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Making a House That Will Last for Centuries?
tcyun asks: "The intro text from kaisyain's review brought up a thought that has been floating around in my head as I am a new home-owner. If one wanted to design a home that would last for hundreds of years, what would one have to do? I, and many of my friends, have recently/ purchased homes. As with all homes, some things are in good shape, others are not. Many items are the fault of initial design, many are due to poor upkeep and repairs. Looking around, it is possible to have a home last for hundreds of years (my family's ancestral home is about 400 years old and there are castles in Europe that are older). If one wanted to build/modify a home, what would one need to do to make sure that the home would still be standing, and usable, hundreds of years from now?" M : Wired suggests going underground.
"A few elements come to mind: structural integrity, usability, reparability, ease of upkeep, physical location (geology and neighborhood), technology, and aesthetics.
- Structural integrity: Rock lasts a long time, but has a variety of draw backs. Concrete (poured or cinder block) foundations are common where I live but wood is still the material used for most of the structure. Should steel cross-beams be considered for parts of the structure? I have heard good things about laminated/engineered wood.
- Technology: Folks on Slashdot have talked about wiring homes with cat-5/7/x and installing empty conduit 'just in case.' Is this really useful with the proliferation of wireless? Would it be more useful if a crawlspace was made available between the ceiling and the attic so that any type of ducting/wiring could be run into a room? Should all rooms have access to a central column through which wiring, plumbing and ducting were run?
- Usability: I have a small house with a small, combined living-family-dining room. I am fairly sure that 50 years ago the designers were not laying out the space to take into account book shelves, a large television, stereo cabinet, gaming consoles, and more in addition to a couch, chair and dining table. Simply making the room larger is one option, but cavernous space is not necessarily good for usability. What would be a good floor plan and how might different sized rooms be distributed to be useful over time for multiple purposes? Would it need a bathroom? (joke)
- Reparability: the previous homeowners made a number of DIY 'improvements' which are nice, until one needs to make a repair. Many items are installed in ways where the only option is to remove entire installations. What types of modular improvements can be made that allow for easy repair/replacement over time as needs change?
- Location: How would one choose where to build a home that would last for hundreds of years? Do you pick an existing neighborhood, space that is at the edge of a town/city or somewhere further out? Does one pick a neighborhood that has been economically/geologically/stable/safe over the longer term even if it is not in great shape at the moment. At first glance, cities in the United States like San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh have all gone through 10-20 years spells of nastiness, but have been fairly stable cities at the macro level for a hundred years.
- Aesthetics: Does one simply design/architect and deal with the fact that it will variously become attractive/unattractive over time?
And to complicate matters, how different are the options if one imposes a budget for initial construction (depending on your own idea of what a realistic budget is)."
look @ great wall of china and pyramids of egypt. people worked really hard to build them.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Most of the houses around me now have been here at least a hundred years. They just built them and they stayed up. Victorians were good at that.
Got me thinking about L.A. Story "Some of these buildings are over 20 years old."
The house I live in, is only 100 years old this year.
my sig
I'm sure their shelf-life is around 200 years. :-)
If you are in California and you are really interested in the topic this person brings up, you need to stop by this place outside Victorville along the 15 freeway.
California Institue of Earth Art and Architecture.
Not exactly what you might be looking for. But I want one of these houses. Cool looking, Cheap, Enviromentally friendly, and they will last a long... long... long... time.
Ted
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I would suggest avoiding load-bearing interior walls. That way the house can be reconfigured as needed in the years to come. Also, use nice thick (at least 2x6) walls to allow space to run whatever you want in them later.
As for materials, any modern materials will last a long long time if properly maintained. Houses built of wood 100's of years ago are still standing and our wood products now are much stronger/better.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
There are many centuries-old buildings in Europe, but then, Europe doesn't have very many earthquakes and such. As a result, many of the oldest buildings seem to be made of stone.
In Japan, on the other hand, there are tons of buildings that are hundreds of years old, _and_ have survived some of the biggest earthquakes, not to mention, a fairly dynamic climate (hot humid summers, cold wet winters). Wooden architecture might not withstand fire, but unless that's a concern, I'm sure there are some lessons to be learned there.
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Open Source Shirts
Yes, it has drawbacks, but if you want a house that will still be usable in three hundred years it's the only way to go. Not only are there many castles and the such still around that were made out of stone, but there's many stone houses as well. For instance, the old rock house on Moore Farm is almost 250 years old now, and still livable.
You're only going to live, what... a hundred years? Maybe a little more? Screw it. Make a great house that falls apart right when you die. You don't want your deadbeat relatives prospering from your hard work, do ya?!
Google for it.
It's a mix of mud and straw commonly used as a building material throughout various times and places. There are houses in Ireland that have withstood centuries of weather and worse with little more than a renewed coat of lime every now and again.
I've used this material myself. It takes temps as hot as 2300F, becomes a more or less solid block once it set, can be built a vertical foot at a session. Amazing amazing stuff.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Your lifestyle may be the main determining factor how long your house lasts. Keep it clean and dry and pests will not find its structure a desirable alternative to a more suitable food supply. The metal composition of the plumbing (nickel, chrome, other stainless, etc...) will determine if rust will eat through over the years (and it will!) and cause a flood. Is there sufficient drainage of rain gutters? Is your basement sealed from cracks?
The goal is to keep the wild elements of nature out of your house with the roof over you. This includes party animals which may be more destructive than cockroaches.
However, a problem you will face is climate control and ventilation. Those 1800s houses were drafty, had huge non-living-space attics, and had poor energy efficiency. After thinking about it for a while, and visiting friends' tract mansions that smell of mold and rot 18 months after completion, I am convinced that the excess (and energy-consuming) ventilation through those old houses is a bit part of why they last so long.
Unfortunatley it is no longer acceptable to have your bedroom go to 110 deg.F in the summer and 38 deg.F + draft in the winter! So were I designing a new house to last, I would add a very large heat exchanger and the necessary vents, fans, smoke detectors, dampers, etc. to force-draft a good amount of air through the house. This would probably mean a duct system separate from the air conditioner (I would probably use radiant floor heating). And also a lot of motors, fans, controls, etc - so buy spare parts for 20 years down the road.
Your idea of an insulated equipment space between the top floor and attic is a good one - possibly you would want to put the heat exchanger there. And I would go ahead and wire for Cat6 and CATV, since technologies like that don't go away as fast as people think. But use conduit so you can change your mind on the media later.
Other things I would consider: real plaster and lath walls, copper supply / cast iron waste pipe, and for sure lots of access hatches so that things can be fixed without disassembling the walls.
sPH
Since the great wall is packed with the bodies of those that built it (and the pyramids probably have some poor saps crunched in as well), should we assume human skeletons contribute greatly to a structures durability?
