The wonder of modern drywall

https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-wonder-of-modern-drywall

by jger15 • 5 months ago

154 267 5 months ago

worksinprogress.news

elephanlemon• 5 months ago

“You’re in luck if you’ve been hankering to have your wall connected to wifi.”

grebc4• 5 months ago

It’s so they can begin selling you a subscription to allow you to hang a picture.

enobrev5• 5 months ago

I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure.

Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?

grebc4• 5 months ago

Cheaper than building them behind concrete or brick.

esseph• 5 months ago

I think the question is: why are they behind anything to begin with?

Conduit all the things and paint to match?

mlyle3• 5 months ago

What's the alternative, though? Removable panels will be more expensive, and troublesome in various ways.

Drywall is not too bad to deal with. And 99% of the wall surface doesn't need to be opened for a -long- time.

enobrev5• 5 months ago

I watched a video recently, which I can't find, where an architect set up a beautiful wooden baseboard around the entirety of their property, and that baseboard held all mechanicals and was perfectly clean and easy to get into as needed.

Drywall is manageable and cheap, I agree. But it's more painful than it should be for something that _will_ require maintenance.

XorNot• 5 months ago

Mass production should be able to make this standard. Walls don't vary that much.

Personally I've been printing snap in access panels whenever I have to get into a wall these days - in white PETG they pretty much disappear into the wall for me.

dathanb82• 5 months ago

And do what? Leave the ducting, pipes, and electrical lines exposed for the one time in 20 years you need to do something with them?

In addition to being much more attractive than exposed infrastructure, drywall and the insulation that gets put behind it help make your house much more energy efficient.

valleyer• 5 months ago

No -- use doors.

accrual3• 5 months ago

I wouldn't call it easy, but it's conceptually simple to cut a square hole in some drywall to access behind it, and then pop the piece back in with screws, mud, and tape, then paint.

enobrev5• 5 months ago

For sure. I've wired my old house with speakers in every ceiling, and cat-6 in every room. I've had a small pipe burst and a couple leaks behind a bathroom.

I've patched quite a bit of drywall, and I'm about mediocre at it. But it seems so silly and unnecessary to me.

Everything else in this world that requires maintenance comes with access panels and other means of easy access. In our living spaces, some of which should ideally last tens of years (mine is from the 1890s), we seal it all away.

MarkMarine3• 5 months ago

Drywall is trivial to remove and repair, I have no issue cutting walls with a circular saw or vibrating cutter to get access then patching it.

I have seen another method for making walls that were accessible though, from a homesteader/ hand tool woodworker and carpenter. His walls were 24” thick with huge areas for piping and electrical and had 4x4’ removable wood panels.

https://youtu.be/8fdm9R1Cbm0?si=9SRXgcdutos-hywc

alanbernstein• 5 months ago

It's the repainting that bothers me

kmoser2• 5 months ago

I wouldn't call it trivial. First you have to determine where to cut it; if you cut the wrong area you have to cut again. All the steps in repairing it either take time, are messy, or require some skill, and the time adds up (e.g. waiting for the patch to dry before you can sand; waiting for the primer to dry before you can paint; etc.).

And then you have to match the surrounding paint, which is all but impossible since even if you have the same color, the original will have likely faded over the years, making your newly applied coat a mismatch, so now you have to paint the entire wall (no fun when it's a big wall). And if you had wallpaper instead of paint, good luck to you unless you saved some extra scraps.

All in all, an access panel would make the job much simpler.

epcoa4• 5 months ago

Rarely do pipes, wires, or ducts just outright fail even in 50 years. Usual case for tearing out drywall is for voluntary renovations. Shit behind the wall just doesn't "fail" if it is left undisturbed or you were unlucky like those that got defective PEX or similar installed.

badc0ffee• 5 months ago

Maybe you're thinking of poly-B, not PEX.

AngryData• 5 months ago

Wires not really but copper and iron pipes and ducts can and do corrode away. Ive seen hvac ducts that were more hole than anything but nobody noticed under the floor or above the ceiling.

hedora6• 5 months ago

Rodents love PEX. If we knew, we'd have used copper. It would have been cheaper in the long run.

It just takes one rat.

SoftTalker• 5 months ago

(C)PVC gets brittle and can crack. Been there done that.

enobrev5• 5 months ago

My house is 150 years old, but it's also been rebuilt several times in that time. My neighbors' houses are less than a decade old. We have all swapped stories about replacing things behind drywall. Leaks. Electrical issues. Ducts. Everything. Consider yourself lucky if you have not. 50 years is not the number you should bet upon.

kevin_thibedeau6• 5 months ago

The paper is a critical technological innovation. It shrinks upon drying, turning the sheet into a prestressed panel. Predecessor manufactured wall materials like Beaverboard are much flimsier because they lack a taught skin that enhances rigidity.

mrexroad4• 5 months ago

it's pretty cool how the paper faces effectively provide all the strength by creating a torsion box w/ the gypsum in the middle.

hedora6• 5 months ago

If we ever build another house, it's going to be attic-free with exposed conduits + hvac ducts / pipes on the ceiling. Every electrical box is going to have a 2" conduit (embedded in the wall) running up to a conduit that runs on the ceiling (if there's a basement, then down to the basement ceiling).

