I'm building my personal Gaming Room...

[Ronald Reagan]

Construction in different parts of the world really interests me a lot..

Note that normally, in my part of our country, we need to always build anything on piles because the ground is way too soft to build anything heavy without it sinking into the ground. However, for the gameroom we decided for another solution, check out the thread.

Funny that you mention that. Last week I heard from a constructor who was at someone's house in Amsterdam for some kind of damagecontrol. The owner of the house wanted to have a good cellar, so he decided to fill up the cellar by himself with a lot of cement/concrete, without asking for advice by a constructor or anything. After a couple of days his house started to sink because of the weight of the cellar, pulling the house down into the soft ground!

[level42]

Well I actually seriously (briefly) considered putting a cellar "under" my garden.

However, the sinking into the soft ground is problem 1 (which can be solved by "hanging" it to the piles of the home (or new piles).

However, over here, there's also problem 2:
The high level of ground water.

If it's higher up then 1 meter below ground level (which it is usually here near Rotterdam) there will also be a CONTRA force to the sinking and it's called: FLOATING !

Yes, the cellar could be pushed upwards by the water.

This can also be compensated with f.i. an extra heavy "roof" on top of the (pre-constructed) cellar.

However, all of this would make it WAY to costly (however, if you are in the eastern part of the country, it's easier to go with this solution, but usually people also have more room there....)

[leonk]

Interesting ..

my home was build in 1918, and we're about 1 km away from the lake.  150 years ago, the water line was very close to my street.. as a result, it's all sand here.  But nothing sinks in the ground.  Makes me wonder how soft your ground is that structures actually sink in it?

Also, what are home generally made from?  In Canada, only the foundation is concrete.  The rest is wood with a brick veneer.  Typically 2 stories + full size below ground basement.

[McVenco]

The problem in a major part in The Netherlands is that the underground consists of bog, or mire. In some parts (around the city of Gouda, for instance) they even have to drive piles in the ground as a foundation for sewer pipes! I work in road construction, and in those soft areas we sometimes have to make a sandbed of several meters for the underground to consolidate. It's not uncommon that that sandbed sinks 2 or 3 meters before the ground is sturdy enough to build on!

Our homes are mostly made of concrete and brick. First a concrete foundation (on piles in the softer areas), then the carcass is built with prefab concrete modules or with large cementblocks. Finally, a cavity wall is built on the outside for isolation (and for good looks of course, concrete is not so pretty mostly  ). Wood in most cases is only used as an esthetic element, or in large houses designed by architects...

[leonk]

Thanks for the lesson! Very interesting .. sounds a lot like homes in New Orleans, where a lot of the homes are below sea level, and if you dig down just 1m or more, you hit water (this is why cemeteries there all have the caskets resting above ground in tombs).

The only thing that surprises me is the material.  Concrete/stone tends to be more common in hot weather construction (Greece, Italy, middle east, etc.) In colder climates, homes tend to be build from wood (I believe due to availability and thermal properties in the winter).  I can imagine that it costs a lot more to heat a home made of concrete than it does of wood.

Nuno, how do you heat the lair? Electric heaters?  I can't imagine you'll be installing a gas furnace into the building.  And if you do use electric heaters, how do you maintain constant humidity? Or at least comfortable levels? (If I didn't have a central humidifier on my gas furnace, the humidity in the house drops to about 20%, which is drier than the Sahara desert! Bad for skin, static electricity, and overall comfort levels)

[level42]

In The Netherlands we build very sturdy homes. That's why concrete is mostly used. In earlier ages bricks were the main building material. We are a country direct to the sea, with a huge coast-line (well, relatively of course). We have a mild-sea climate here. The lowest temperatures (which we would call extreme) is -10 degrees, highest around 30, 35 in extreme hot days. But the average is pretty mild.

Indeed, a large area of our country is well below sea-level (the lowest point is not too far from my home at -6,76 meters !!!) so if it weren't for our world-famous dikes and other water protection, we'd have pretty wet feet here

What makes you think concrete homes would be harder to heat ? All modern build homes are very will insulated with rock-wool or stuff like that. If I compare my (gas operated, we have gas lines like water lines across the country) central heater to the one my uncle in Massachusetts has it's tiny. He has an oil operated heater, and it's huge, but if it is -20 degr. Celsius there, he still want to have +21 inside....that's a task our heating will never have to face.