-rt
My 2 cents: I've seen a number of these houses that last for centuries. There are a few pitfalls, i.e. finding materials that last. Most of the houses which people have inhabited for long have been upgraded much since their building. Probably the best thing you could do is employ good planning for accesses, plumbing and electrical. Odds are you won't have significant changes in plumbing technology or wiring, but being able to get at it for repair is a good. Insulation, windoes, etc, avoid plastics, as they break down. Good landscaping is important, too. No roots in your cellar/exterior plumbing and easy access to utilities (whatever shape they may be) Last, give yourself a decent vegetable garden, workspace and leisure space. :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yeah, I had that crazy idea when I built my house, too. I'd fix it up and that would be that. It just ain't going to happen.
My place is a plain old post-war home that is about 55 years old and is structurally fine but I have had to do many upgrades to it. With maintenance it should last a very long time but at some point it will probably be more economical to flatten it and build something new.
The fact is that tastes and technology change. When I moved in the place had knob and tube wiring and no insulation at all. I rewired (hint: use 20 amp, not 15, and run plenty of circuits - I have every one of my 7 outlets in the kitchen on its own breaker - no problem with overloads here). I had insulation put in. The plumbing was updated to copper years before I moved in.
At some point I will need a new furnace (40+ years old) and a new water heater (16+ years old) and will look into the new energy-efficient technology for those.
The point is that the house was pretty much state-of-the art when built but as things wear out or technology changes then the place gets upgraded to newer standards. What's next? Who knows? I could have pulled lots of cat 5 and then wanted cat 6 or fiber. A friend did a full network wiring during a remodel and never used it - by the time she was done she and her husband had switched to wireless. Even my nice wiring upgrade may become obsolete with DC feeds and smart controls. Someday I may be using fuel cells and heating the place with the waste heat. I don't know. Stonehenge has lasted a long time but it doesn't have any modern upgrades.
Enjoy your house. Pick your battles^h^h^h^h^h^h^h upgrades. Don't drive yourself crazy pursuing perfection.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Concerning your points #2 and 4 (technology and repairability), and, to a certain extent, #3 (usability)...
You know, it's really not that hard to tear down a sheet rock wall, make whatever changes you want and build another one. We're talking about one Saturday's work here. The materials are dirt cheap too: have you ever bought 2x4's? Or sheet rock? The most expensive thing you'll buy is likely to be the case of 24 beers for your pals who'll help you out.
So if you're planning to build a house that's going to last hundreds of years, a few Saturday's worth of the owner's time really doesn't weigh in heavily in the sum of the relevent considerations.
My friend and I theorized about creating a house in a cliff face. The house would be dug (excavated?) into the rock, and shaped to your needs.
Important things to remember in this plan were things such as:
- A sub-floor or crawlspace below the lowest floor to allow for water drains, wiring, etc.
- Plenty of internal space for ventilation (depending upon the type of rock there could be Radon issues).
- Insulation, depending upon the climate, your rock walls could be cold around the front of the house.
I very much like the "conduit" suggestion of yours. I think it is a good solution to have a centralized access method like that. It allows for easier service, and you never have to worry about where you are going to run that wire.
I would still run network wiring, as wireless should only be used in situations where wires aren't practical/convenient - portable devices mostly. As computers improve, that bandwidth becomes important in-house. (movies, music, etc)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I recently moved out of my last house, which was built circa 1900. The house was built to last - outer walls were all double layer of brick, central support beams were made of gigantic 12" diameter planed tree trunks. Theoretically the house could have been given a "shelf life" of hundreds of years.
Except for one thing - it had changed ownership about 12 times before I bought it. Someone decided around 1970 to put a kiln into the basement, except the pesky main support beam was a little too low for their liking - so they carved a 9" deep section out of it. By the time the house came to me, the middle of the house sat 3-4" lower than the outer edge.
One of the challenges to building a long lasting house is designing rooms that offer maximum flexibility of use, but since this isn't always possible, it might be a good idea to make modification of major supports structures difficult to achieve, to prevent stupid people from hurting themselves or the house.
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
Were spent in a home that dated from the 17th century in rural England.
;-)
The house was all stone construction with huge oak beams and a lovely flagstone floor in the kitchen. That is how to build a house that lasts for hundreds of years.
Unfortunately, it's very expensive to build homes that way these days. And flagstone kitchen floors are damn cold in winter
-psy
(Yes, I know Homer Simpson saw this house at "ELCOT", but it was actually at Disneyland.)
Best Buy can have you arrested
All you'll need is a small room with a hole in the floor, and the three seashells :)
David
You may be interested in How Buildings Learn - it's about how buildings are altered and adapt to changes (new occupants, new uses, new environment, new technology) over time.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I live in Central Mexico, and there are a lot of old Spanish colonial here homes that were built anywhere from 200 - 400 years ago. They all have meter thick walls, and have proven very adaptable for modern needs, such as electrical installation and plumbing. Of course this is because you can just gouge out the wall for cabling and then plaster over it.
When you built a house back then, it was truly built to last.
Also, in temperate areas, the structure (25 high ceilings with all rooms opening to a central courtyard) provide natural air conditioning year round.
If you look at traditional architecture from around the world, you will find that every climate has had architecture adapted for it.
It has just been in the past 50 - 75 years or so, with the creation of housing developments that architecture has fallen apart and failed. That is because the architecture appropriate for the climate of Massachussetts is not appropriate for Arizona, and vice versa. However, housing developments are built to maximize the profits of the developer, not to last hundreds of years.
Of course, Spanish colonial architecture may not be appropriate for where ever you live, but I would guess you could find climate appropriate architecture for your region that would outlast your great great grandchildren.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
No joke. Old-fashioned water taps with metal seats and rubber washers will wear out but they are then repairable. The parts are terribly standard. Even if they weren't, they could be made out of common materials at some point in the future. Washerless faucets, otoh, use proprietary and expensive gadgets to control the flow of water. Some are not repairable. Some are, but require expensive, funky kits. And all of them will be eventually go out of fashion and their replacement parts along with them.
Faucets with washers and seats. With $10 in spare parts, they'll last for 10 lifetimes. If I ever build my own home, I'm gonna use faucets with plain round rubber washers and simple, standard metal seats.
The ex-apartment-maintenance man in me wouldn't have it any other way.
The buildings that remain from 400 years ago only do so by dumb luck. Virtually all of their contemporaries have failed, even ones of similar design and construction.
To last 400 years a structure needs to be built of non-degrading materials, with a design that remains useful despite unknown domestic evolution, in a location that remains desirable, but not so desirable that the house is removed for redevelopment of the property, and in a style which will always be at least acceptable. Only one of those criteria is under the designer's control.
