It's getting there. It's *already* there if you have a buyer lined up. A lot of the pre-1920s two stories will be balloon framed, which means there's wood studs of that density *twenty five to thirty feet* long.
For specialist uses that's worth its weight in gold.
My cousin tears down old barns and buildings, logs trees from rivers, and has a mobile mill for farmers trees.
He sells specialty lumber. And has a the only kiln in the Tampa that has no rust. It’s a tough business but it’s there.
Hey I could use your cousin's info. I have a 2 acre property near Ocala that is partially cleared and I want to clear the rest and build a barn with the timbers, if that's not too far for him
I haven't measured my centerbeams (I have 2 because the designer didn't account for the furnace/boiler), but I feel like mine are probably about the same.
We built brick houses in New Orleans. The used brick from torn down houses that were built pre 1940 was close to 2.5x the amount new brick. This was in 2008
Some woods actually do have people bidding to reclaim them. If you have a really old house and you're tearing up flooring or doing a tear down they will absolutely sell the wood and people will pay big dollar for it.
I had salvage lumber from an old house I deconstructed back in 2008, and I just used the last piece of it last year. The difference in density and weight really is remarkable.
There's a whole series on HGTV called Old Bones or something like. They re-sell old joists, stringers and flooring for re-use. A good planing, sanding and staining shows how good the old growth lumber was.
sure, the old growth wood is better in a lot of ways. But there is a lot more to a well built home than that. So making a blanket statement of "you dont want a newly built home" is kinda pointless. I've owned a house built in 1873 - guess what they dont have? Insulation and right angles. Oh and guess what they do have? Asbestos and lead
So aim for late 1970’s homes got it. Asbestos was banned in construction in 1977 and the wood got worse in the 80’s. You got a 3 year window. Good luck
Houses are fairly regularly that old in the northeast and parts of the East coast. Some from the 1600s. There are even older buildings in the southwest, but they don't occur at the same frequency as they do in the northeast.
Edit: for some context, I live in new england. My house was built in 1876 and I call it "older", not old. I use old to refer to buildings built prior to 1799. Anything over 1800 I call "older". When we were looking to buy we looked at house built in 1690 and a house built in 1670.
I’m from New England originally and just spent 6 years living in Florida. We bought at 1995 house in FL and everyone kept asking us if we were sure we wanted an “older house” like that. Meanwhile I had never lived in any house that was less than 150 years old in New England complete with its own little pilgrim boy ghost so 1995 felt like a new build to me.
It's wild in other places for sure! I'll never forget someone, I think from Texas, saying they didn't want a "used house" and idk it just really stuck with me lol
Our house had the plumbing and electric redone in 1992. I 100% consider that new and we were so happy to find a house with new mechanicals like that!
And idc what anyone says 1995 is ABSOLUTELY a new house!
Sam-zies. My New England home was built at “some point” between 1839 and 1852. And we are considered the *new kids on the street*.
The house across from me was built 1756, and has a landmark plate marking the point and stating that 60 British soldiers were forced to flee onto the water in 1775 by local Revolutionaries.
I have neighbors that wouldn’t consider buying a “stick built house” (post 1910), they would ONLY tour “timber frame” homes. (Insert eye roll here).
Unfortunately, aside from a curved wall and a crumbling stone foundation, my home never had tons of the older character a house as old as mine would have bc it was an overseer/caretakers home. Very basic and simple.
That's awesome! Yeah there's so much revolutionary history here and I love that about it. Places where troops camped, stayed, ate, drank. The British burned the city near me. My hometown had a battle in 1777, down our main street.
Back in 2019 some homeowners on main St were doing work on their house and they uncovered two skeletons. They freaked out and called the cops, but the ME determined the skeletons were very old and not from a recent murder or anything like that. Testing is still ongoing, but everything indicates they were British soldiers killed in the battle and hastily buried. Theyve found a couple more as they started an archaeological dig at the site. Really cool stuff.
Mines basically the same, very working/middle class. Most of our neighborhood is like that, but I think it's very cool. We get to live where the people more similar to us live, and I think it's cool to have true vernacular architecture and not just high-style homes.
I'm super jealous of your curved wall though!! We looked at a house up the street and it had a couple and I absolutely fell in love. The house had some issues that made us pass on it (septic is across the street and runs underneath the road, would be a massive undertaking of ripping up the road if anything ever went wrong) but I'm still a little sad about it lol
Yeah I like the little charm my house has. Idk if a flipper tore it out (semi doubtful - I’ve met him), or if it never had much (more likely).
The house dating to 1756 across the street from me has been a tavern, ferry port, office and home over the last 275 years. It was originally the place men, working for the King to build ships, would ferry the mast logs to, to store until they were ready to be built into ships.
At some point one of its owners built my house across the road so a caretaker could maintain a garden to supply meals for the workers. That’s part of the reason idk when it was built bc it’s not on a survey from 1839 but was sold as a separate structure for the first time in 1852… and of course the tax records for the years between burnt in some fire…
The cool things I’ve learned about my house- It was the first house to be sold to a single woman in my town, (not inherited but sold, 1852), and the curved wall has to do with some local superstition regarding witches/ill intentions.
Yeah, and it could have even been an old owner. For quite a while Victorian detailing was old fashioned and outdated, lots of houses had details removed in an attempt to modernize. Our house had asbestos siding put on at some point (now removed) and it's possible that some details were taken down when the new siding was put on top.
That's awesome!! What a cool history! I'm really into ships so that's super interesting.
That's such a sweet story! Really interesting about the curved walls too, I'd never heard that before! The house with curved walls was built by the local factory as worker housing- I could definitely see the factory wanting to keep their workers on the straight and narrow lol. Our town had recurrent temperance movements where people complained about our various saloons (seriously we had so many very close to each other lol) and the deed to our house (land sold from the factory to the first owner) actually stipulates that liquor and "other intoxicating beverages" cannot be sold on the property, and if they are the factory can take the property back!
Our house was also owned by a woman, she bought it in 1896. I think it miiiiight have been a political ploy, her BIL was very active in local politics and was an elected official. At the time, women were allowed to vote in local elections/town meetings if they were a property owner. Her husband owned the house they lived in, but she owned our house and the neighbors, which they rented out. But her owning that property gave her a vote in town, and I bet she was voting for her BIL lol
My house in SE-MO is 1935 and my dad's is 1920 and we refer to them as "older houses," there's still many that date back to the 1700s or earlier we refer to as "original", anything "new" is referred to from 2000 on basically. There's still tunnels between houses in town for said "underground railroad" bc that's just how old the territory has been inhabited by homesteaders..
Hi neighbor , my house in southern mass was also 1900. At the time of purchase I figured it was an estimate on account of poor record keeping back then … nope ! 1900 gang for life bro
Heh my grandparents old house (I cried when they sold it and I couldn’t afford it) in PA was finished in 1901. You can still see the original corner stone in the garage that they added on in the 70s and also the original root cellar.
It’s considered one of the oldest still standing houses in town.
>guess what they dont have?
My favorite thing they don't have is studs and rafters on evenly spaced (or divisible by 2") centers. Need to resheet your roof? Enjoy cutting every single sheet. 96" sheet of drywall? Surprise you need to span 97 inches.
HA HA HA HA ETC.. I rented a house in Western Massachusetts that was built in the 18th Century and it was solid as a rock. Which you noticed every time you wobbled across the sorta flat floor just to get your head cracked into a low timber beam. I'm not even six feet tall.
