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sleevieb t1_jdinzon wrote

Everytime I see a 5 over 1 I fear this is their fate.

Or that the glues will fail after decades and they will do a building 7 out of nowhere

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jodyhighrola t1_jdj25o3 wrote

I’m with you. Timber frame construction, specifically in mid to high rise buildings, obviously has come a long way. IF your fire suppression systems fuck up down the line….yikes. That’s why we have inspections and code, but we’re not quite getting any better at those things as time progresses in some regions of this country. (Uneducated opinion)

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sleevieb t1_jdjdpg6 wrote

Society is so fucked and wealth is so stratified that we began building tenaments again.

In decades when the first time renters of these units are long gone and no one can remember they were once “new luxury apartments “ they will be full of poor families who will be cooked alive as neglected pipes and aging wood and glue fail.

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Vegetable_Macaroon32 t1_jdjjd2c wrote

They aren't timber frame , they're platform framed out of dimensional lumber, not as robust as concrete or steel, but keep it dry ( exterior maintenance) and it should hold up fine. People need places to live and i assume this cuts building expense , not having the heavy duty steel i beam or concrete construction. It won't last as long as pyramids but it doesn't need to. And there are very old wood structures around, i feel like the longevity of a building has a lot to do with care and upkeep. I work in the fan on old houses and i assure you it takes a huge budget and an army of tradespeople to keep those things from totally falling apart. The new apartment buildings probably aren't meant to last a hundred years, they can always be pulled down and rebuilt. Who knows how people will want to use the space that far in the future? Not sure what glue you mean, like in the plywood?

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sleevieb t1_jdjtj8q wrote

My understanding is these structures are kept together by commercial adhesives and thousands of bolts per floor.

>People need places to live and i assume this cuts building expense , not having the heavy duty steel i beam or concrete construction.

The origin of these structures is some developer figured out that a county code had been changed to no longer require steel and concrete construction as long as they had a fire suppression system that conformed to a new more stringent code. Once one of these things was built other developers in that city took notice, it spread across the state and then country.

I agree that it is a cost cutting measure and a solution to the problem of people not being able to afford to live. Similar to the construction of tenements was a response to horrible economic conditions.

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> It won't last as long as pyramids but it doesn't need to.

The pyramids are tombs

> And there are very old wood structures around, i feel like the longevity of a building has a lot to do with care and upkeep.

I'm not denying that but I would think a concrete and steel structure requires much less upkeep and repair than a wood strucutre. Even with the outer layer of weather blocking that these structures have. I wonder if it will ever make economic sense to repair the top 4 floors above the concrete bases.

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> I work in the fan on old houses and i assure you it takes a huge budget and an army of tradespeople to keep those things from totally falling apart.

Fan houses are not 4 stories tall. Nor do they have the density of these so the potential fire risk is greatly mitigated. I'm sure you know the exorbitant cost of rehabbing or maintaining one of these properties, even though it has been decades now where it made economic sense to refurbish and upkeep the houses.

> The new apartment buildings probably aren't meant to last a hundred years, they can always be pulled down and rebuilt.

I agree that they wont last 100 years and will probably require being torn down sometime in the future whether from degradation or their outlawing as fire risks.

> Who knows how people will want to use the space that far in the future?

I think the "fuck it let the people down the line figure it out" is a horrible way to urban plan.

Not sure what glue you mean, like in the plywood?

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I thought these were made of Glue laminated timber or Cross laminated timber but maybe I was mistaken

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Vegetable_Macaroon32 t1_jdjwrs5 wrote

The cross laminated timber stuff is exciting next level building tech in it's infancy, think cool artsy buildings in Sweden. The podium building we are talking about looks like good old two by fours and two by tens nailed together by framing crews with big nail guns. Albeit probably w trusses and some LVL s in the mix. I think the tenement comparison is a bit much, people in tenements didn't have hot running water, refrigerators and AC, much less pools and gymnasiums and one bedroom apartments all to themselves. I agree w you, to an extent. It would be nice to see the six story concrete apartment blocks that seem to predominate in Europe, but the country is having a housing crisis. Yes the evil developers will make money, they aren't philanthropists, but lots of apartments are going up all over town. So something is working? I wonder how much of this has to do w bringing residential construction to commercial rental world in terms of enabling immigrant labor in the mix. These folks work very very hard , no union coffee breaks or paid holidays. Sad, but capitalism ain't always pretty.

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jodyhighrola t1_jdjgkcz wrote

Related to pipes… if the cold weather extremes extend to warm climates, pipes won’t stand a chance. I watched Austin’s MFH world implode when every building had catastrophic pipe bursting because they didn’t insulate for that kind of weather. It was apocalyptic feeling hearing all of the fire alarms going off for days, no water.

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sleevieb t1_jdjtrcs wrote

Climate change is going to fuck shit up but VA is a better place than most.

For instance our winter codes are way more robust than Austin. This last Christmas was probably a portent though.

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RCBilldoz t1_jdme8rt wrote

It was truly the perfect storm and was started by a careless smoker.

They had finished framing and it had no doors or windows. It was a giant rocket stove.

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