This would let us avoid stapling electrical lines + network cables to studs inside walls. Fixing shorts, adding circuits and upgrading network lines would be trivial.

We'd have to buy what, 1000' of conduit? There's no way that's a sufficient fraction of the cost of a house.

enobrev5• 5 months ago

In Chicago, code requires EMT for all electrical, which can be annoying for adding a new run, but at the very least it makes it less likely for rodents to chew through or other interference.

After wiring my whole house with Ethernet and ceiling speakers, and now dealing with a couple leaky pipes and several problems from previous owners, I'm considering ways to make these things easily accessible/replaceable while keeping an eye toward aesthetics.

donkeybeer2• 5 months ago

Ctrl F "brick". Nothing about bricks and concrete in all the history of wall surfaces.

accrual3• 5 months ago

Brick is mentioned near the top:

a method of constructing walls that has been a mainstay for at least 6,000 years, predating mud bricks

To be fair the article is about drywall and its history, not the history of all walls in general.

donkeybeer2• 5 months ago

I was thinking of fired brick and concrete, which solves much of his problems of drilling into walls.

aaronbrethorst3• 5 months ago

Picture rails are a kitschy and twee feature that few people today even know their purpose, but anyone who tells you that they’re just as good for hanging things on are committing perjury

In my humble opinion, they are significantly better than pounding a nail into drywall. Of course, I also have an absurdly large collection of framed photographs and other art, all of varying sizes, and I love swapping frames around throughout my home. Having picture rails throughout my house means I don't have to keep pounding holes in the wall every time I replace that 20x20" photograph of my toddler shot in a square aspect ratio with a 16x20 shot on my 4x5, or whatever.

littlestymaar• 5 months ago

And the author completely misses the point thinking it's somehow mandatory in plaster walls, when it's just a convenience thing that avoids making holes in the plaster…

rootusrootus7• 5 months ago

I do appreciate why people want to avoid that, plaster does crumble pretty easily. Combined with 100+ year old lath that is as hard as iron, it can be a mild pain in the ass to hang a picture without doing more damage to the plaster than you want.

xnx3• 5 months ago

Do picture rails work for gallery walls (clusters of frames)?

aaronbrethorst3• 5 months ago

I think so. https://www.stasgroup.com/en

joeblubaugh• 5 months ago

Yes - you can hang multiple hooks per line. You can use more lines.

I was at the Rijksmuseum recently and they use a wire system like this for all manner of configurations

viceconsole• 5 months ago

Many people only think of picture rail as what you find in old Victorian homes, but modern picture rail can be much less obtrusive and lightweight. I have a lot of framed art as well. When I finally bought a house I installed STAS minirail throughout. The "wires" are transparent Perlon filament, and anything you hang can instantly be adjusted vertically and horizontally.

This is way better than arguing with partner about the proper height, making a destructive hole, then having to cover/patch when opinions or artwork change. My walls are not drywall, so that was a big factor, but the freedom to arrange/rearrange is a major benefit.

aaronbrethorst3• 5 months ago

Yep same. Super easy to install.

hedora6• 5 months ago

We've had great luck with the removable 3M velcro picture hangers. (Each corner is held with two pieces of velcro that face each other. The velcro has double back tape on the back, which affixes to the wall and the picture. The double back tape is stretchy, and can be removed by pulling a tab. The tape is single use.

No damage to paint so far, though we've only had them on the walls for about a year.

mcbishop• 5 months ago

I really like this guy's drywall-install how-to videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vancouvercarpenter

mrexroad4• 5 months ago

pretty sure it's an established rule now that drywall cannot be discussed w/o linking to vancouver carpenter.

but, yeah, his videos are great. i've done more than my share of everything from sound abatement channels/glues/etc, hanging rock on vaulted ceilings, to level 5 finishes, but I still like to flip though his videos every now and then and pick up logistical / speed tips.