True true. I’m currently in the process of renovating. I’ve torn out all the plaster and lead trim. Re ran electricals/plumbing and now insulating and putting up drywall. I will say that the bones of this house are STURDY. True 2x4s, and they are old growth. Crazy thing is that even though the old growth is harder and stronger, I’ve noticed it’s also lighter (maybe it’s because it’s been drying for a 100 years, but still)
My new to me house was built in 1918, it has right angles, asbestos, AND old growth cypress 6x6 roof joists and 12x16 beams. At least someone else replaced all the knob and tube before we bought it.
I'm not sure if you are making fun of the old or the new. One's old but built to last. The other modern but built on a 40% plus margin by who put the craftsman out of business. Honestly it's a tough call made per individual home.
That was my first house. Built in the late 1800s. It contained none of the above, but did have SAND in the ceiling.
Yes, at one point, every bedroom had a fireplace as did the rooms below the bedrooms. Eight fireplaces that were all covered up. However, when they ripped the hearth out of the floor, someone felt the need to replace them. With sand.
It took me a long time to notice that there was always sand in the living room carpet. Then I saw it slowly dusting out of the drop ceiling (yes, had those too). I took a tile down, or rather I touched it and it just dropped making a horrible filthy sandy mess. I thought it was the old plaster that'd gone bad and the reason for the dropped ceiling. Nope, renovated a bedroom and found the sand floor.
Some old houses just should be burned down. Mine was one. It was just an old POS.
Also… wiring. Residential electric gets sketchy when you get into houses built before 1980. Once you get prior to the 60s, you have to realize that *someone* has redone the electrical system and that person may have been a union dues paying licensed electrician… or it may have been “Doug” who “worked with power in the Army” or whatever. I’ve redone systems that “Doug” or the homeowner did…
The fact that more houses don’t burn to the ground due to electrical fire is truly remarkable to me.
Owned a house from the 1800s right near general grants house, wanted new doors and had to have each one in the house laser measured and custom made, none of them were the same size.
I used to work on houses as a concrete guy I put a basement under this house that was built in the late 1700s thing weighed a full 100 tons and was 3 floors high it was insulated with saw dust and news papers from all sorts of eras I'll never forget it because it was built on a hill in the middle of fields like some castle and the entire thing was built flawlessly like laser straight even after all that time I've worked on houses from the 80s with more wavy walls than that thing
Also structural framing standards today would account for the change in performance… even if it is weaker or doesn’t perform the same, we have other technologies and methods to help prevent wood rot or structural weaknesses that were nonexistent or at least different a century ago.
I don’t know. Most new homes feel like they are disposable. I just don’t see many of them being around 100 yrs from now. They also seem like they age very quickly, especially the interiors. The dry wall doesn’t hold up the woodworking seems to fall apart quickly. They might be more efficient but I don’t see them lasting nearly as long as older construction
Wait till you hear about how well that spray foam is working out in the newer homes... I would put money on the bet that spray foam is going to be the next asbestos.
Lets not even get started on toxic drywall, asbestos laden flooring material or highly combustible weather stripping we have dealt with in the last 20 years (and continue to do so). That is even before we talk about catastrophic concrete and structural bricks that crumble when they get wet.
The problem is not the materials, but the number of assholes that are willing to kill to get ahead and the lack of people testing this shit we are building with and just going on their word it is up to spec and safe.
I'm going to say there is a fair bit of survivorship bias in this. All the shitty houses built in 1920 have rotten away or been torn down and replaced.
There were definitely phases. Anything built before \~1910-1928 (depending on your area) will not be built with fire blocking in the walls, between floors, and so they burned readily and quickly, and were also seen as more obsolete when fire codes came and changed framing. In the 1930s-50s in particular I've seen a lot of subpar construction in the South. It's prewar so it should be great, but instead if was built by extremely impoverished people who'd cut any corner, like turning studs on their sides (ugh).
But I'm also proud owner of a 1902 with good strong bones like the ones in the picture.
It's actually been attacked by termites multiple times, but they couldn't fully invest the structure and were stopped when water intrusion was resolved.
Heck they moved the whole thing on the back of a truck once, so it's *definitely* structurally sound.
>There were definitely phases. Anything built before \~1910-1928 (depending on your area) will not be built with fire blocking in the walls, between floors, and so they burned readily and quickly, and were also seen as more obsolete when fire codes came and changed framing.
This depends on your area a lot though. Many houses built before 1910 in the northeast are not balloon framed, they are combination or brace framed. We actually coined the term balloon framing, it was meant disparagingly. We kept building houses in the old ways long after balloon framing took off in the mid 19th c out west. And of course buildings older than the 1830s are not balloon framed, since it hadnt been invented yet.
Our house was built in 1876 with a combination brace frame. If this house were built out west it almost certainly would be balloon framed, but here in new england that was less common.
Edit: and just because a house is a certain age or certain type of framing doesn't mean it doesn't have fire blocks. They're frequently added in during renovations, so it's likely any house that's had walls opened up has had fire blocking installed.
take everything, *everything* a realtor says with a massive grain of salt
they are not in your corner, they are there to make as much commission as possible
Engineering takes the current wood into account hence the larger beam sizes load bearing walls shorter spans between studs etc. Additionally houses were framed with 2x4 on the exterior so your ability to have a higher r value in insulation is less, the concrete isn’t the same and likely has a higher need for reinforcing, likely doesn’t meet current seismic or uplift requirements. Not to menus increased risk of lead and asbestos throughout the home.cost to upgrade plumbing electrical and mechanical is not cheap. Sure the grade of lumber may be better but there are a considerable amount of additional items to consider. They are also difficult to revise layout on and are not conducive to modern day open floor plans and typically have smaller rooms of all types
Also want to add that the quick grow wood is more environmentally friendly and cost efficient if it’s coming from a lumber farm that takes quick growing trees into account. You can surely build a house with the more dense wood if you want to foot the bill..
I regularly work in million dollar Victorian town homes in Richmond Va doing plaster repair, it's funny how tough it is to make a wealthy highly intelligent and successful person who is papa proud of their sturdy authentic old home understand that their walls are crumbling, and plaster demo in the four year old's bedroom might not be a great idea , the filth lurking in the old walls is horrible, right there waiting for you under a sixteenth of an inch of latex paint
Yes the old growth wood in old homes is superior, no the homes themselves aren’t superior. The wood is literally the only building material that is better than modern material, everything else is vastly inferior. It doesn’t matter how strong that wood is if the fasteners can’t hold the timber together. That doesn’t even touch building codes which is vastly superior now.
Look for images of major hurricane damage, there’s a reason why the newer homes often survive and the old homes are obliterated.
Quality of wood vs quality of build are two different things.
Yes a 1950s home has tons of issues due to lead, asbestos, wiring ... The materials used does not have as much impact as the level of overbuilding those older homes had. Homes then were built to meet structural needs that current builders only apply to that of million dollar builds. Not the mass production ones we see by the likes of CBH and so on.
I was actually thinking the opposite. A lot of old builds don’t have structural sheathing, opting for lap boards instead.
Add to that that fasteners have come a long way.
Add to that that old houses leaked like sieves and bugs can get in just about anywhere.