I am always amazed why they build so many wood homes in f.i. the US where there are lots of hurricanes and tornadoes, and then we see all those demolished homes. I would think concrete buildings would survive a lot better.
I guess wood is simply the cheaper way to build.

.... then the carcass is built with prefab concrete modules or with large cementblocks......

Yes and there's another popular method (like my house was built, about 14 years ago): tunnel-building (as we call it).

A metal "tunnels" are placed over the floor and concrete is poored over them. It's a bit hard to explain, here's a picture:


Note that the electricity pipes get installed prior to pouring the concrete so that they are recessed in the walls.


And here's some of those tunnel elements. You can see they can remove them easily once the concrete is set. The setting is quickened by heating with gas burners IIRC.




This method is used where there are a good number of same houses build at once (we have a lot of "row-houses" as we call them, that's homes which share walls.)

[DarthNuno]

Nuno, how do you heat the lair? Electric heaters?  I can't imagine you'll be installing a gas furnace into the building.  And if you do use electric heaters, how do you maintain constant humidity? Or at least comfortable levels? (If I didn't have a central humidifier on my gas furnace, the humidity in the house drops to about 20%, which is drier than the Sahara desert! Bad for skin, static electricity, and overall comfort levels)

To be honest, I don't know yet which solution I'll take, but I'm thinking about something like this (air conditioner) 



Used by Bally Ballo on his huge game room [see this topic (french)]

[level42]

Wow, is that unit big enough to cool/heat such a large room ?

I am still planning on getting an airco unit for both heating and cooling too but these days (loads of snow, freezing cold) they can't install it.

So I bought an el-cheapo oil-filled electric heater from Marktplaats for the time being.
It's 2000W but if has a thermostat and there's no need to keep temperature very high in there. I also have great insulation...

[Blanka]

Yes and there's another popular method (like my house was built, about 14 years ago): tunnel-building (as we call it).

The main reason for using this technique is that we are cheap-asses . You DON'T want to know what the main structure of your house costs....
_{In a housing plan of 100 similar homes, expect the tunnel construction to be around 3000-5000 euro/home, everything included.}

[leonk]

What makes you think concrete homes would be harder to heat ? All modern build homes are very will insulated with rock-wool or stuff like that. If I compare my (gas operated, we have gas lines like water lines across the country) central heater to the one my uncle in Massachusetts has it's tiny. He has an oil operated heater, and it's huge, but if it is -20 degr. Celsius there, he still want to have +21 inside....that's a task our heating will never have to face.

Thanks for the explanation. The truth is, that what you uncle has is Mass is not normal for Canada.  In the big cities (I live in Toronto) the following are all connected via underground lines: sewer, water, electricity, and gas.  We use gas to heat the house, the stove and hot water tank.  Electricity is used for AC, washer/drier, fridge and dishwasher.  Only really old homes still have oil tanks... but they're being removed and upgraded to natural gas.

The weather here fluctuates between -35 C in the winter to 35 C in the summer.  Most people keep it at +22 to +24 year round.  Natural gas is very cheap in Canada .. we over produce it and sell a lot of it to the USA (same with oil.. Canada sells more oil to the USA than the entire middle east!)

As for construction, there's a plus to build from wood on top of poured concrete.  It's easy to pull lines after the fact (e.g. ethernet, security system, etc.) Also, it's much easier to move walls around inside if you wish (open concept is pretty popular these days).  The negative is house fires.

Also, I do believe that we use wood here because it's very cheap!  I was at the local building store today and looked at the cost of wood.  a 2x4x8' is less than 2$!!  I'm sure home builders probably get it for even less!!!

[Blanka]

Concrete and wood do not differ in gas use, but in speed. A wooden house has more "speed" than a concrete one.
In warm countries, they use low speed to take coldness from the night into the day, hence the limestone blocks or clay-covered wooden frames in traditional building there.
In cold countries you have to heat 24/7 in winter, so the low speed is irrelevant.... until we started to isolate like shit!
By the way, your Canadian building habit is caused by:
1) availability of wood
2) pretty good insulation of wood by itself
We built in clay bricks because:
1) rivers give lot of clay
2) soil contained lot of "leem" to burn for baking the clay.
With the discovery of a big cement-pit south of Maastricht, and all the previous not useful pebble sand in the rivers, we moved to partly concrete building.
But with things like modern hard foam like rigid phenolic insulants (forget rockwool, it is shit for insulation), the low-weight wooden building may be not that good any more. With our huge increase in insulation, damping the fluctuations over time becomes more and more important. That's why green roofs are so popular. They add mass to the face of a building that receives most heat. So using wood for your home might not be that smart any more in Canada. At least, not for the structure.
For façade covering, traditional building techniques always win from modern international borrowings. Our traditional façade materials have proven to withstand the climate for centuries.