PaulDavisThe1st• 5 months ago

Interesting to me that no mention of the use of drywall (in various forms) to act as a substrate for actual plaster. This seems common in the UK from what I understand from my family back there, and it is also common in the USA in high end residential construction. It is particular common in Santa Fe where I live now (for high end anyway) because the so-called "diamond plaster" look & feel is very popular. So, you still build with stick frames (or in a few cases, cinder block), cover that with drywall/sheetrock, then plaster it.

globular-toast2• 5 months ago

It is indeed how it's done in the UK. It's a bit of a cliché for British people to complain about American houses, but it's not that we don't have stud walls ourselves, it's just that we don't just go and paint directly on top of plasterboard. Both walls and ceilings are skimmed, with either plaster or shudder Artex. We also have dot and dab walls which are built from block, have a layer of plasterboard glued, leaving a ~6mm cavity, then skimmed with plaster.

rootusrootus7• 5 months ago

Probably 99% of all drywall in the US is not painted directly, either. It is textured [0]. I'll go out on a limb and say that a substantial majority these days are orange peel texture on the walls and knockdown on the ceiling, made primarily with drywall mud (Artex seems to be essentially the same thing).

I'm not sure I would want a plaster skim in any case. I grew up in a house built in 1914 that had lath & plaster, and I've cursed the brittle plaster many times. We even had actual picture rails but my mom never liked to use them to actually hang pictures, amusingly enough.

[0] To be brutally honest, the texturing isn't for any particular reason aside from how well it hides minor imperfections. Having someone skim coat the walls and ceiling with a perfectly smooth finish is definitely a thing, but it's a good bit more labor intensive.

ZPrimed• 5 months ago

yeah, my parents' US home (which was originally my grandmother's) in the eastern half of the US has plaster-on-drywall construction.

it is a bitch and a half for hanging anything (just like plaster on lath), plus it screws up wifi.

Pro tip for finding a stud, if you have access to the bare floor -- stick a drywalling knife / spatula under the bottom trim and poke. you can find the studs that way, and then measure off since 16" is pretty common. Measuring off the edge of an electrical box can work too, but you have to figure out what side of the stud the box is on...

mrexroad4• 5 months ago

re: finding studs. unless it's balloon framing, you'll hit the bottom plate in normal stick home construction (and if not, you probably should air seal that gap...). The most consistent and easiest way to find studs is hovering a neodymium magnet across the wall to find the drywall screws. I haven't used my stud finder in years b/c of how much more reliable this is. Plus, it works even if you've doubled up your drywall (e.g. 2x 5/8in w/ green glue for sound abatement, etc).

MarkMarine3• 5 months ago

I think this misses the beauty of a plaster wall. Level 5 drywall has nothing on a skilled artisan with plaster, and yeah you can’t hang things through it but it also lasts hundreds of years. My walls are 120 years old and robust, the kids haven’t damaged them and they’ve more than held up.

asdff8• 5 months ago

You can hang things through it just as easy as drywall too. Light stuff just put it right into the lathe. Heavy stuff, with both types of walls you are going to want to anchor into a stud.

franktankbank2• 5 months ago

How do you find yourself a lath? Try once if it doesn't hit then move up/down a 3/4 inch.

fractallyte• 5 months ago

There are reasons not to like gypsum drywall:

Some buildings standing today still have wattle-and-daub panels from 700 years ago.

Will any drywalled building survive even a tenth of this time?

The plaster mixture used then was a homegrown concoction, with recipes matching the climate needs and vernacular material availability.

The wonder of wattle-and-daub (clay) and plaster-and-lath (lime) is that the materials are breathable, move with the structure, and can even self-repair small cracks. I don't know of any old house that suffers from black mold...

My last big gripe with gypsum drywall is disposal. Demolish a property with clay or lime walls, and they'll naturally degrade into the environment. Drywall needs proper disposal: "Do not burn: Drywall releases toxic fumes. Do not bury: It can create dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas in landfill."

Does anyone want to live with that?

kogasa240p• 5 months ago

Do not bury: It can create dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas in landfill."

Wonder if in the future there will be incentives for proper disposal since you can extract hydrogen from it, other than that I agree with you.

rootusrootus7• 5 months ago

I don't know of any old house that suffers from black mold...

For much the same reason they don't suffer from low heating bills, either.

kbelder• 5 months ago

I was just reading how it's common to pulverize gypsum drywall to mix into dense clay soils to loosen it up.

asdff8• 5 months ago

It’s impossible to mount even lightweight items such as picture frames onto the wall, because even the tiniest hole from nails or the like would crumble and erode into dust.

The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just move the nail up a half inch.

aidos• 5 months ago

Ha! If I even look at my lath and plaster walls the wrong way a little bit crumbles away.

asdff8• 5 months ago

The trick is to have 100 years of landlord special paint holding it together

kevin_thibedeau6• 5 months ago

You really need to predrill through the lath. Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood. If you hit anywhere off the stud it can cause the lath to flex and break the backside keying off. This leads to delamination with enough accumulated damage.

rootusrootus7• 5 months ago

Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood

That is my piece of advice for anybody who is buying a house at least a hundred years old. Old lath is like iron, and you can do more damage than you expect if you just try to put a screw into it without pre-drilling.

jf___2• 5 months ago

A huge share of the gypsum used in drywall is *synthetic gypsum* — a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) at coal-fired power plants. When SO₂ is scrubbed from exhaust using limestone, the reaction produces calcium sulfate dihydrate, chemically identical to mined gypsum. In the US, FGD gypsum has accounted for roughly half of all gypsum consumed by the wallboard industry at its peak.