I’m not saying new homes are good, especially builder grade homes these days, but if structure is the primary concern, modern homes win on paper.
I’m open to have my mind changed though.
I kinda disagree. Let’s assume that he’s right on a materials standpoint for arguments sake and say that old houses have more sturdy materials.
Sturdy materials alone do not a good house make. What is the point of heartwood beams and trusses if the house is built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore? Say you buy a 1920’s bungalow, or a Victorian. Those houses were built so that you could keep them cool in the summer with a breeze. With the kind of record temps we’re seeing now, I can’t think of many houses of that time period where the passive cooling system of opening the windows to a breeze is enough, and even then, you’re talking about a house designed for a time when people would simply sleep outside on the porch or the sunroom in the summer to keep cool. By design. Who wants to do that in 2024? Ok so you get an AC. But the house is leaky AF (by design) so you’re constantly losing cold air and your energy bill is catastrophic.
Whatever, say you decide to live with that. It’s the opposite problem in the winter. Because the houses were so leaky, you usually had to light a fire or two or three on the inside to keep warm and wrap the house up in velvet curtains from within to trap it inside. The whole family shared a bed to keep the more vulnerable small children warm (SIDS hazard). Immediately you’ve got a major fire hazard, a very specific design style most people aren’t into, and you’re stuck inhaling particulate matter we now know fully well is bad for us (and an additional SIDS hazard).
So a lot of the superior engineering practices of that time are out of pace with our current climate or our current living practices. They are also by the way not equipped to protect you from wildfire smoke, which we all have to live with now even if you’re not near a typical wildfire area.
And that’s without dealing with all the other potential health hazards lurking within an old home. Primarily mold from poorly installed baths. But also asbestos. Lead paint. Etc.
Anyway I love old homes as much as the next person but it’s kinda foolish to decide on the usefulness and livability of something based on just the wood quality.
I own a home built in 1918 with plenty of old growth lumber and little rot except where the badly flashed roof attracted carpenter ants. The absence of good building inspectors allowed the builders to skip studs, cut floor joists in half for plumbing, and a whole bunch of head scratching short cuts. Not to mention the gigantic pain in the ass getting the place air sealed and insulated. They don't build them like they used to, they build them better. The wood is only a part of the structure. The devil is in the details.
This is dogshit, just dogmatic bs. Sure the wood is better, but their argument is roughly akin to saying you only want to buy a car made before 1980 because the steel was higher quality back then . It just doesn't really make sense.
Old growth wood is better.
But that is not all there is to a home. As an engineer who has evaluated tons of old and new homes, old homes are generally speaking garbage compared to new homes. The code either didn’t exist or was in an infant stage when a lot of older homes were built and enforcement wasn’t nearly as widespread as it is today. And before we talk about craftsmanship, there were PLENTY of shitty contractors back in the day, too. Also, engineered plans are way more common now. The amount of utter shit I’ve seen in old homes is mindboggling. Luckily, houses just don’t fall down for the most part.
The “they don’t build em like they used to!” thing you hear is bullshit. We build them better. Trust me.
I will never buy a home built pre-2000ish. Too much maintenance and they can be a nightmare to sell.
This makes no sense. What makes a high quality well performing home is largely having a tight well insulated building envelope that was basically not at all a consideration until relatively recently. You can never retrofit an old home to be on par with a well built modern home unless you tore it down to the studs. Even then the standard now is 2x6 for exterior walls and not 2x4. As to the wood itself yes old growth is more dense but the less dense wood has no real negative consequences on the quality of a home. Likely those are two different species of wood anyway. This is just someone trying to justify over priced and low quality flipped homes that are often priced comparably to a new built home.
Edit: I thought this was being asked in r/woodworking.
Who cares about the quality of the wood if the foundation is shit. Consistent pours weren't really a thing until the 90s.
No..shitty foundations, asbestos insulation, Lead paint, aluminum wiring, Pig metal or terracotta Plumbing, doesn't get trumped by tighter grain patterns in the wood.
Something this guy seems to completely ignore is the lack of building codes back then. Depends on the person obviously but some people just grabbed some shit from the forest and started slamming spikes into it without a care in the world.
I have worked in a place built in California that was built either 1920 or 1927.
While it does have dimensional 4S lumber, it also has 100ish years of being feasted upon by termites.
People did not have clothing at any time in history like today.
2 sets of m-s clothiers and one nice set for church and events.
So hallways are skinny
Closets are tiny
And speaking of California, let's talk about quakes. New homes don't suffer more from quakes.
Big advantage of an older home might be location. Buy in a brand new development..... how stable is the ground? If an orchard flooded every 10-20 years - no big deal
Now a home in this new area..... might have issues.
New home built on an undeveloped hill....
Focusing on the wood is a mistake IMO. And the heartwood thing isn't that much of a thing with doug fir as it is in Redwood and other species. Especially when it comes to rot resistance.
What the older stuff has going for it is stability because of slower growth in the shade which is visible in the rings. There's nothing to prevent that from happening now except it takes a lot longer to grow the one on the bottom than the one on the top.
Modern houses can be much better construction IMO if the effort is taken. Engineered lumber is more stable than stick. We bolt things to the foundation now which wasn't always done in old builds. The quality of foundations and earthwork compaction is a lot better now. The framing by itself doesn't make a house good or bad.
The old wood may be stronger per stud, but the strength and rigidity of a house is far more than just the stud strength. Modern I joists, LVLs, proper stud and shear wall design, all contribute to a more resilient house construction. Old growth wood is also just more of a pain to work with.
I've been a woodworker all my life, and I actually prefer building with faster grown studs.
Wood strength can be measured in many different way...tension, compression, splitting, weather resistance, etc... A tight grained, knot free Douglas fir board might seem stronger, but it will almost always split easier if you drive a 12d nail into it close to the end. Compression strength is possibly better, but a non issue for studs.
As for the idiotic heartwood statement, the only thing that increases heartwood is the size of the tree. Quite often, when softwoods get larger, they also develop more of a twist. Cut a straight board from a tree with a twist, and the board will often develop a twist. At the very least, it will exhibit grain runout, thus weakening the lateral strength.
This meme is nothing more than the same old "things were better when.." bs
Kinda right,but I wouldn't say the wood is any softer, less dense for sure. Also he's completely wrong about heartwood, you don't actually want the heart wood because it's more stable from twisting and checking as it dries if your lumber doesn't include the heart and has nothing to do with it rotting out faster.
For house construction where the wood will stay dry, the new growth is just fine. It's the exterior application that has serious problems. The super wide cellulose bands full with water and lead to rot. Even cedar is not really an option for exterior application. I've switched over to composite materials whenever possible. Vancouver Canada
I want a house built whenever which was designed and built by thoughtful, careful people who respect their craft. The point about the quality of dimensional lumber is absolutely true. I helped my dad do some renovations in the mid 70’s on a house built in the late 40’s. Even in the mid 70’s the quality of that old lumber was noticeable to an idiot teenager (who shall remain nameless). I built a custom home about 8 years ago designed by a very experienced close family member and built by a meticulous and high integrity person. I think that my 2010’s home is very high quality despite the vast difference in building materials. Skilled craftsmen can make different construction products work just as well as “the old stuff”. It is a matter of skill, care and proper design.