The negative is house fires.

I heard that in all new houses in the Netherlands from the 1993 building law up till now, no-one ever died because of a fire.

[level42]

Interesting to read about the situation in Canada's cities. However, my wife has some family in Canada and they are farmers and they are very remote so they may well heat on oil as well. I'm not sure about that, but my uncle in MA moved from a suburb of Boston to a more rural area close to North-Adams. I guess that's why  they're not connected to gas lines. I know they had to blow away rocks with dynamite to build the house and that about every winter the (above ground) electricity lines get struck down at least one time each winter.

Everything is underground here, I don't think I remember seeing any electrical above ground wiring, except for the really big power lines of course, but in our soil it's very easy (and thus cheap) to put it underground.

About the wood price: that is simply incredible. Wood is _very_ expensive over here (like most stuff) but I guess Canada has so much wood available....we have very little wood production here in our own country.


@Blanka, yeah I think the main cost is never in the very basic structure right ? The more labor intensive stuff is probably adding to the costs, and of course our ground is expensive in "de randstad" area. And I'm sure they make (made ?) some good profits back then, but I live in this house for almost 15 years now, and even now it has been an excellent investment. It's value has increase about 2.9 times since then, even with the recent price developments (which has little impact on my kind of house).

About the rockwool: is it really that bad ? I used it in my gameroom for the walls. 7cm. thick and it was pretty freaking expensive.



[PS, since I find this a very interesting discussion I didn't notice that this is in Bruno's building of his Lair 1,2 and 3......hope you don't mind Bruno, maybe it would be better to start a separate thread ?)]

[Blanka]

The stuff I talk about insulates 4 times as good at just 6.5 cm!

About the wood price: that is simply incredible. Wood is _very_ expensive over here (like most stuff) but I guess Canada has so much wood available....we have very little wood production here in our own country.

We are investigating prefabrication of all wooden stuff in Canada and have it containered. Price will be around 35% of regular Dutch production, and for the price you get the better Western Red Cedar instead of Pine. They even can work from Dutch window-frame-profile standards and accept metric CAD files for CNC-ing.

[leonk]

Blanka,

western red cedar lasts longer than pine, but homes are not build from that material here.  Cedar is as expensive as pressure treated wood (pine) (i.e. 2-3 times the cost), so it's only used outdoors for its beauty and smell.  Expensive decks are build from cedar, but the joists/support beams (stuff you don't see) is made from pressure treated.  Keep in mind that the red cedar you buy today is not as good as stuff you purchased 20 years ago.  Red cedar today is what we call "new growth" where the rings aren't as tight together .. it doesn't last outdoors as long as the old growth (which is close to impossible to find).

If money was no object, than homes in Canada will be build like this: (all custom homes, and new homes are starting to be like this)

- Styrofoam forms (with steel rebar) filled with concrete foundation.  The Styrofoam remains behind as a good insulator/water proofer.
- rest of house build from pine injected with special blue liquid.  It's like pressure treatment, but made for indoor.  It doesn't rot, have any gases, and ants/termites hate it.
- for insulation, you use spray foam on site (e.g. WALLTITE ECO) - all structural walls are build from 2x6 wood. (expect R22 with perfect air tight seal, fully thermal breakage from outside)
- roof has blown in insulation - R50 minimum (by code!)
- the outside of the house has brick or stone veneer for beauty
- all windows are triple pane, low-e argon glass filled

A home like this is so tight, that it requires a heat exchanger to bring in fresh air from outside!  Requires very little heating/AC to keep warm/cool.

As for rockwool, we have a similar product here (it's called Roxul - it's made of Basalt rock and Recycled Slag).  I've used it before and like it a lot more than pink insulation.  It's fire proof, and better insulator!  I've seen a blow torch sitting against this insulation for hours, and nothing happened to it!  It's required by code to insulate around pod lights, fireplace vents, and anywhere where high heat might exist and insulation is required.

[level42]

The stuff I talk about insulates 4 times as good at just 6.5 cm!

Damn, I should have known that earlier !.....no way I'm going to re-do the plasterboard walls again....

About metric in Canada: they switched back in the late 80's AFAIK.

As a matter of fact, the US is still the only country in the world that uses something else.....