The "cheap, uniform, and free of defects" story is partly a story about coal. The drywall industry scaled on the back of an abundant, nearly free waste stream from the energy sector. It's a classic example of industrial symbiosis — one industry's pollution abatement becomes another's feedstock.

And it cuts the other way now: as coal plants shut down across Europe and North America, synthetic gypsum supply is shrinking. The drywall industry is facing a real raw material squeeze, with manufacturers having to shift back toward mined gypsum or find alternative sources. There's ongoing work on using phosphogypsum (from fertilizer production) but that comes with its own radioactivity concerns.

For someone in your position this is particularly relevant — the "wonder" of drywall is entangled with the fossil fuel economy in a way that makes earth-based construction methods look increasingly attractive as that supply chain unwinds.

xnx3• 5 months ago

Fascinating. I wonder if supply constraints will make drywall recycling profitable.

PlunderBunny• 5 months ago

I don’t know about other countries, but in New Zealand there’s already recycling of leftover bits of drywall (we call it ‘gib board’ after a brand name). All the big building companies will accept leftover bits of gib board, but small bits can be thrown directly in your garden beds to help break up clay.

The gypsum used in New Zealand is mined locally.

driscoll42• 5 months ago

I used to work for a drywall manufacturer who still owned their own mines despite efforts to divest from them by some. They always viewed it as a structural advantage to still own them and not be wholly dependent on the coal plants (which effectively have conveyor belts going from the coal plants to the wallboard plants). I imagine as time goes on it'll become even more of an advantage for them to still own those mines as their competitors are forced to buy at highly inflated prices (or even from them) as coal shuts down.

trollbridge• 5 months ago

Or AI’s thirst for power will bring coal back.

MisterTea• 5 months ago

the "wonder" of drywall is entangled with the fossil fuel economy in a way that makes earth-based construction methods look increasingly attractive as that supply chain unwinds.

I keep thinking of that scene in Brazil where the hero, Harry Tuttle, opens a modular wall panel in Sam's apartment.

We standardized on 16 inch stud spacing here in the US a long time ago when we likely still used cement with a plaster skim coat on wood lath. Cutting up a board of nearly the same stuff feels primitive. You have to break open the wall to fix things.

To me the next logical step is a standard for modular walls that are laid out on a grid structure. I get that no one wants exposed screw holes but I can think of ways to hide them or make them part of a decorative pattern to blend them in. The coverings would be made to be cut to size as well. Wall panels would have to be environmentally friendly so wood is a first choice in natural and/or composite forms.

If you think this will look boxy then look up the passive house and notes on home building. Homes with a winding structure are difficult to seal reliably and roof so a boxy home is actually more economically friendly in terms of insulation to reduce HVAC energy consumption.

ragall30• 5 months ago

You have to break open the wall to fix things

The best is to build in such a way as to not have to fix them in the first place. European standards mandate passing all wiring through corrugated tubes. Builders add spare empty ones for future expansion, which makes it unnecessary to open the walls in most cases.

intrasight2• 5 months ago

no one wants exposed screw holes

Wouldn't bother me. But I'm an engineer. But I think the holes can be plugged with removable plugs.

bombcar3• 5 months ago

We have exactly what you want - it's called shiplap or car siding.

It's wood that is nailed up in such a way that you can pretty easily remove and repair something and replace it.

However, inside wall things get done so rarely that the cost savings by using drywall more than covers paying someone to patch the drywall after a repair.

A middle ground is to run all utilities at the bottom or top of the wall, and use large baseboards/crown molding to cover it up.

willis9365• 5 months ago

This reminds me a bit of Hank Green's recent video on why we don't recycle plastic. The answer is we frack a lot of methane for electricity and ethane is a byporoduct of that. You can flare it off or use it as a negative cost ingredient for polyethane / many other plastics. As long as we're using lots of fossil fuels the byproducts will be cheap. Anyone who has played gregtech or factorio or similar already has an intuition for this. The answer then becomes simple: if you want less plastic you must use less fossil fuel. They are one and the same.

https://youtu.be/325HdQe4WM4

glitchc3• 5 months ago

Isn't that common knowledge, that plastics aren't feasible without fossil fuels?

hettygreen• 5 months ago

Question: Would this process of creating synthethic gypsum leave any toxic chemicals from the scrubbing process at the coal power plant exhaust?

dTal• 5 months ago

Interesting comment with worthwhile content, but the writing style strongly smells of ChatGPT, and the phrase "For someone in your position" is incongruous (who is being addressed?). Did you use it, and if so, would you mind sharing the prompt?