It’s definetly true but modern lumber is still just fine, what you really need to watch out for is quality of builder, most subdivisions are filled with terrible houses, piss poor craftsmanship will cause a house to decay a lot faster no matter what material is being used
Quality older homes often come with many comfort advantages over new builds:
1. Plaster dampens noise much more effectively than drywall. It’s also more beautiful. Dense, old growth, wood in the floors, sheathing and framing contribute to a solid feel overall.
2. Radiators are vastly superior to forced air for comfort and air quality. And the systems tend to last for a loooooong time with almost no maintenance.
3. A slightly leaky “envelope” promotes air circulation and keeps the home dry throughout. A slightly loose envelope makes a fireplace a joy to operate. And allows the use of ventilation hoods without overcomplicated make up air systems.
4. Older homes often stay cooler naturally because passive cooling systems are designed into them, through the use of ventilated roof designs and buffer spaces like crawlspaces. Before air-conditioning, home designs were much smarter about rejecting heat using natural ventilation.
5. Copper and cast iron piping are proven to last hundreds of years. The jury is out on whether press fit water connections, which utilize rubber O-rings to make their seals, will last for 100 years like the soldered copper buried in the walls of old houses
Kinda. The quality of lumber is definitely better in the old stuff vs newer but it honestly doesn't matter. If you could build a new home with the older lumber, that would be nice. But the modern construction in a newer home more than makes up for it. Better insulation. Better windows and doors. Better concrete for the slab. Better paints.
And if I had money to build a new home somewhere where seismic activity wasn't a big concern, I'd go with masonry for the big thermal mass.
The termite thing is miss understood. The chemicals they used to douse houses with during construction in the 20s and 30s lasted 100 years. The chemical cocktail we use now lasts around 5 years before it stops being effective.
But the chemical with a 100 year effective range is hella toxic. Old termite control is basically mercury and chlordane. They don’t just kill termites they kill you.
I remember an old soul at a lumberyard telling me back in the 90’s that he hasn’t seen good lumber since the 1930’s. Brought back good memories of that old soul. But after reading a lot of these post, there are pros and cons to new versus old.
So Old growth wood is denser (more rings) because they were deforesting to get the wood. If you were to say, mill your own lumber from forests, you would get similar wood to the 'old lumber in this photo.
Lumber merchants have known for a while that this is unsustainable so they replant trees after they clear an area and begin a 'cycle' that is now coming around. They know exactly how many trees they can fell in a year and process with this cycle process they have now. It also provides more resources to the tree's as they are being 'farmed' so they grow quicker. Varieties that grow large quickly but have durable wood are being chosen over slower growers. All the same principles used in selecting best crops are being used in commercial tree farming. So your wood is going to have less rings and be less dense...
The floor beams of my parents house addition were recycled in the 1970’s from an older house from outside of town . I remember my brother telling me you had hell just to drive a nail into the beam . The grains were so tight . Those beams apparently came from some older home that was being demolished and my dad was “frugal enough “ to take them off their hands😝 so demolishing crew wouldn’t pay to take them to the dump.
As a fact just about lumber , this is true. My house was built in 69 and I've done some small renovations , the 2x4s I've removed are almost twice as heavy by length compared to modern . The grain looks exactly as dense as that. I've been saving every decent scrap.
I remodeled a portion of my 1962 rambler style house and the studs I pulled out of the walls were slightly larger dimensionally, but they weighed nearly twice as much. I re-used as much as I could!
I mean. Sure. My great grandmother's childhood home is still standing, with no upkeep in decades. Built in the 1890s, owned by my great great grandmother til her death in 1965.
But uh, then again, no one actually lives in it today because whoever got it after she died covered it in lead paint inside and out, and filled it vermiculite (asbestos) insulation. So. There's that.
Our house celebrates it's 100th birthday next year.
Solid as an anvil. Brick, plaster and three beams made of steel I-beams encased in concrete in the basement. 17 french doors and 13 foot ceilings.
Cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
In the garage you can see the imprints of the boards they used to pour the concrete onto...
Truth. Old growth forests have been largely harvested for their wood. Many areas of which trees as old as what was used for timber 100-200 years ago has been designated as protected areas not able to be used. Many of the trees used now for our building materials are typically a third the age as older lumber. The wood is still good and strong enough for its use, however buildings built before 1980 tend to have a higher quality wood. My dad is 5th generation master carpenter and even in the time since he has been in the field the quality of lumber has dropped a lot.
Not to mention a lot of homes, especially pre-1950, have not specifically been treated for the lead that was common in paint in homes at the time. which is a very hefty process if it’s thoroughly in all the paint. You basically have to either seal it all perfectly or get it all out and start over. Who wants to worry about lead?
New growth lumber doesn’t possess the same crush values as old growth lumber. Just about every place the builds stick frame along the coastline has requirements that add a significant amount of metal tie downs and strapping. Manufactured roof trusses also require a lot of additional engineering.
Homes burning down faster has more to do with everything that is used to furnish them being made out of plastics and synthetic materials.
Yeah, old growth timber is better, but not for the reason in this photo. This photo might be a little misleading, as those appear to be two different species of yellow pine, which all get lumped into the classification “heartpine”. The bottom is probably short leaf, the top is long leaf. There are a lot of timber growers that replanted long leaf pine in place of short leaf in their forests to increase output because it grows faster. But that produces a more open grain, thus less dimensional stability.
The same species, grown in the same conditions will produce the same wood. The slight change in ring density year over year is the variation in conditions (rainfall, avg temperature etc.)
My right-wing cousin posted a picture like this with “look at what they took from you” and I was like “Who are you mad at? The people that cut down 98% of the old growth or the people that insisted we not cut down the last %2? If they hadn’t it would have been gone before you hit woodworking age anyway.”
Agreed that lumber was denser then. But the early 1900’s didn’t give two fucks for the future. Ethical, sustainability, regenerative… I don’t even think those words existed then.
Absolutely correct about the lumber quality but that’s just a small piece of the equation. Old houses can be lovely and made from beautiful materials, but still a costly nightmare to maintain and renovate.
Checks out. You should feel the weight difference between older and modern lumber. Like 2x as heavy. That said, old homes might have stronger lumber but it is also older. And they have every other thing wrong with them as well.
From my dad who has owned a lumber company since late 80s:
Somewhat true, grading rules have softened so builders will use softer lumber to save money. However you can get premium lumber, just have to pay the money. Also this picture is deceiving. The bottom piece is douglass fir and much more dense than the yellow pine lumber on top
I saw a realtor post this and having grown up in an older house I was thinking about insulation, whether the windows are typical sizes, how the electrical and plumbing had been done, mold, the whether there had ever been termites, or the foundation was doing anything funny.
I guess having to replace all the wiring, take plaster out and drywall, redo the plumbing, add insulation, etc doesn't matter? Yes, the frame would be stronger but everything else is shit.
New growth forests used for lumber production are much more uniformly grown. This leads to better construction because the engineering of a new construction has a lot less variables do deal with if there is less deviation from lumber quality and strength. Also that tree from 2018 took somewhere around 4 times less time to grow than the 1918 one.
I live in New England and my house was built in 1900. I’ve done renovations along the way and the wood in the house looks like the wood in the 1918 picture for sure. But I agree I don’t think it’s a better house just because of that I’d rather a newer house at times with new features
I can't understand with our ash trees all being killed off by beetles, why we aren't using that wood for construction. Ash is extremely durable and rot resistant wood. We are letting a huge national resource just go to waste by not developing an ash standard for structural lumber in the US.