Simply seeing 400 year old houses no more implies the ability to create them than seeing someone win at roulette implies you can pick the next winning number.
Here's an interesting product, Timbercrete made onsite from sawdust and cement.
It's cheaper and a better insulator than stone (and just about anything else for that matter).
I'd guess that, if sealed properly, it could last for hundreds of years.
Step 1: use stone and concrete. The Romans used stone and concrete extensively, and many of their public works projects are STILL standing two thousand years later. Today we have reinforced concrete, which is even stronger than anything the Romans had. Also, this will make it prohibitively expensive to tear your house down if anyone gets any bright ideas about turning your property into a parking lot in a hundred years.
Step 2: Use concrete for interior walls, floors, well, basically everything. What's the first thing to go in old houses? The roof. And, when it does, water gets into the house and the whole structure rots. A concrete roof will keep water out, which is the most important thing if you want the house to last.
Step 3: Don't use glass for the windows. You can get a 4x8 sheet of inch-thick lexan or plexiglass, which is bulletproof by the way, for 175 bucks down on Canal Street in NYC. It's an extremely resilient material.
Step 4: Don't build the electric and etc into the walls. Design the house so that everything is retrofit, i.e. bolted onto the surface. That way you can always strip it out and replace it later. Note that you can't do this with plumbing, but no plan is perfect. Go for PVC pipes there; at least they won't rust.
Step 5: Paint EVERYTHING with a polymer-based paint to waterproof it.
Step 6: make sure the house sits at the base (or top) of a cliff or some other construction-inconvenient location. Then plant LOTS of oak trees all over the place. Within fifty years they'll turn into a nice forest. This has a couple of benefits:
A) if anyone tries to build on your property, the tree huggers will come out and Hayduke their machinery. They'll also spike the trees, which makes it reeeeeeeally tough to chainsaw them down safely.
B) Even if the local town board figures out how to get around the environmentalists, it'll cost 'em a fortune to knock down all those trees and make room for a wrecking crane to go for the house. They'll give up and go somewhere else.
Step 7: Cultivate the area around the house into a wetland, then make sure every environmentalist in the area is aware that it's there. Then, get the EPA in to declare it a wetland. This is way easier than you might think. It makes it just about impossible for anyone to build anything there ever again.
STEP 8, the MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Put the whole property into some kind of legal trust, so that you don't even really own it anymore and no one can sue you for it. Then, set up the trust so that it just passes along to your children, and so on. Your descendents will have use of the house forever, basically, but won't be able to sell it. In the process, make sure there's enough money in the trust to pay the taxes for at least the foreseeable future.
What do you think? I can't afford to do this kind of thing, but then, I rent an apartment and I'm into the whole "once I'm gone the world will forget I was ever here" thing. I find my complete irrelevance to the universe to be entirely invigorating.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
When concrete was first invented, someone built a bunch of houses with it as a proof of concept. They were about twice the price of a house of similar size, but required hardly any maintenance, and were inexpensive to heat and cool. Though they are a bit unattractive, almost all of them of them are still standing now, in excellent condition.
Modern concrete homes benefit from preformed window and door holes making them just as livable as conventional houses. They are still much cheaper to heat and cool, and things like brick veneer or vinyl siding make them hard to distinguish from other houses. They also use regular wood for walls and floors, so if you feel the need to remodel, or add wiring, it's just as easy as with a regular house. The only abnormal thing is having to bring new wiring in through a predetermined location.
Termites are a much lower concern, since the steel reinforced concrete has to crack enough for termites to get through. By the time a crack gets big enough for termites to get through, it's probably time to remodel the inside anyway (every 35-50 years). This is a good time to seal the cracks up. Even if they get in before you want to remodel, you can rest well knowing that they aren't eating the expensive outer shell of your house.
The real problem with concrete houses is that they still carry a significant price premium of at least 30%. They are somewhat popular as a hybrid though. Fully finished walk-out 'basements' are very popular nowadays. An entire floor with bedrooms and other living space lets out directly onto ground level in back of the house with lots of windows, and has concrete walls. Ground level for the front of the house is at the second floor.
There's a german architect named Albert Speer who has done some work for the german government on this idea, though I understand it to be quite controversial.
Every now and they someone discoverers a pensioner somewhere in the fatherland that's been dead in their home for a couple years. It seems that one can arrange things so that the government payouts are deposited in an account, and all your recurring debts are automatically paid from there. If you don't have friends or family that care enough to visit, you're free to die and go unnoticed indefinitely.
Think of it... somewhere in Berlin or Hamburg there are skeletons propped up in chairs with bowls of chips in theirs laps, faithfully watching to tube. Now all we need is apartments that last hundreds of years. At some point a certain percentage of units will have 200 year old occupants that never come out.
BTW, this isn't urban legend. It's been widely reported on several occasions.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I was once enamored by the idea of building a house that would last a thousand years. While I came up with several ways to do it, I also came to the conclusion that to do so is a terrible idea.
The needs of today are not the needs of tomorrow. If you have ever visited some of those thousand year old towns in europe you know that the streets are too small, the heating sucks, power lines and pipes have no place to hide, drafty and damp. Not a happy place to be but for SCA fans.
The castles of old are horrible places to spend any amount of time as well, not because they are old, but because they were designed with different priorities.
Thus, we can project that in the future, today's home of paradise might be quaint or gaudy to future eyes. But they won't be able to tear it down and building something good because it will be a historical landmark. A useless museum probably. And the children of tomorrow will be trapped inside buildings built by long dead peoples.
Perhaps in the future there will be no houses at all! Borrowing from Philo Farnsworth's ideas about the potential of fusion, maybe house of tomorrow will fit in your pocket when not in use, and be constructed entrirely of force fields. The old time houses will seem like caves!
My parents house is a 19th century farmhouse in Ireland. The walls are unshaped stone (just the faces are finished)and mortar. They are three feet, (yes 1 meter) thick. There is a 3 feet thick dividing wall in the center of the house running between the back wall and the front wall.
The roof beams are old ships masts and a lot of the other timbers were ships timbers.
The foundation is on bedrock.
It's survived a gas cooker explosion (which took out 2 windows and the kitchen cabinets, but the floors and the walls never moved), several huge storms over the last century and a lot of floods.
Building houses that way today does cost a fortune. For a start you can't get good timber anymore - most timber is kiln dried and doesn't seem to age as well as the timber that was stored for 20 or 30 years to dry naturally.
It's also hard to find a builder who knows the principle of dry stone building. Most older Irish homes were built in the same style as drystone walls, except that mortar was also used.
Okay, I love stone as much or more than the next guy, but it's hardly necessary to build a house out of stone to get into the multi-hundred lifespan range. There are lots of houses in New England that are stick-frame homes with wooden clapboard siding that are >200 years old.