46493168• 5 months ago

“Terrestrial develops a robotic approach to earthen construction”. person you replied to claims to be a founder of this company, according to LinkedIn

Other “tells” in the comment are the subscript “2” and the full spelling of the chemical. Also 3 emdashes

some_random2• 5 months ago

They're a founder of a startup doing this kind of thing, realistically they probably copied blurb per-prepared marketing blurb or something they sent to someone else.

m0llusk• 5 months ago

some interesting new failure modes also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall

mrexroad4• 5 months ago

new? that was literally two decades ago.

ghtbircshotbe• 5 months ago

1. Is plaster and lath gypsum based? In my experience plaster is basically identical to stucco, which is basically just mortar with increasingly fine sand. It is very hard and completely unlike drywall.

2) Why emphasize asbestos when talking about plaster? My understanding is you likely have more to worry about if you have a house from say the 40s-70s, which almost universally have some sort of drywall product.

evnp• 5 months ago

We had our circa-1915 house checked for asbestos before lifting it. The inspector laughed after taking a chip out of the plaster because you could clearly see horse hair protruding from every side of the chip. This is apparently unlikely to overlap with asbestos, though it comes instead with a minor (?) anthrax risk. I'll take that over the dust from drywall sanding every time though.

jccooper• 5 months ago

"Plaster" can be lime, gypsum, or cement, in rough order of historical adoption. Sometimes you even use different types on the same wall; cement rough coat and lime or gypsum top coat, for example.

KevinMS• 5 months ago

Because drywall is a dense and uniform mixture, hanging anything off the wall (from pictures to heavier items like shelves, TVs, or even cabinetry) is a trivial exercise, either a simple nail for a small frame, plaster anchors for medium loads, or toggle bolts for the real heavy hitters.

yikes

andwur• 5 months ago

That's inaccurate for standard thickness drywall sheet, which is usually a 20kg maximum parallel load (e.g. vertical for a wall) regardless of fixing method. Orthogonal load is even less. You might be able to attach a TV or cabinet but it would definitely not be safe, any additional weight or dynamic load would quite likely rip it off the wall with no warning.

The recommended approach for anything with moderate weight or above is to anchor to the studs and never rely on the drywall itself for retention.

c0nsumer• 5 months ago

I suspect they are meaning because it's uniform you can easily find the studs through it and fasten things directly into them.

An uneven wall material (plaster on lathe, or even plaster on drywall as we have in most of our house) can be quite a hassle to find the actual timbers/studs behind.

quesera• 5 months ago

Very yikes.

Also wrong:

By eschewing the lath lattices, buildings now have way more room in wall cavities for improved insulation and conduits

The cavities are exactly the same size, plaster+lath, or drywall.

Most residential construction won't use conduit anywhere, and commercial construction would never bury a conduit inside a wall, regardless of wall covering.

These are weird things to get wrong.

BadBadJellyBean3• 5 months ago

As a German I always found North American houses and their drywall and wood constructions incredibly odd. It always felt flimsy to me. From my experience we just started using drywall for some interior walls on some newly built homes. But throughout my life I was used to very massive walls.

I recently saw some house building videos and it is somehow fascinating how different the building materials and methodologies are. North America obviously made it work, but still very odd to me.

rootusrootus7• 5 months ago

I think it's just what you get used to. Every method has ups and downs. And different regions are going to gravitate to different materials based on availability (for example, my Indian coworkers just cannot fathom why we would ever build houses from trees instead of reinforced concrete; doesn't it rot?!!).

I don't think of the walls as especially flimsy, though. Built correctly, they are totally fine. Yes you can punch a hole in one if you are sufficiently motivated (and you better miss the stud...), but the only times I've ever punched any hole in drywall it was because the door stop was removed for whatever reason and a dumb teenager threw the door open with no regard for propriety. At least drywall is trivial to fix.

BadBadJellyBean3• 5 months ago

Yes you can punch a hole in one if you are sufficiently motivated

This is what I meant with "flimsy". If I hit my wall my hand breaks. But as I said It seems to work. I am just used to the massive nature of our houses and I admit a part of me prefers it that way but I don't think it's the one true way.

lostlogin2• 5 months ago

why we would ever build houses from trees instead of reinforced concrete

Earthquakes are a factor where we are, but also, if NZ can find a way to do something cheaper, we will always do it. Quality be damned.

ragall30• 5 months ago

Stick frame buildings are prone to dry rot, very susceptible to molding, and the addition of drywalls* make them objectively inferior for any building that's expected to last more than ~40-50 years. It used to be, 100 years ago, that the big cities like NYC, Chicago, Cincinnati, etc... were so dynamic that entire neighbourhoods were expected to be rebuilt every ~50 years or so. That's no longer the case.

