OK, build a dock on pilinge made of ipe and another on pilings made of pine and see which lasts longer.

Build a boat out of plywood and another out of OSB and see which lasts longer.

[-MIKE-]

Are you blind? Did I not say OSB is not designed nor intended to get wet?

And I thought we were talking about houses, here. How many builders do you know who are using Ipe for studs, joists, subflooring, sheathing, etc?

Please stay in context.

[Father Haskell]

Failure to maintain.

If it stays wet.

[DGDevin]

That's the stuff that worries me, the plastic plumbing that will require the slab to be jackhammered to be replaced, the stuff held together with adhesives that is failing a little tiny bit every day. If the house were a hundred years old at the point where major systems need to be replaced then everybody got their money's worth, but if it's only thirty years old--yikes. A lot of commercial buildings these days seem to have a deliberate short lifespan, nobody expects that strip mall to be around for very long so it isn't built for the ages, perhaps it's the same way for housing now. The corporate world seems to want us to throw away everything and buy new stuff as often as possible, maybe disposable housing is the way of the future.

[Swingman]

the stuff held together with

In the case of housing, it is not the corporate world, it is the consumers themselves who insist on tearing down perfectly good housing to erect larger and more grandiose.