There are numerous threats to a house's longevity:
1) Weather
2) Pests (insects, mice, etc.)
3) insufficient maintenance
4) Problems such as earthslides, earthquakes, settling, tree roots damaging foundations, etc.
This is off the top of my pointy head, so I'm sure there are categories I'm not thinking of right now.
Okay, so we know that you can get a stick-frame, non-stone house to last for multiple hundreds of years. How to PLAN for that is another matter.
First, take the weather and your local area into account. Prone to earthquakes? In a flood plain? Loose soil? Soil that drains poorly? On a hillside? Design accordingly! Many of these are foundation design issues and can be designed around. I'd stay away from the flood plain, though.
Next, once you've got your design TYPE planned, make sure your builder is doing to use appropriate engineering to achieve the design requirements. These include new types of roofing materials, roofing support design (big issue in Hurricane-areas - make sure your roof SUPPORTS can take it). Make sure your roofing system can 'breathe' if that's what it needs. The roofing material needs to be matched to the correct roof support system - cheap builders don't care, but this is what can cause massive roofing problems a few decades down the road, depending on weather in your area. Make sure your soil drains properly. Make sure your foundation is sealed properly. Make sure your windows are correctly installed (and skylights are even more problematic), and installed correctly for YOUR type of wall/roof system. Make sure your house is designed properly for your site - what type of sun/wind/rain do you get in that area? Make sure your window & skylight placement is proper. On the coast? Make sure higher salt content & moisture content in the air is taken into account for ALL materials used. Moisture-resistent drywall. Wood that comes in contact with concrete/stone/earth needs to be treated properly. Don't use wood shingles if you've ever heard of 'fire'. Live in a forest area that is prone to fires? Design accordingly (have a swimming pool - backup water source for dousing house down).
Maintenance. Learn what all the systems in your house would require, and make sure you've got the wherewithall to make that happen. Maintenance costs money, so build that into your accounting. Making your house's internal environment have a fairly consistent temperature/humidity level will go a long way to making wood and drywall last much longer. If your roof needs work, get it done RIGHT AWAY. Same thing for plumbing, electrical, and foundation systems. These are your critical priority systems to maintain, as they can impact everything else in very bad (expen$ive) ways. If your architect & builder are smart, they can minimize the amount of plumbing needed (designing house to that, say, kitchen, bathrooms, etc. share as many walls as possible. A good builder can make things like 'wet walls' (remember the Matrix?) where service people can get access to normally hidden things like plumbing, etc. Having to bust through a drywall to get to hidden plumbing really blows.
Make sure everything is vented properly (bathrooms, oven hoods, etc.) - that helps make things more livable. Make sure you spend the money for the good windows that tilt in so you can easily clean things and INSPECT them. Getting cheap stuff that isn't easily accessible is probably not a good idea in the long run.
Flooring - radiantly heat that floor! Very nice technology.
Zone heating/cooling - a great idea, but having vastly differing temperatures in adjoining rooms makes me nervous. I've seen no anecdotal evidence of this being a problem, though houses with zone heating/cooling
You can always dig a hole to extend an underground house, but you can't really un-dig one. If you wanted an extra room, that's easy, but if you want to remove it or alter it, it's going to be difficult.
Many people in the opal mining town of Cooper Pedy, South Australia live underground to escape the heat.
Heating would be an issue if you were deep underground. Maybe the heat from molten lava should be used for heating? However, any kind of explosion/terrorism would rupture the pipes and kill everyone in the immediate area.
I would want steel reinforcements in my underground house, although how useful it would be when there are thousands of tonnes of rock above?
What happens after an earthquake? Compulsory interior re-decorating? You mix up some cement to patch up the gaping hole leading to your neighbours toilet?
get a bunch of slaves,then have them cut some rather large blocks , than have them stack the blocks in some design, probably pyrmidal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you really want to build a house that will last for hundreds of years, the most important thing to do is to leave your descendants with enough money to keep it up. Most of the popular building materials are physically good enough to last for a very long time, but it's very tough for a building to stand a long time if it's not maintained. A lot of buildings are also torn down long before they need to be in order to make space for a new building of some type. Money will help there, too, because it will give your descendants the leverage they need to fend off possible threats to the house. Beyond that, just look at what materials were used in existing very old houses in the area and use those, since they've proven their durability under local conditions.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
You may have the impression that concrete is a modern material. It isn't.
The Romans used concrete extensively, there are a number of several hundred year old concrete buildings.
How long it lasts is down to the building design. Fundamentally, it has to be flexible and low cost to run. People pull down buildings because they become expensive to operate and difficult to use.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Some of the criteria mentioned by the author set me thinking: and here is what I think might be useful in building a house that lasts:
a. Structural integrity
Structures made from rocks tend to last longer. In fact, most of the ancient buildings or structures were made of rock. Ditto for Medeival castles (and not_just_the_ones_in_Europe). So, looking at the past, rock should be your first choice. But is it the only one? I don't think so.
Reinforced concrete *could* be an option. However, concrete is a very treacherous substance Also, if one lives in area that experiences heavy rainfall, concrete might not be a good choice. Moisture/ rainwater can seep through the voids in concrete and can corrode the reinforcement. The cost of waterproofing might be huge.
Bricks. Lots of them. The thicker the brickwall, the longer it might last. But then how many people would want a wall say 4 feet thick?
Timber: In principle, well-cured timber should last for a long time. For e.g the pillars that support the dykes/ docks in many older European cities.
b. Technology
That is an interesting criterion. TV screens are getting bigger, computer monitors are getting thinner. So, the amount of space required for each of these "Display Units" is changing. Similarly, cell phones are a commonplace, so theoretically, telephone conduits/sockets are not necessary. It is difficult to predict what the appliances/ applications in the future would be like.
c. Usability
What do you, the owner/habitant of the structure plan to use the building for? If you plan to stay there for a LONG time ( and I mean till ripe old age) start thinking of having ramps instead of staircases. Or escalators. Similarly, the bedrooms should be on the ground floor (or first floor as some people call it). How many children are you planning to have? Do you plan to convert the building to a museum/public library after your death? THat will decide how much of usable space you will need to provide in the house. Remember, a group of people need more space to move through a room than a single person.
d. Reparability
Concrete repairs are expensive. Rock masonry repairs are difficult and expensive (I am speaking in genral) Timber *might* be cheaper to maintain.