Over a lifespan of 100+ years that's very well expected in the US given that cities aren't growing much any more and infill has been made almost illegal in most places, using long-lasting materials and techniques like in Germany becomes a lot cheaper, and more convenient. It always surprises my US colleagues when I told them that in 20 years living in the house I grew up in, the only thing that ever broke were once the roof gutters due to very heavy rain. Otherwise, houses are expected to just go on and maybe need repairs every 50-60 years.

* drywalls are inherently sensitive to humidity, which makes it necessary to cover them with wall paint which is essentially a waterproof layer of plastic, which makes it not breathable and thus drywalls develop mold rather easily (even worse, it's often invisible mold). In contrast, walls made of stone, cement or brick (or a mix thereof) and covered in stucco are breathable and much more resilient to humidity and mold issues.

KoftaBob2• 5 months ago

cannot fathom why we would ever build houses from trees instead of reinforced concrete

Steel-reinforced ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) has become a much more common frame material for homes in the US, especially in the hurricane-prone southeast.

DANmode8• 5 months ago

doesn't it rot?!!

It does indeed.

There’s a portion of our populace who accepts waking up tired with flu-like symptoms daily.

pibaker• 5 months ago

I suspect the prevalence of "flimsy" wood and drywall constructions to be part of the reason why Americans dislike apartment living. They provide little sound insulation, are prone to water damage, have a shorter lifespan than the average person and once they catch fire they burn the entire thing down.

Concrete or brick buildings are much nicer to live in, but expensive, so they are not very common among new constructions.

glitchc3• 5 months ago

Actually apartment buildings are mostly concrete. Strip away finishings like cabinets, drywall and flooring from a unit, and what's left is a concrete cell. Sometimes separating walls within a unit are wood based but that's rare too.

jandrewrogers4• 5 months ago

Concrete or brick buildings are effectively illegal in much of the US because they aren’t safe. Large parts of the US are prone to earthquakes far more severe than any in Europe, a fact learned the hard way. It destroyed all of the prior masonry and brick buildings in the US so that type of construction is no longer allowed. Your choices are pretty much wood-frame or steel-frame construction.

That said, plenty of steel-framed apartments are effectively sound-proof. I’ve lived in them. You don’t need masonry, just wall mass.

Masonry can be engineered to US seismic standards but it is extremely uneconomical to do so. In my city, my house must be engineered to survive without structural damage an earthquake stronger than any in European recorded history. That’s not over-engineering, large parts of the US just have earthquakes that strong. It limits your material choices.

Similarly, US construction must also be engineered for extreme wind loading. Some of the buildings in my area are designed to withstand 300+ km/hr winds. Because that is a thing that can happen here.

Just about everything about US construction style can be explained by the necessity of engineering to survive extreme seismic and/or wind loading. Which it demonstrably does for the most part.

turtlebits5• 5 months ago

Wood isn't flimsy. Drywall is fine, it's cheap and easy to repair. If built correctly can last 100+ years.

UltraSane• 5 months ago

The way houses are built and what materials are used is very location specific do to climate and economics. North America has oodles of land to grow wood on. When you have cheap nails and screws wood is a FANTASTIC material to make houses out of and not flimsy at all when designed correctly. Europe used to make houses out of wood until they cut down all of their forests. Wood and drywall construction has the advantage of being fast to build and easy to remodel.

I personally like houses that use Insulated Concrete Forms for the exterior walls.

briHass• 5 months ago

Drywall gets maligned, but it is a pretty remarkable building material. Inexpensive, easy to fix/finish, and very fire-resistant, especially for its weight.

The timber-stud and drywall model also works well for the modern world, where layout preferences and in-wall technology changes often. It was only about 20-25 years ago where having POTS lines/jacks in multiple rooms was cool, and now they're mostly useless.

bravoetch• 5 months ago

My home, built in 2011, has 36 ethernet ports throughout the house. Some in closets, some above the trim, some where a TV would be mounted. The TV mount areas also have conduit specifically for HDMI and other cords. And there's speakers and speaker wire going all over the house. All of it terminates in the garage at a single panel.

It's mostly unused. I have PoE wifi access points around the house. And the sound system I hardly use.

whartung• 5 months ago

I live in rock and rolling California, and we love our stick framed houses. They’re very resilient to the tremblors that plague us.

Yea, if we’re hit hard enough, the stucco may or drywall may crack, but, big picture, those are cheap cosmetic fixes compared to anything more structural being damaged.

Back during the Northridge quake, my friend was buying a second floor condo in Santa Monica (which was hit pretty hard). It resulted in several drywall cracks, but nothing worse than that. Even better, the closing day was scheduled for the day after the quake.

woodpanel3• 5 months ago

As a German I have to admit we are culturally odd with this. Our houses are way too over constructed and the dry-wall stigma here is just one aspect of it, wood construction stigma is another. It thus is no wonder that Americans have way more affordable housing.