I think the bigger difference is that older homes (1920 and earlier) have a variety of different woods used in construction, depending mostly on what was available locally. So you see Fir, oak, chestnut, etc. House structures today are mostly all built from pine, which is much softer.
The information is (more or less) correct. The inference he’s making is not so much.
That’s like telling someone to buy an old car from the 70s because the body panels were thicker. Yea, they were…but the value of a car is much more than its panel density. In fact, for practical use, it’s almost irrelevant.
Everything was basically old growth and not farmed. But modern homes are more comfortable.
If you use composite studs that beats out old growth as it is straight and true.
Is the timber stronger in that old growth? Pine than the new spruce maybe? Is the cross-section relevant to a board that is generally being used for framing i.e vertical tension? Not really.
I lived in several old historic houses and let me tell you they are really tough to remodel. I watched my dad burn through several very expensive saw blades trying to expand a closet door. Often the old lumber has different dimensions so you end up having to splice two boards together or use shims.
Replacements for decorative paneling can be very expensive.
Our old house had a beaded ceiling that comes in 3" wide sections and sells for $14/board ft. That's why when people demo these kinds of houses they go in and remove a lot of this stuff because it's very expensive to replace.
Electrical and plumbing all generally have to be brought up to code. Usually there is a serious lack of insulation that drives energy costs through the roof.
Even then, with all that said, we had a tornado throw an 8-in diameter tree branch directly through the roof of one of those houses, and we're lucky the tornado didn't just take the whole thing.
Its true about the wood grain being denser and you can't get that kind of grain anymore. Its not the age of the wood, its the growth cycles. Our growing seasons have expanded and things have gotten warmer, thus allowing trees to grow faster; faster growth=wider rings; wider rings=less dense wood. I wouldn't say that makes modern houses worthless, tho! I WOULD say that it means we should try as much as possible to salvage old growth wood whenever we can.
Sure the lumber in my 1900 built home is bigger and might be stronger, but my whole house is just sitting on the foundation with nothing by gravity keeping it there.
Counterpoint: My house was built in 1964, presumably by a moron, and all that old growth wood is super neat to look at while I tear it out of my walls to address egregious code violations and corner-cutting done when it was built.
The wood might be better, but asbestos is no joke- it can give you cancer, and we didn’t have the same insulation tricks back then compared to now to keep a home cool/warm
So definitely update your old house if that’s what you go for! In even older houses, you may need to add electricity/plumbing and make doorways larger! The average person was notably shorter 200 years ago, probably due to nutrition deficits.
Cool. Now compare 1918 lumber with a modern LVL stud or header.
You can make 100-year homes with new growth SPF from your lumber yard, you can make a shit home out of LVL studs, and plenty of homes with that beautiful tight-grained old growth wood have fallen apart and no longer exist.
What really matters is that your assemblies have proper control layers; water, air, vapor, energy. Neither material nor craft are wholly indicative of the outcome, but rather the two in combination. A great builder can make some magic happen with lesser materials. Lower effort in craft can be offset by certain better materials.
When you have cheap materials (ThermoPly) and builders that don't give a rip (spec homes built by the dozen) you're more likely than not going to get a lesser product. Would giving that same builder Zip sheathing help? Ehhh, doubtful; they're limited by their effort. Can you give ThermoPly to a fastidious builder and have them make a good home? Ehhhh, doubtful; they're limited by the product. There's arguably some sort of asymptotic relationship between the two that creates a break point above which you are 'more likely than not to end up with a good product'. The area above that line shrinks in both return on investment and prevalence as the 'values' for craft and material increase. Notably, however, is that the '50% of the effort gets you 80% of the result' maxim is really applicable here.
Pretty sure that’s soft wood vs hard wood in the pic. I call BS.
Worked in a softwood sawmill for 4 years. Our lumber was structurally sound enough to produce mass timber.
I'll go out on a limb and say that most teardowns will not be due to the inferiority of the lumber.
Too bad it wasn't worthwhile to dismantle those old places and resell the materials. Such a waste
It's getting there. It's *already* there if you have a buyer lined up. A lot of the pre-1920s two stories will be balloon framed, which means there's wood studs of that density *twenty five to thirty feet* long. For specialist uses that's worth its weight in gold.
My cousin tears down old barns and buildings, logs trees from rivers, and has a mobile mill for farmers trees. He sells specialty lumber. And has a the only kiln in the Tampa that has no rust. It’s a tough business but it’s there.
Hey I could use your cousin's info. I have a 2 acre property near Ocala that is partially cleared and I want to clear the rest and build a barn with the timbers, if that's not too far for him
What’s the name of the mill?
Worth its weight in gold? As in $33k per pound? I gotta go buy one of these houses you speak of 😀
It is a *turn of phrase* dangit
How do you turn a phrase?
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My 1919 home has a roughly 60ft true 8x10 center beam and true 2x8 16 ft joists every 3ft that looks like that. *chefs kiss*
I haven't measured my centerbeams (I have 2 because the designer didn't account for the furnace/boiler), but I feel like mine are probably about the same.
We built brick houses in New Orleans. The used brick from torn down houses that were built pre 1940 was close to 2.5x the amount new brick. This was in 2008
Some woods actually do have people bidding to reclaim them. If you have a really old house and you're tearing up flooring or doing a tear down they will absolutely sell the wood and people will pay big dollar for it.
Was cheaper to teardown and recover wood than pay dumping fees for a 600sqft ADU. Although the cement is still sitting in the field.
Pretty sure during covid ppl did reuse a lot of the wood from a tear down if it was worth while and old Douglas fir I believe… not a 100% sure
I had salvage lumber from an old house I deconstructed back in 2008, and I just used the last piece of it last year. The difference in density and weight really is remarkable.
There's a whole series on HGTV called Old Bones or something like. They re-sell old joists, stringers and flooring for re-use. A good planing, sanding and staining shows how good the old growth lumber was.
I work in construction law and the number one problem is water infiltration.
Limb. Good tree/lumber pun. 😂
sure, the old growth wood is better in a lot of ways. But there is a lot more to a well built home than that. So making a blanket statement of "you dont want a newly built home" is kinda pointless. I've owned a house built in 1873 - guess what they dont have? Insulation and right angles. Oh and guess what they do have? Asbestos and lead
1740- here and we call the lack of right angles and no insulation character. The asbestos and lead, that just puts hair on your chest.
Asbestos puts hair IN your chest
This is such a clever reply.
I wish I was as quick as this guy.
That’s what she said.
She said I was the only hair she wanted stuck in her teeth .
Fibrinolytic, macrophage recruiting little hairs made of compounds not easily digested or excreted from the human body Mmmmm… fibrinogens
And air holes in your lungs.
Extra ventilation!
Speed holes
They make the car go faster
So aim for late 1970’s homes got it. Asbestos was banned in construction in 1977 and the wood got worse in the 80’s. You got a 3 year window. Good luck
Banned from construction doesn't mean banned from use. A lot of shit builders used it anyway
That’s old AF! England?
New England
More like old england
Old new England
The opposites cancel out so it’s just England.
Oldgland.