Again by meintenance I am assuming normal maintenance (painting/waterproofing, etc.)
e. Location
As far away from Human habitat as possible. The Pyramids/ castles/ Great Wall of China....were they in the cities/ suburbs????
f. Aesthetics:
I am not the aesthetics type. Personally, I believe that functionality is superior to looks. What is considered beautiful or appealing today might not be considered the same in the future. ("In the 60's in England one could have bad teeth and still be considered sexy"...Austin Powers Int'l Man of Mystery if I am not mistaken)
**Remember: at the end of the day, it is RESOURCES that will decide the fate of the structure. Some kings spent decades building monuments. Some dynasties spent centuries building walls.....They could do so because they had resources. In terms of land, labor, money, material, time and many more.
I remember reading about some Western architects who came here to study construction methods, especially the puzzle-like way that wooden beams are fitted together to create a temple roof. Their determination was that it was simply too complicated to be able to be reproduced in the west, as it took years of apprenticeship to learn how to cut and fit the joints.
Aside from the nifty temples, most Japanese architecture is crap. I live in an "old" building, built in the 1980's. No insulation, ugly from the outside.
Oh, and if you like that pre-war style with the tiled roofs, remember that many many people in the Kobe quake were killed by falling tiles.
Sometimes I think that Gojira stomped on Tokyo because he had good taste.
-- My Weblog.
Before I start I should say that my girlfriend (well, partner, but using the word girlfriend should get a few Slashdotters drooling) is a town planner, a graduate of the internationally reknowned Bartlett School of Planning, and I've learnt a thing or two about urban design, planning and architecture from her along the way.
Modern buildings, with very few exceptions, aren't designed to last for hundreds of years. Architects, developers and builders design and build for the short term, not for the long term. The materials they choose to work with aren't designed to last for centuries simply because cities, and hence buildings, evolve over time - what's needed and what's fashionable today will be useless and outdated in only a couple of decades from now.
The proof of this is around us - buildings erected in the 60s and 70s are being pulled down all the time, to make way for more "modern", "practical" and "aesthetic" developments. This is especially true of commercial buildings but it also applies to residential structures too.
Modern building design is nothing like Victorian building design. The Victorians constructed brick buildings, because brick was the best material available to them. As a result, they couldn't safely build more than four or five storeys - beyond that a building would not be able to support its own weight. They also (for the most part) didn't have any means of transporting goods and people up and down easily - lifts/elevators didn't really take off in a big way until the turn of the 20th century.
It was only when the means to work steel effectively, to shape it as required, was developed that modern building design took off. Steel being lighter and stronger than brick allowed architects to design taller, more spacious buildings and coupled with the use of lifts/elevators, it allowed them to break the ceiling barrier that previously existed. Once they started to work with steel, they quickly were able to go very high, very quickly, hence the rapid development of skyscrapers almost overnight in New York and other cities.
But I'm digressing from my main point: The reason why buildings don't last is because, generally they're designed with the knowledge that they'll be obsolete within their designers' lifetimes.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Much maligned in recent times, a traditional Hovel can last for centuries if properly maintained. In Europe there are some examples well over 500 years old. Most hovels are built into a hedge, thicket or clump of small trees and consist of a single room with no provision for sanitation, and usually without running water or cable TV. Costly ventilation systems are rarely needed as usually the builder would leave large openings for the smoke to escape. Construction materials usually comprise of sticks, mud and a dash of bovine excrement. Very cheap and can usually be habitable in a few hours. Insects can sometimes be a problem, but once a family of rats move in this usually sorts its self out.
Concrete is not an invention of the modern world. The oldest known concrete dates back to 5,600 BC in the former Yugoslavia. The first major users of concrete where the Egyptians in around 2,500 BC. The Romans followed in around 300 BC. Google for the history of concrete for more information.
Some of the earliest straw bale homes were built around the turn of the century (see this paper for a few details) and still seem to have good structural integrity... Aside from that I would hesitate to make any extravagant claims about the length of time straw bale structures might last.
In addition to the other points mentioned, however, I would add a few of my own to consider.
So what about it? It's fun to speculate as if money were no object, but has anyone else researched alternative construction methods that have advantages over the traditional frame construction? Has anybody actually done this?
http://metapundit.net
The oldest church in South Carolina is made of rammed earth as well as the oldest church in the San Francisco area (towers that Hanibal built in Spain are also still standing). The new techniques of using rebar to tie the pad and rehinforcing top beam together is great. Here's a good book on it.
We're planning on having a rammed earth ground floor with a timber framed second story. The ground floor is going to be designed for additions to be added on as needed (large doorways in exterior walls).
For interior use, we're going to use a manifold system that will pipe water to where ever it's to be used. You can think of it as two hubs, one hot, one cold and flexible pcv/vinal lines that run, in the ceiling, from the hub to the faucet. This gives you flexibility in placing sinks and such or even repurposing rooms. For sewage, that'll run under the floor. This'll be accessable from the basement. We're looking into grey water recovery as we'll be doing this in New Mexico (not that any place can't stand some water conservation).
For networking, am going to be running hamster tunnels (smurf tunnels?) along the base of the walls as well as along the top of the walls, between ceiling and upper floor. Don't know about adding wireless access points/antennas to the system.
The layout of the house will also make use of berming along the north walls and a porch along the south walls that will block most of the summer sun but allow winter sun to heat the place. Some of this design will come from earthships being built in New Mexico. We'd like to be totally off the net, but our love of tech makes this a distant dream (unless low power laptops take over for just about everything).
I drank what? -- Socrates
(It's a little more complex than the above description - but not too bad)
A friend of mine who designs buildings says that these are popular in Canada and Europe. The only downside is that they're so freakin' tough that you can't really rip hunks out if you decide to make additions later.
For some pictures see, for example,
www.logixicf.com/
(I'm not affiliated with them, and have no idea if this product is good - but the pictures are better than on the other sites I found)
If you go with concrete or stone floors then go for radiant heat and cooling. (The cooling is a little tricky; you have to make sure you are above the dew point.) It also lends itself to solar heating and free-cooling.
It's on the Canadian Shield. Some of the most geologically stable land in the world. Few tornadoes also (well, at least in Duluth, its a giant hill so...) Very, very, very low chance of earthquakes (caused by the crust warping back up from the glaciers--about one millimeter a year, most of the quakes are in S MN though.) Not many big cities that could be a target in a war/terrorist situation. Lots of iron ore mines in the Arrowhead region though,take that as you see it. Or alternatively any Canadian province on the Canadian shield.
Steel reinforced concrete is not "far better" for long term use by any rational standpoint. It stretches, pulls, fractures from within. And that's if it is kept perfectly dry every single day that it exists.
But don't mind me. I was just discussing this exact subject with a civil engineer last night and framing that conversation around thoughts from ones I've had with authorities as varied as the senior job site engineer for rebuilding the Statue of Liberty and folks from the Millenium Clock Project at the MIT Media Lab.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
I come from Europe, and in my hometown there are many houses that have lasted for centuries. Most commonly they have a concrete foundation. Then the first floor exterior walls are made of stone. The subsequent floors can be made either of brick or stone, it is really an aesthetic decision. The internal walls most often are not supporting, so they are made of brick.