Those stigmas are also odd for most of our heritage-like old towns that are full of still-intact "Fachwerk"-Wooden-Constructions - which basically use the same technique, should give us a hint or two. Also wooden constructions do allow to comply with our ever climbing ecology standards, without complicated venting mechanisms to keep mold out (as you need for stone). Those two stigmas are also odd, given, that drywall and wooden construction sectors are actually huge in Germany. Knauf is one of the worlds largest companies in the wallboard sector.

BadBadJellyBean3• 5 months ago

Stein auf Stein, Brick on Brick. It's what makes the German feel safe. It will last forever. I will break everything but the walls if I hit them. I need heavy machinery to put a screw into the wall. It feels right for the German. Wooden houses are for eccentric people with too much money for a disposable house.

As much as I don't want to be a stereotypical German thick walls feel right to me. But I honestly don't think that our building style is the true one. It is just what I am used to.

ragall30• 5 months ago

Our houses are way too over constructed

They're not. The long-term reduction in maintenance costs more than make up for it. Tell a German that the "normal" North-American "common sense" is saving 1-2% of the house value every year for repairs and you'll be considered a madman.

and the dry-wall stigma here is just one aspect of it, wood construction stigma is another

Both stigmas are very well justified.

jandrewrogers4• 5 months ago

The materials used in US house construction are practically restricted by a requirement to survive extreme seismic and wind loading. In the US there are ghost towns where brick and masonry cities were completely obliterated by these hazards. As the US learned how to engineer buildings that mitigated these risks, these learnings were reflected in construction standards.

This led to the highly evolved wood-frame and steel-frame structures used in all construction in the US you see today. There are still a few old brick and masonry buildings from before these building codes, but most of the buildings from those eras collapsed in one disaster or another.

hn_acc12• 5 months ago

For a while in the 90s, a friend from Canada went to Germany and started building NA style houses (wood frame, drywall) in Germany. People loved that it could be finished in 3 months instead of 9-12 and cost 1/3 less, IIRC.

ragall30• 5 months ago

They're happy until the long-term effects hit them, as stick frame houses need repairs a lot more often. Nowadays, European companies have developed many modular building techniques that have reduced the labor considerably, from robots that 3D-print concrete walls, to LEGO-like hollow bricks.

DANmode8• 5 months ago

When it rained into the interior wood frame of the home before they were done building it, did any Germans happen to stop by to explain biology?

nkrisc3• 5 months ago

Flimsy? No. I mean they won't survive a tornado, but homes aren't usually built with surviving a direct tornado hit in mind.

Sure it's not as strong as brick or concrete blocks, but it's strong enough for normal, every day use.

Where it does pale in comparison is hanging heavy objects on the wall. You do need to secure heavy loads to a stud, instead of just drilling and anchoring anywhere in the wall. However what it lacks there it more than makes up for in ease of routing low-voltage cables in an existing home.

Also, if I really wanted it, I could knock out almost all of my interior walls and completely change the layout of my home. Not something you do on a whim, but you can absolutely do so when renovating a home.

JKCalhoun• 5 months ago

I have heard (from a German co-worker) that you tend to double-up the drywall. Sheets go on vertically, then a second layer horizontally to double the thickness—improve soundproofing.

sorenjan• 5 months ago

Wood and drywall is how most houses in Sweden are built as well.

Here's a timelapse of a Swedish house being built: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbSm0Zw00Cs

timc3• 5 months ago

The drywall wall is stronger, heavier thicker stuff and sometimes doubled up. We also often use steel work as the studs (particularly good professionals) as it’s stronger and faster than wood to put up. Then all the wiring is in conduits, and it’s acceptable to put water feeds on the outside of walls in the room for servicing. Then it comes to our bathrooms which are proper wet rooms and usually built to a very high standard to meet insurance needs.

I watch a lot of building videos from the US, it’s eyeopening watching for someone used to better construction methods.

The construction of UK inner walls is even better, it”s often plaster applied on plasterboard/drywall usually by skilled trades. Very strong.

jimnotgym2• 5 months ago

I left the building trade in the UK about 20 years ago.

The UK is a damp place! We built one-off- houses. We built exclusively with 'brick and block'. Brick outside (to take the weather), cavity and block inside. Downstairs walls were block. Upstairs walls were studding, unless blocks were required to go up to support roof purlins.

The blocks inside were normally 'dry lined', sheets of 'plasterboard' (what we call drywall) 'dabbed' to the blocks with a plaster-like adhesive. Often these were 'Thermal boards', plasterboard laminated to urethane insulation foam. Plasterboard was always 'skimmed', plastered over with a plaster designed for this. The drying time is much lower than 'wet plastering' on the blocks.

