> That sounds tremendously wasteful. All housing will have to be built new now?
Well ya. You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials. We should get better at recycling and renewing building material, maybe the Japanese counteract things that way?
> You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials.
I'm very skeptical it would save any non-trivial amount in materials. What would you leave out?
Housing in the USA is already very cheaply built, 2x4s and drywall and the cheapest hardware they builder can get. Such houses easily last over a 100 years barring some disaster.
To build a house that crumbles to unlivable in 30 years, you'd have to intentionally design it to do that. Which sounds terrible from an environmental waste perspective.
> They “last” 100 years with pretty Constance maintenance
It's no surprise to anyone that a house needs some maintenance, that's a given. If someone lives in it and keeps up with basic maintenance, it'll last many generations.
> the average house isn’t that old so the jury is still out on some of it
I suspect the average house will never be that old, simply because a lot more houses are getting built all the time bringing down the average.
But plenty of 100+ year old houses, even here in California where most construction is more recent.
> In many places tear down and rebuild is cheaper than remodeling
Remodeling is a whole different topic. Yes, remodeling a house to be much larger or much nicer (or both) can be very expensive.
But on the topic of simply living in the same house in the same configuration as it was originally built, for 100+ years (multiple generations surely), there's no need to remodel. Only maintenance.
Is this satire, are you really advocating building houses with an expected life-span of 40 years? So if i buy a new house when im 30, i should expect to have to buy new if i live to be more than 70 and I havent moved.
If we assume your idea of close to perfectly recyclable houses comes true, i think people would have to really dial down their expectations and standards. No more drywall, particle boards everywhere. Tiles.. forget it, kitchen counters made by reclaimed wood etc
> Is this satire, are you really advocating building houses with an expected life-span of 40 years?
I'm really not sure. On the one hand, I agree it is wasteful. On the other hand, I personally like living in a new home.
> No more drywall, particle boards everywhere. Tiles.. forget it, kitchen counters made by reclaimed wood etc
The average kitchen where I live is renovated every 10 years, so the drywall, much of the electrical and plumbing, the floor, tile backsplash, etc...is redone. Bathrooms are also on a 10 year schedule. You can let the reno slide, of course, or perhaps you can do a higher quality reno and hope it lasts longer than a decade. (I'm looking at a kitchen reno right now and my house was built in 2016...the builders just made too many mistakes, but $150k to redo the kitchen...ugh)
In Japan, they don't do the reno every 10 years, they just rebuild the house every 30. How is that much different?
Well ya. You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials. We should get better at recycling and renewing building material, maybe the Japanese counteract things that way?