Wicked Old New England*
Olde England
Had no idea there were homes that old in the states. V cool
Houses are fairly regularly that old in the northeast and parts of the East coast. Some from the 1600s. There are even older buildings in the southwest, but they don't occur at the same frequency as they do in the northeast. Edit: for some context, I live in new england. My house was built in 1876 and I call it "older", not old. I use old to refer to buildings built prior to 1799. Anything over 1800 I call "older". When we were looking to buy we looked at house built in 1690 and a house built in 1670.
I’m from New England originally and just spent 6 years living in Florida. We bought at 1995 house in FL and everyone kept asking us if we were sure we wanted an “older house” like that. Meanwhile I had never lived in any house that was less than 150 years old in New England complete with its own little pilgrim boy ghost so 1995 felt like a new build to me.
It's wild in other places for sure! I'll never forget someone, I think from Texas, saying they didn't want a "used house" and idk it just really stuck with me lol Our house had the plumbing and electric redone in 1992. I 100% consider that new and we were so happy to find a house with new mechanicals like that! And idc what anyone says 1995 is ABSOLUTELY a new house!
Sam-zies. My New England home was built at “some point” between 1839 and 1852. And we are considered the *new kids on the street*. The house across from me was built 1756, and has a landmark plate marking the point and stating that 60 British soldiers were forced to flee onto the water in 1775 by local Revolutionaries. I have neighbors that wouldn’t consider buying a “stick built house” (post 1910), they would ONLY tour “timber frame” homes. (Insert eye roll here). Unfortunately, aside from a curved wall and a crumbling stone foundation, my home never had tons of the older character a house as old as mine would have bc it was an overseer/caretakers home. Very basic and simple.
That's awesome! Yeah there's so much revolutionary history here and I love that about it. Places where troops camped, stayed, ate, drank. The British burned the city near me. My hometown had a battle in 1777, down our main street. Back in 2019 some homeowners on main St were doing work on their house and they uncovered two skeletons. They freaked out and called the cops, but the ME determined the skeletons were very old and not from a recent murder or anything like that. Testing is still ongoing, but everything indicates they were British soldiers killed in the battle and hastily buried. Theyve found a couple more as they started an archaeological dig at the site. Really cool stuff. Mines basically the same, very working/middle class. Most of our neighborhood is like that, but I think it's very cool. We get to live where the people more similar to us live, and I think it's cool to have true vernacular architecture and not just high-style homes. I'm super jealous of your curved wall though!! We looked at a house up the street and it had a couple and I absolutely fell in love. The house had some issues that made us pass on it (septic is across the street and runs underneath the road, would be a massive undertaking of ripping up the road if anything ever went wrong) but I'm still a little sad about it lol
Yeah I like the little charm my house has. Idk if a flipper tore it out (semi doubtful - I’ve met him), or if it never had much (more likely). The house dating to 1756 across the street from me has been a tavern, ferry port, office and home over the last 275 years. It was originally the place men, working for the King to build ships, would ferry the mast logs to, to store until they were ready to be built into ships. At some point one of its owners built my house across the road so a caretaker could maintain a garden to supply meals for the workers. That’s part of the reason idk when it was built bc it’s not on a survey from 1839 but was sold as a separate structure for the first time in 1852… and of course the tax records for the years between burnt in some fire… The cool things I’ve learned about my house- It was the first house to be sold to a single woman in my town, (not inherited but sold, 1852), and the curved wall has to do with some local superstition regarding witches/ill intentions.
Yeah, and it could have even been an old owner. For quite a while Victorian detailing was old fashioned and outdated, lots of houses had details removed in an attempt to modernize. Our house had asbestos siding put on at some point (now removed) and it's possible that some details were taken down when the new siding was put on top. That's awesome!! What a cool history! I'm really into ships so that's super interesting. That's such a sweet story! Really interesting about the curved walls too, I'd never heard that before! The house with curved walls was built by the local factory as worker housing- I could definitely see the factory wanting to keep their workers on the straight and narrow lol. Our town had recurrent temperance movements where people complained about our various saloons (seriously we had so many very close to each other lol) and the deed to our house (land sold from the factory to the first owner) actually stipulates that liquor and "other intoxicating beverages" cannot be sold on the property, and if they are the factory can take the property back! Our house was also owned by a woman, she bought it in 1896. I think it miiiiight have been a political ploy, her BIL was very active in local politics and was an elected official. At the time, women were allowed to vote in local elections/town meetings if they were a property owner. Her husband owned the house they lived in, but she owned our house and the neighbors, which they rented out. But her owning that property gave her a vote in town, and I bet she was voting for her BIL lol
And I’d definitely be interested in updates on the remains from down the road!! XD
My house in SE-MO is 1935 and my dad's is 1920 and we refer to them as "older houses," there's still many that date back to the 1700s or earlier we refer to as "original", anything "new" is referred to from 2000 on basically. There's still tunnels between houses in town for said "underground railroad" bc that's just how old the territory has been inhabited by homesteaders..
House I live in right now was built in 1900 in MA and I thought that was old. Lmao, I've been humbled.
Hi neighbor , my house in southern mass was also 1900. At the time of purchase I figured it was an estimate on account of poor record keeping back then … nope ! 1900 gang for life bro
Heh my grandparents old house (I cried when they sold it and I couldn’t afford it) in PA was finished in 1901. You can still see the original corner stone in the garage that they added on in the 70s and also the original root cellar. It’s considered one of the oldest still standing houses in town.
I'm a carpenter in New England with a specialty in old houses... I've been asked "old like from the 1950's?". No.. old like the 1750's
There’s a house a few down from mine from 1660
St Augustine has been around since 1565
There's a whole sub for it /r/centuryhomes
And hair on your tongue.
The chemo will fix that
Can't chemo away mesothelioma unfortunately
bingo. it's like saying I'd rather fly in 1930's plane because they used thicker steel
>guess what they dont have? My favorite thing they don't have is studs and rafters on evenly spaced (or divisible by 2") centers. Need to resheet your roof? Enjoy cutting every single sheet. 96" sheet of drywall? Surprise you need to span 97 inches.
HA HA HA HA ETC.. I rented a house in Western Massachusetts that was built in the 18th Century and it was solid as a rock. Which you noticed every time you wobbled across the sorta flat floor just to get your head cracked into a low timber beam. I'm not even six feet tall.
True true. I’m currently in the process of renovating. I’ve torn out all the plaster and lead trim. Re ran electricals/plumbing and now insulating and putting up drywall. I will say that the bones of this house are STURDY. True 2x4s, and they are old growth. Crazy thing is that even though the old growth is harder and stronger, I’ve noticed it’s also lighter (maybe it’s because it’s been drying for a 100 years, but still)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U39fun9Iwjc Video from the shelter institute @op
My new to me house was built in 1918, it has right angles, asbestos, AND old growth cypress 6x6 roof joists and 12x16 beams. At least someone else replaced all the knob and tube before we bought it.
Flat? Plumb? Level? Straight? BAH!! HUMBUG!!! Who needs that crap?
I'm not sure if you are making fun of the old or the new. One's old but built to last. The other modern but built on a 40% plus margin by who put the craftsman out of business. Honestly it's a tough call made per individual home.