On big spec built sites they were using prefab timber frames instead of blocks for the inner wall. Then they would plasterboard, and just fill the joints (no skimming). This is always considered a lower spec than skimmed walls.

elendee• 5 months ago

But the noise.. this has been a huge factor in my quality of life, having lived in both buildings. That issue trumps any advantage drywall has, and I spent about 10 years working with it as well.

I think the market forces have simply dominated our natural, economically inefficient, home-dwelling instincts. I think this article means well, but it is written from the perspective of a landlord basically.

nkrisc3• 5 months ago

It's not really a drywall problem, but a drawback of the usual construction method. If you insulate the interior walls then noise isn't really a problem. Of course, most builders are not insulating or noise-proofing interior walls, so there you have it. I suppose with other building materials (bricks, concrete blocks) you get the solution "for free", so to speak.

ragall30• 5 months ago

It's a problem because with stick frame and drywall, the builder has to take special effort to noise-isolate a house, which in effects ensures that not even 0.1% of housing has those properties. European regulations make for a much higher noise isolation by default.

CyLith• 5 months ago

My house is plastered, and it is substantially more soundproofed than drywalled houses in the neighborhood. It is not a function of the construction method, since my house is stick framed just like my neighbors.

scythe• 5 months ago

Possibly the solution would be to have some kind of soundproofing backing material on the converse side of the drywall panels. Including this could be required by regulation which would be easier to enforce than some kind of abstract acoustic property. One of the interesting arguments that Brian Potter made is that you're usually better off trying to move the issue from construction to manufacturing.

This is basically similar to how leaded drywall is used to shield X-rays. Of course, there are additional costs associated with the hazards of lead.

porknubbins• 5 months ago

If I ever get to build a house I’m using that high density drywall they have in hospitals everywhere but the ceiling. It doesn’t cost that much more compared to the labor and it would be enormously satisfying to know your walls can’t be easily dented or damaged.

hedora6• 5 months ago

Drywall is terrible vs. modern plaster.

Modern plaster has backing boards that are similar to drywall, so you get most of the construction advantages (except for the labor intensive step of plastering), and can hand pictures / toggle bolts in the same way. Unlike plaster, drywall gets moldy + needs to be replaced after water damage. I think this is why films with old buildings set in Europe often show peeling paint / water damaged plaster, but people are still living in them, and it seems fine. In the US, buildings with that level of wear would be so moldy they'd need to be gutted to studs, at minimum.

The article touches on mold resistant drywall, but I'll believe it when I see it. Also, apparently, it is much easier to create long-lasting patches for plaster than drywall.

turtlebits5• 5 months ago

It's more important to control moisture than buy moisture resistant materials.

Drywall is great, its cheap and easy to repair.

I would not want to live in any water damaged house without remediation due to the risk of mold.

DANmode8• 5 months ago

In the US, buildings with that level of wear would be so moldy they'd need to be gutted to studs, at minimum.

Middle America and the rust belt would like a word (and the word is: mycotoxins, lol).

ericwebb• 5 months ago

I am also a fortunate owner of a 100+ year old home. Why is the lath and plaster so susceptible to cracking?! That is my nemesis. I haven’t tried to hang a TV though yet.

deadbabe• 5 months ago

I stayed with a guy in France who had an old house with these picture rail things, and it was the first time I had come across something like that. I thought it was a very interesting solution for quickly rearranging artwork in your home if you love art but don't have enough wall space to display all your pieces so you might occasionally swap them.

turtlebits5• 5 months ago

Drywall is pretty amazing, but I don't agree with all the points in the article.

It cheap to buy and cheap to install, easy to cut and installs fast. It's tolerant with imperfect walls and is surprisingly flexible. It can also be seamlessly repaired.

It can also act as a primary air barrier.

I do not like moisture resistant drywall, moisture control is more important as well as using proper materials in high humidity areas.

quokwok• 5 months ago

Works In Progress have an odd antipathy to picture rails. Actually, picture rails are good. You don't have to fill any holes if you wish to move or remove a picture. To put up a picture rail, you can drill multiple holes laterally until you find a stud. The unused holes will be covered by the rail.

wellf• 5 months ago

What about cement render? Seems like plaster board and plastering was only mentioned.

I am sure plastering was common in 80s too but maybe misremembering.

edit: seen other comments and that was/is "modern plastering" i.e. with backing boards.

ReptileMan• 5 months ago

The popular additive was asbestos. While today we all know about its intense toxicity

Asbestos is not toxic. The mechanism by which it fucks up your lungs is completely different.

webnrrd2k• 5 months ago

If you're interested in this kind of material, I'd recommend checking out Construction Physics by Brian Potter.

https://www.construction-physics.com

kristianp• 5 months ago

Yes and it's often posted on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=construction-physics....

aristofun• 5 months ago

One thing I know for sure - this thing benefits mainly builders and renovators, not end users.

xnx3• 5 months ago

A lot of the criticism of drywall here is improved by double-upping.

The wonder of modern drywall

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