Also, a trick I learned from my grandparents, which works great in keeping your house cool in summer and warm in winter. The idea is to basically have two layers of outer walls, with air in between. This technique has been used for centuries in the Middle East, where it is hot as hell.
Bulgaria is 13 centuries old, and some castles have lasted for centuries. There is a church near my old school which dates back to the 9th century or something like that. Believe me it is not that hard to make a house that your grand-grand children can live in. It probably will be expensive here in the states though, where people charge a lot for non-conventional stuff.
Longevity is good. It did wonders for Cobol.
Honestly, Having a house stand for a long time is a nice goal, but if you take into account how people use houses now compared to how they were used 25 years ago, and go back in 25 year increments, you will likely not see any period of time larger than 50 or 75 years where a single dwelling completely met the needs of its inhabitants.
You won't even be around by the time the house you're living in today falls apart - why build your house of the future to today's standards? At best you're wasting your time and money. At worst, your descendants are going to have to waste time and money tearing the useless eyesore down.
Sure, castles last a long time. People still love 'em. Have you tried living in one? They are very ill suited to us in so many ways. Adding modern conveniences is an expensive pain. Bringing them up to code, keeping them clean. Maintenance and upkeep. These costs alone could pay for a new house each year, nevermind the fact that you couldn't get a modern projection TV in more than a few rooms without a crane and a large window.
Unless you have an oracle, you aren't going to be able to design for the future. If the house of the future was designed and built in the 30s and 50s, we'd all have elevator shafts in our two and three story homes, except we wouldn't be using them because they don't have a good price/performance ratio. Therefore we'd convert them to badly sized closets and storage (well, I'd have a firepole in mine, but that's not the point). Even if you overdesigned chances are good that they would still not fit well.
However, as an academic excersize it is an interesting question. Kind of like putting Linux on the atari 2600. You could, but its more fun talking about it than it would be implementing it.
-Adam
Some interesting things that I've noticed. I bought my house a few years ago. It was built in 1890. The house is only on it's third owner (me). It is in pretty nice shape considering how old it is. As long as you keep up with the maintance on an old house it will last a very long time.
Find a house that is older and has had a relatively low number of owners. This tells you they were in the house taking care of it all along if it still looks good.
Once in your house be pro-active... What I mean is actively look for problems or potential problems that you can fix. For example, fix that small crack in the steps before it ruins the whole steps. Keep your wood painted, and repaint every few years as needed.
My house is withstanding the test of time, and when originally built had no electrictity, and was heated with fires. Then it was updated with gas lighting, and again with electricity.
One interesting thing about my house is the amount of labor that went into building it. There was no such thing as drywall, which is fairly easy to put up. The walls are amazing if you ever need to take one down, there are inch wide boards with only a quater inch sepearting them, that run all thru the walls to hold up the old plaster walls.
You would pay thru the roof to have a crew of people hammer each one of these boards in, but when my house was built cheap immigrant laber was everywhere, and it was used / abused. Good luck recreating my house in it's exact for for under $300,000 in labor alone!
And I think that's why old houses do seem to last forever. The amount of skilled labor that was put into it, at such a cheap cost.
And the stones! The stones are 50 foot high, 30 foot long, 20 foot deep, and other measurements as well. And the stones are not from round there! That's the amazing thing. I mean, remember, this is B.C. *mumble*. This was before the B.C./A.D. changeover when everyone was going... You didn't have to wind your watch back - you had to get a new bloody watch! As if A.D.'s enough - fuckinell... And the Muslim people going, "A.D? Who's he?" Yes. Good laugh there.
And uh... So, yeah, the stones are from 200 miles away, in Wales. So these guys in Wales were obviously carving the rocks out of the v - very living mountain... "Fantastic, building a henge, are we? That's a fantastic idea. That's a marvelous religion the Druids have got. Yes, got a lot of white clothing, I like that. There we go." And they smash out a huge stone and then they put tree trunks down to roll it along on. "All right, walk it along, here we go, here we go." Buuuhbuuuhuuh. "Help you push 'em along. It's not far, is it?" And the Druids going, "Heave everyone, heave! Well done, everyone, you're doing very well. You'll love it when you see it. I've seen some of the drawings already, it's very special." After 200 miles, "You fucking bastards! You never told it was 200 miles! 200 miles in this day and age - I don't even know where I live now! *sigh* I wish the Christians would hurry up and get here!" And they set all the stones up and the Druids still there tinkering around going, "No that stone and this one - can we swap them around?" So that was the Pagans.
[Courtesy of Eddie Izzard: Dressed to Kill]
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Cordwood houses are unlikely to last as long as stone ones (usually > 500 years) but they rival brick for longevity and cost a fraction of what it costs to build with stone or even brick.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Why build something that will last 200 years when you have no idea about what the world will be like.
Why not, instead, design a home that is easy to rebuild and recycle so you or your descendents can have a different vision and easily remake it.
Raised conduit will only look like a "cross between a prison cell and a boiler room" if you don't make an effort to make it otherwise.
Let's say that instead you put in an inch deep baseboard covering a two inch deep recessed channel. The baseboard, since it will be unusually visible, will be oak or other material chosen to look pretty and age well. A matched crown molding with tapered base fills it in. If a third horizontal is done in the form of a chair rail then there is plenty of room to run anything that we have reason to know to foresee.
Since many of the approaches mentioned here would work best with nine foot or taller ceilings, all of this should be nicely in proportion. If, as I suggest further down, window seats, shelving, and other such things are built in out of matching materials, then the room should actually look quite pretty.
A few things to keep in mind:
-All conduit should be attached with brass or other ornamental nuts and bolts. No nails, no hidden connections. This reduces the risk of some nitwit cutting into the baseboard or other conduit because they can't see that it was meant to be removable. Best case scenario would be to have a few small places in the house where vertical conduits have small glass windows so that people can see that stuff is running inside.
-Verticals could be made to look mock-tudor or some other style that typically has visible beams and supports.
-"Spiking" the inside of the surfacing with thin, long ceramic rods might be a good idea. This, again, is meant to reduce the odds of some ignorant future person just starting to slash away. Nothing like hitting industrial ceramic in what seems to be wood to get a person's attention.
- Color code the various types of things running through the conduit with lots of labels in more then one language.
I can't say that crazyphilman's approach is quite mine. But I can see the viability of it.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Philadelphia is also home to the oldest continually inhabited street: Elfrith's Alley. Some of the homes there are all well over 300 years old.