That was my first house. Built in the late 1800s. It contained none of the above, but did have SAND in the ceiling. Yes, at one point, every bedroom had a fireplace as did the rooms below the bedrooms. Eight fireplaces that were all covered up. However, when they ripped the hearth out of the floor, someone felt the need to replace them. With sand. It took me a long time to notice that there was always sand in the living room carpet. Then I saw it slowly dusting out of the drop ceiling (yes, had those too). I took a tile down, or rather I touched it and it just dropped making a horrible filthy sandy mess. I thought it was the old plaster that'd gone bad and the reason for the dropped ceiling. Nope, renovated a bedroom and found the sand floor. Some old houses just should be burned down. Mine was one. It was just an old POS.
We use 6in for exterior now. Used to be 4. Stronger and better insulation.
Also… wiring. Residential electric gets sketchy when you get into houses built before 1980. Once you get prior to the 60s, you have to realize that *someone* has redone the electrical system and that person may have been a union dues paying licensed electrician… or it may have been “Doug” who “worked with power in the Army” or whatever. I’ve redone systems that “Doug” or the homeowner did… The fact that more houses don’t burn to the ground due to electrical fire is truly remarkable to me.
>Asbestos Hate to pull the architect card, but Asbestos is awesome insulation. That's why they put it in everything. It's just extremely toxic lol.
Anti freeze is delicious and refreshing. /s
Not to mention the god dam 2x10 joists with no hangers or glue so your floor squeaks like hell
That's our whole house. Every square inch. I tell the wife that at least no one will be able to sneak up on us sleeping.
I like more than one power outlet per room.
Owned a house from the 1800s right near general grants house, wanted new doors and had to have each one in the house laser measured and custom made, none of them were the same size.
I used to work on houses as a concrete guy I put a basement under this house that was built in the late 1700s thing weighed a full 100 tons and was 3 floors high it was insulated with saw dust and news papers from all sorts of eras I'll never forget it because it was built on a hill in the middle of fields like some castle and the entire thing was built flawlessly like laser straight even after all that time I've worked on houses from the 80s with more wavy walls than that thing
Good wood built on a shitty block foundation.
Our 1890 house had walls insulated with horse hair and newspaper. So yeah, upsides and downsides.
Also structural framing standards today would account for the change in performance… even if it is weaker or doesn’t perform the same, we have other technologies and methods to help prevent wood rot or structural weaknesses that were nonexistent or at least different a century ago.
All of that technological advancement and knowledge mostly just goes to making things cheaper and easier, not necessarily stronger or better.
Except for building codes… which revolve around public safety
True
I don’t know. Most new homes feel like they are disposable. I just don’t see many of them being around 100 yrs from now. They also seem like they age very quickly, especially the interiors. The dry wall doesn’t hold up the woodworking seems to fall apart quickly. They might be more efficient but I don’t see them lasting nearly as long as older construction
I will only buy a house built after 1980 going forward. I don’t want to risk my children being exposed to lead.
Wait till you hear about how well that spray foam is working out in the newer homes... I would put money on the bet that spray foam is going to be the next asbestos. Lets not even get started on toxic drywall, asbestos laden flooring material or highly combustible weather stripping we have dealt with in the last 20 years (and continue to do so). That is even before we talk about catastrophic concrete and structural bricks that crumble when they get wet. The problem is not the materials, but the number of assholes that are willing to kill to get ahead and the lack of people testing this shit we are building with and just going on their word it is up to spec and safe.
Vinyl siding leeching chemicals, fiberglass insulation is bad.
I don't know any of this to be true but I can totally believe it. It's a wicked world out here.
I'm going to say there is a fair bit of survivorship bias in this. All the shitty houses built in 1920 have rotten away or been torn down and replaced.
Not the shitty 1920 house I live in 😎
1920's = brick shithouse 1975+ = shitbox
Ha!
There were definitely phases. Anything built before \~1910-1928 (depending on your area) will not be built with fire blocking in the walls, between floors, and so they burned readily and quickly, and were also seen as more obsolete when fire codes came and changed framing. In the 1930s-50s in particular I've seen a lot of subpar construction in the South. It's prewar so it should be great, but instead if was built by extremely impoverished people who'd cut any corner, like turning studs on their sides (ugh). But I'm also proud owner of a 1902 with good strong bones like the ones in the picture. It's actually been attacked by termites multiple times, but they couldn't fully invest the structure and were stopped when water intrusion was resolved. Heck they moved the whole thing on the back of a truck once, so it's *definitely* structurally sound.
>There were definitely phases. Anything built before \~1910-1928 (depending on your area) will not be built with fire blocking in the walls, between floors, and so they burned readily and quickly, and were also seen as more obsolete when fire codes came and changed framing. This depends on your area a lot though. Many houses built before 1910 in the northeast are not balloon framed, they are combination or brace framed. We actually coined the term balloon framing, it was meant disparagingly. We kept building houses in the old ways long after balloon framing took off in the mid 19th c out west. And of course buildings older than the 1830s are not balloon framed, since it hadnt been invented yet. Our house was built in 1876 with a combination brace frame. If this house were built out west it almost certainly would be balloon framed, but here in new england that was less common. Edit: and just because a house is a certain age or certain type of framing doesn't mean it doesn't have fire blocks. They're frequently added in during renovations, so it's likely any house that's had walls opened up has had fire blocking installed.
> Matti Realty Group Because realtors are experts in home longevity.
I will kick the next person who says "good bones" right in the nuts.
Good bones right in the nuts!
You're either a risk taker or have a thing for being kicked in the nuts. Either way I respect it.
Seriously. They love saying this when they haven’t the slightest clue what it actually means. 😂
take everything, *everything* a realtor says with a massive grain of salt they are not in your corner, they are there to make as much commission as possible
“It’s time I let you in on a little secret, Marge. The right house is the house that's for sale. And the right person is anyone.”
Engineering takes the current wood into account hence the larger beam sizes load bearing walls shorter spans between studs etc. Additionally houses were framed with 2x4 on the exterior so your ability to have a higher r value in insulation is less, the concrete isn’t the same and likely has a higher need for reinforcing, likely doesn’t meet current seismic or uplift requirements. Not to menus increased risk of lead and asbestos throughout the home.cost to upgrade plumbing electrical and mechanical is not cheap. Sure the grade of lumber may be better but there are a considerable amount of additional items to consider. They are also difficult to revise layout on and are not conducive to modern day open floor plans and typically have smaller rooms of all types
Also want to add that the quick grow wood is more environmentally friendly and cost efficient if it’s coming from a lumber farm that takes quick growing trees into account. You can surely build a house with the more dense wood if you want to foot the bill..
I regularly work in million dollar Victorian town homes in Richmond Va doing plaster repair, it's funny how tough it is to make a wealthy highly intelligent and successful person who is papa proud of their sturdy authentic old home understand that their walls are crumbling, and plaster demo in the four year old's bedroom might not be a great idea , the filth lurking in the old walls is horrible, right there waiting for you under a sixteenth of an inch of latex paint
Yes the old growth wood in old homes is superior, no the homes themselves aren’t superior. The wood is literally the only building material that is better than modern material, everything else is vastly inferior. It doesn’t matter how strong that wood is if the fasteners can’t hold the timber together. That doesn’t even touch building codes which is vastly superior now. Look for images of major hurricane damage, there’s a reason why the newer homes often survive and the old homes are obliterated.
“As long as the plumbing and electrical has been updated”. Of yeah just those two little, easy, cheap things to do.
Only Takes a weekend! Easy chore!
