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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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).
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.
Readit News
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.
https://youtu.be/325HdQe4WM4
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.
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.
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.
Wouldn't bother me. But I'm an engineer. But I think the holes can be plugged with removable plugs.
Other “tells” in the comment are the subscript “2” and the full spelling of the chemical. Also 3 emdashes
The gypsum used in New Zealand is mined locally.
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.
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.
No damage to paint so far, though we've only had them on the walls for about a year.
I was at the Rijksmuseum recently and they use a wire system like this for all manner of configurations
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It does indeed.
There’s a portion of our populace who accepts waking up tired with flu-like symptoms daily.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's mostly unused. I have PoE wifi access points around the house. And the sound system I hardly use.
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.
Concrete or brick buildings are much nicer to live in, but expensive, so they are not very common among new constructions.
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.
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.
Here's a timelapse of a Swedish house being built: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbSm0Zw00Cs
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.
I personally like houses that use Insulated Concrete Forms for the exterior walls.
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.
Dead Comment
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.
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.
yikes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
https://www.construction-physics.com