The homes are all brick townhomes, about 4 stories tall. They have been kept in good repair for all of their existance.
Most of them started off as rental properties for Sea Captains and Trader's who frequented the city. They whole block narrowly dodged a fire in the 19th century, and were almost demolished to make room for I-95 in the 1950's. The only thing that saved them was a community organization and a historical designation.
I think someone about pointed out: having a house last hundreds of years is primarily dumb luck. Continual upkeep and habitation helps. After a while you need nothing short of a historical designation to keep it from being knocked over by progress.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Im surprised no one has mentioned earthships. I heard about them about a year ago. Imagine a house built partly into the ground that used solar panels to regulate temperature more efficiently. Alternatively you could have your house built out of dirt cheap materials. (Used Tires) Economically it is inexpensive, efficient and I believe durable. Well, the website is http://www.earthship.org
void
void
bullshit. I *LIVE* in a strawbale house, and the straw is packed so tightly there's no chance anything is getting in there.
unless your friend is one of the many lame hippies that infest the strawbale community, who seem to confuse "hay" with "straw".
insect OR rodent infestation is extremely difficult in most well designed strawbale structures, as well as providing superinsulated soundproof walls that withstand heat way beyond anything your stick house would sustain.
cob is OK, it's in the same category as rammed earth and/or adobe. they're great building materials in the right environment, but they can get really ugly if you don't plan correctly for drainage, etc.
we had to put extra-large overhangs on our roof to accomodate rainfall, so we have a much better chance of maintaining lower internal strawbale moisture. it's all about thinking about what you're going to do, rather than listening to some dumbass contractor suggesting 2x6's and rollup insulation. sheesh.
standard construction = WinME
EOM
If you google around, you will find that although the pyramids were a massive 'public-works' project, the workforce were farmers who had nothing to do during the flood season. The workers even received beer as a refreshment.
You know, that CRAPPY TRASH made of glue and sawdust/wood chips!
. html
And cut your own wood! Get a DIY sawmill, I mean really get one, they are not that expensive.
Measure some boards from the lumberyard and see why.
Measure a 2x4 and get back with me. Or measure a 2x12 and see what you get.
In the day of the 11ozs of coffee in a 16oz can consider that they are screwing you on wood.
Cut 8x8's or bigger. Go look at some of the old houses built during the 1600's and 1700's up in the northern states. They built those houses to last a LONG time, and they are still here 200 and 300 years later.. No chipboard or sawdust boards in those homes!
Or, just go buy a used castle. There are some islands for sale that have castles on them.
http://www.vladi-private-islands.de/home_e
There also used to be a rumor that skeletons were left inside of the Hoover Dam, but as this would have, if nothing else, greatly weakened the structure as the body decayed, no bodies were left behind (this is also why skeletons wouldn't have been left inside of the Great Wall).
The houses that have lasted a hundred years are the good ones. There were many more bad ones, virtually all of which have disappeared. The people we know as "Victorians" were the rich people of a hundred years ago, who could afford houses with lots of gingerbread, tile, fine woodwork, and other expensive, craftsmanlike touches. These people were relatively richer than the rich people of today, so the homes you're thinking about were even beyond the MTV Cribs and HG channel stuff.
Even the smaller, more low-key homes that are revered today, such as Greene and Greene's craftsmans, were premium products for the well-heeled. They've lasted so long and appear so well-made now, becuase no expense was spared back then.
Do some research into some of these old neighborhoods, and see who used to live there. It wasn't average folks, trust me.
The houses that have lasted a hundred years are the good ones.
Yes, a lot of the examples on this thread basically prove that rich people can afford to build houses that last. But it doesn't always work that way.
Our house in the Luberon (SE France) is probably about 600 years old, and was probably built by a group of nomads who settled in our area and manifestly didn't know much about building. So they started by digging half the rooms out of the (very soft) bedrock, added a few barrel vaults made from what they had dug out, made all the walls 3 foot thick and kept the distance between walls to less than 12ft. The walls themselves are two piles of soft stone held together with lime mortar, with the gap filled up with whatever they could find (including a lot of straw AFAICS.) It's the weight of the infill rubble that keeps the vaults strong.
Now the advantage of having a house that is basically a slightly organised pile of rubble is that, in entropy terms, there just isn't very far for it to degrade. When we bought it there was a huge crack down one wall, and we just filled it up with some more boulders and lime mortar.
All this in a low grade earthqake zone, where the French army tried to burn most of the villages to the ground at one point, but the only effect of this was to make the roofs cave in and make the walls black (as you see when you start drilling holes).
On a related note, the first suspension bridge in the world, in Bristol, UK, is also one of the most stable. Why? Because, like most things that Brunel built, it is overengineered by several orders of magnitude. If he had had a beowulf cluster to do his simulations on, it would be a lot lighter, and would probably have fallen into the Avon Gorge some time ago :-)
Virtually serving coffee
Dried compressed mud, also known as pisé can last incredibly long under the right climate. The most fascinating construction is the Arg-e Bam, in the middle of an iranian desert. It was founded 2000 years ago, and abandonned 200 years ago, and it is still here. Of course, very little rain there, or else... It is said that the citadel was never defeated; the only time an army almost conquered it, they had to make a river run against the high walls; when they tumbled, they realized there was much more thickers walls to get to the citadel, so they gave up.
Bam is now under heavy restauration, it is a highlight of every tourist trip in Iran. I highly encourage everyone going to Iran to get there, despite the long long boring trip by bus to reach it.
Slightly off the topic of houses, but on-topic as far as lasting a long time - I remember hearing about another of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges. I don't know offhand where it is (was), but apparently it was becoming unsound, so the Royal Corps of Engineers was called in to bring it down. They applied the calculated volume of explosives and hit the switch. The bridge went up and dropped back near enough in the exact same place, strong enough for the Engineers to drive their truck over...
I figure I should see at least three comments about how if it was the US Army blowing up the bridge, that bridge would right now be passing Pluto and heading for deep space...
Culling the data that people have suggested, I would say that the top three ways to build a house to last is:
For those out there that like to travel, go to Angkor (Siem Reap) in Cambodia to see just what nature can do to a building. I forget the name of the temple that they have decided to let Nature keep, but I have a couple pictures.
Basically, over time soil was deposited on the roofs of the temples, and seeds took root. The root systems of the trees went inside the buildings, down the columns, and tore everything apart.
Many of the temples have been restored... but it is interesting to see what the jungle can do to even the most massive structures of stone.
The second point is the way you lock the structure together. The Elizabethans would use round pegs and square holes (guess where this saying comes from!!). I'm not certain if they used water retention or some other way of varying the sizes, but they'd simply alter the dimensions so that the peg would fit, then adjust them back to normal so that it was firmly locked in place. By then sealing the end with tar, again they could guarantee that that would more or less remain the case forever.
Personally, I'd go for interlocking. Use tiles which interlock along each axis. The reasoning behind this is that stress is a major cause of problems for structures. By having interlocking, stress is localized. A tornado or an earthquake might punch a few small holes, but they won't rip the entire building apart. When the world sorts itself out again, you go out with some fresh tiles and patch it up.
Walls absolutely absolutely should have an internal airgap. It's essential for decent insulation. This is often restricted to external walls, but in today's world where each room might very well want to be at a different temperature, you're much better going with airgaps in the internal walls as well.
Back to longevity. Foundations are a critical part of the structure. It should be impossible for the fondations to crack under any realistic scenario. That means that you need channels under the foundations to keep the ground consistant. (If the ground sinks uniformly, it's not going to be nearly as much of a problem as if one corner falls away.)
Next, you need a reasonably sloping roof - flat roofing is cheap and adds an extra floor, but it makes for a lousy design if you get hit by rain or snow. You want sloped roofing, and preferably slate or a very good synthetic material. This is probably the number one point where buildings sustain needless damage.
Now you've taken care of all external menaces, you've got to pay some thought to the internal ones. Fuses exist for a reason. Use them. I would strongly recommend having each room's power on a seperate loop, rather than looping the entire house. Power spikes and other nasties can then be localized much easier. You probably want a Faraday Cage in the airgap on the outer wall. All arials must then be placed outside, sure - no EMF radiation will cross the boundary - but it will also stop Really Nasty Things happening to electric appliances in a Big Thunderstorm.
Oh, and fuse the arials.
The last aspect is fire. Use fire-retardent furniture and furnishings. That's a big start. Fire extinguishers are handy, too. Now, if you place fans such that fresh air is ALWAYS pulled in at ground level, and ALWAYS expelled at ceiling level, then you will always have a region guaranteed to be free of smoke.
If you want to get even more elaborate, and have the budget, halon fire supression systems in any room used solely for storage, and possibly also in the airgaps, would be a good idea. That way, fire could be isolated, keeping the building as a whole intact.
A further advancement on this theme would be to have a building "skeleton" built in stone, and then build the house through and over this skeleton. Airgaps would be between floors as well as rooms. In this arrangement, fire could not spread upwards. (The halon would shut out the airgap, and if the fire breeched the ceiling, the halon would then douse the fire below.)
The fire could not spread between "ribs" on the skeleton, as stone doesn't burn. This means that even a "worst-case" scenario is inherently limited.
Now, back to those outer walls. I would put a degree of tension within the interlocking tiles, and pla
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Indeed, if you look at pretty much any village anywhere in Europe you'll find the same. A stone structure given a modest amount of maintenance will stand indefinitely. Given no maintenance at all, the walls will stand for three or four hundred years, even if the roof falls in.
There are downsides. 802.11b does not work through metre thick granite walls. Drilling holes in those walls to run cables through is not for the faint-hearted.
But it isn't going to fall down any time soon.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
i met a man who was a traditional indian stone mason and accomplished builder and teacher.A UNESCO heritage person. He builds stone shrines. He said all things crumble, stone lasts longer, but the factor of longevity of a structure is nothing but SIZE. referred to pyramids of egypt as example. nothing but size played the main role in longevity, he said.
Anyone who has seen a Tudor or earlier house England knows that the way to make a house last is to throw away the plumb bob and the set square
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Back when I lived in New Jersey in the 80s, my general opinion was that a house that was 50 years old would last for another 50, and a house that was 20 years old would last for another 20, and a house that was 100 years old would last for another 100 (though occasionally when we were house-hunting we'd see houses that were obviously 30 years old 29 years ago :-) I helped do a lot of renovation work on our church parsonage, which had some parts that were colonial, and a large part that was mid-1800s farmhouse, which had a lot of 9x4 beams, some of which had been termite-chewed to about 20% wood and 80% airspace.
My house there was built in 1931, had a wood frame, cedar siding, real plaster inside walls, real wood floors, cinder-block and concrete foundation, and ship-lap 1x12 floors in the attic - none of the cheap sheetrock or particle board that too many later houses had. On the other hand, the plumbing was getting kind of funky, and some of the parts weren't replacable because they changed design in the 40s, and the original electricity had been knob&tube, which had been replaced by metal conduit in the earlier replacement and romex in the later upgrades, and the phone wiring was several generations of weirdness. The heating system was a steam boiler radiator system, originally coal-fired but upgraded to oil-fired by putting a burner into the fire chamber of the coal boiler.
Some technologies are more extensible than others - building spaces into a house that can have stuff added helps a lot, so for instance forced-hot-air ducting that can later have air conditioning added or heat sources changed is convenient. Conduit for running wires through is more extensible than specific sets of wires which become obsolete more quickly. One- or two-story buildings with an attic and a basement or crawlspace are much easier to modify than three-story buildings or buildings with neither way to access all the rooms. Interior walls that aren't load-bearing are a lot easier to edit later than load-bearing walls.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My grandparents farmhouse was built in 1918 using wood that was available on the land they owned. It was insulated with Vermiculite (available today in garden centers for use in potting soils) If you open up the walls, there are no 2x4's, just logs ~4" in diameter with two faces planed off and the bark still on them. Home longevity is not a matter of materials really, its a matter of maintainance. Keeep the roof from leaking, keep the walls and floors sealed from moisture, keep the house painted and siding and shingles repaired and your house will last as long as you want
The main factor in the longevity of buildings is not the quality or type of construction, given reasonable competence on the part of the builders. It's whether or not the people who live in the houses are happy with their dwellings. If they are, they will maintain them lovingly and they will last. If not, they will rapidly decay. For an example of the latter, taken to an extreme, see public housing like the infamous Cabrini Green. Using exactly the same construction techniques could have yielded buildings that would have been considered wonderful places to live.
To that end, I can recommend a terrific book called A Pattern Language. In short, this book is a collection of "rules" for making communities and buildings as livable as possible. The rules are distilled from centuries of vernacular architecture-- in other words, homes built by those who would live in them, rather than by architects working to somewhat theoretical design parameters. To a large extent, these rules were developed based on the kinds of buildings that have survived many generations.
It may seem unscientific to base a home design on these simple rules, rather than by some organized system of thought (like Bauhaus, to give a really dreadful example of design detached from the requirements of real people.) But once you read some of these rules, their validity seems unimpeachable. Just as one example, see if you don't agree that this rule is a very good one: a room should have natural light coming from at least two directions. Think about the submarine rooms you've been in that have only one set of windows at one end of the room. Compare this to rooms that have windows in at least two of the walls. Which room would be more pleasant to live in?
Houses that are well-loved endure. All else decays rapidly.