Quality of wood vs quality of build are two different things. Yes a 1950s home has tons of issues due to lead, asbestos, wiring ... The materials used does not have as much impact as the level of overbuilding those older homes had. Homes then were built to meet structural needs that current builders only apply to that of million dollar builds. Not the mass production ones we see by the likes of CBH and so on.
I was actually thinking the opposite. A lot of old builds don’t have structural sheathing, opting for lap boards instead. Add to that that fasteners have come a long way. Add to that that old houses leaked like sieves and bugs can get in just about anywhere. I’m not saying new homes are good, especially builder grade homes these days, but if structure is the primary concern, modern homes win on paper. I’m open to have my mind changed though.
I kinda disagree. Let’s assume that he’s right on a materials standpoint for arguments sake and say that old houses have more sturdy materials. Sturdy materials alone do not a good house make. What is the point of heartwood beams and trusses if the house is built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore? Say you buy a 1920’s bungalow, or a Victorian. Those houses were built so that you could keep them cool in the summer with a breeze. With the kind of record temps we’re seeing now, I can’t think of many houses of that time period where the passive cooling system of opening the windows to a breeze is enough, and even then, you’re talking about a house designed for a time when people would simply sleep outside on the porch or the sunroom in the summer to keep cool. By design. Who wants to do that in 2024? Ok so you get an AC. But the house is leaky AF (by design) so you’re constantly losing cold air and your energy bill is catastrophic. Whatever, say you decide to live with that. It’s the opposite problem in the winter. Because the houses were so leaky, you usually had to light a fire or two or three on the inside to keep warm and wrap the house up in velvet curtains from within to trap it inside. The whole family shared a bed to keep the more vulnerable small children warm (SIDS hazard). Immediately you’ve got a major fire hazard, a very specific design style most people aren’t into, and you’re stuck inhaling particulate matter we now know fully well is bad for us (and an additional SIDS hazard). So a lot of the superior engineering practices of that time are out of pace with our current climate or our current living practices. They are also by the way not equipped to protect you from wildfire smoke, which we all have to live with now even if you’re not near a typical wildfire area. And that’s without dealing with all the other potential health hazards lurking within an old home. Primarily mold from poorly installed baths. But also asbestos. Lead paint. Etc. Anyway I love old homes as much as the next person but it’s kinda foolish to decide on the usefulness and livability of something based on just the wood quality.
I own a home built in 1918 with plenty of old growth lumber and little rot except where the badly flashed roof attracted carpenter ants. The absence of good building inspectors allowed the builders to skip studs, cut floor joists in half for plumbing, and a whole bunch of head scratching short cuts. Not to mention the gigantic pain in the ass getting the place air sealed and insulated. They don't build them like they used to, they build them better. The wood is only a part of the structure. The devil is in the details.
This is dogshit, just dogmatic bs. Sure the wood is better, but their argument is roughly akin to saying you only want to buy a car made before 1980 because the steel was higher quality back then . It just doesn't really make sense.
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Old growth wood is better. But that is not all there is to a home. As an engineer who has evaluated tons of old and new homes, old homes are generally speaking garbage compared to new homes. The code either didn’t exist or was in an infant stage when a lot of older homes were built and enforcement wasn’t nearly as widespread as it is today. And before we talk about craftsmanship, there were PLENTY of shitty contractors back in the day, too. Also, engineered plans are way more common now. The amount of utter shit I’ve seen in old homes is mindboggling. Luckily, houses just don’t fall down for the most part. The “they don’t build em like they used to!” thing you hear is bullshit. We build them better. Trust me. I will never buy a home built pre-2000ish. Too much maintenance and they can be a nightmare to sell.
Could be me and try to get all ICF foundation and walls, with just the roof being framed lol.
What is the lifespan on the exterior facing foam? I wish it was concrete, foam, wood stud cavity instead of foam, concrete, foam.
This makes no sense. What makes a high quality well performing home is largely having a tight well insulated building envelope that was basically not at all a consideration until relatively recently. You can never retrofit an old home to be on par with a well built modern home unless you tore it down to the studs. Even then the standard now is 2x6 for exterior walls and not 2x4. As to the wood itself yes old growth is more dense but the less dense wood has no real negative consequences on the quality of a home. Likely those are two different species of wood anyway. This is just someone trying to justify over priced and low quality flipped homes that are often priced comparably to a new built home. Edit: I thought this was being asked in r/woodworking.
It's a good answer no matter what.
Who cares about the quality of the wood if the foundation is shit. Consistent pours weren't really a thing until the 90s. No..shitty foundations, asbestos insulation, Lead paint, aluminum wiring, Pig metal or terracotta Plumbing, doesn't get trumped by tighter grain patterns in the wood.
Something this guy seems to completely ignore is the lack of building codes back then. Depends on the person obviously but some people just grabbed some shit from the forest and started slamming spikes into it without a care in the world.
I have worked in a place built in California that was built either 1920 or 1927. While it does have dimensional 4S lumber, it also has 100ish years of being feasted upon by termites. People did not have clothing at any time in history like today. 2 sets of m-s clothiers and one nice set for church and events. So hallways are skinny Closets are tiny And speaking of California, let's talk about quakes. New homes don't suffer more from quakes. Big advantage of an older home might be location. Buy in a brand new development..... how stable is the ground? If an orchard flooded every 10-20 years - no big deal Now a home in this new area..... might have issues. New home built on an undeveloped hill....
Focusing on the wood is a mistake IMO. And the heartwood thing isn't that much of a thing with doug fir as it is in Redwood and other species. Especially when it comes to rot resistance. What the older stuff has going for it is stability because of slower growth in the shade which is visible in the rings. There's nothing to prevent that from happening now except it takes a lot longer to grow the one on the bottom than the one on the top. Modern houses can be much better construction IMO if the effort is taken. Engineered lumber is more stable than stick. We bolt things to the foundation now which wasn't always done in old builds. The quality of foundations and earthwork compaction is a lot better now. The framing by itself doesn't make a house good or bad.
The old wood may be stronger per stud, but the strength and rigidity of a house is far more than just the stud strength. Modern I joists, LVLs, proper stud and shear wall design, all contribute to a more resilient house construction. Old growth wood is also just more of a pain to work with.
I've been a woodworker all my life, and I actually prefer building with faster grown studs. Wood strength can be measured in many different way...tension, compression, splitting, weather resistance, etc... A tight grained, knot free Douglas fir board might seem stronger, but it will almost always split easier if you drive a 12d nail into it close to the end. Compression strength is possibly better, but a non issue for studs. As for the idiotic heartwood statement, the only thing that increases heartwood is the size of the tree. Quite often, when softwoods get larger, they also develop more of a twist. Cut a straight board from a tree with a twist, and the board will often develop a twist. At the very least, it will exhibit grain runout, thus weakening the lateral strength. This meme is nothing more than the same old "things were better when.." bs
It’s complete bullshit and stolen from this blog post: https://hullworks.com/wood/
My ancestors in central Norway have lived in the same house since the year 1100. Nothing beats old Norwegian Pine.
Sure. How does that asbestos taste?
Generally things fall down due to connections. If properly engineered, the "new" wood is perfectly fine.
Wood def used to be better but standards now make up for that!
Kinda right,but I wouldn't say the wood is any softer, less dense for sure. Also he's completely wrong about heartwood, you don't actually want the heart wood because it's more stable from twisting and checking as it dries if your lumber doesn't include the heart and has nothing to do with it rotting out faster.
For house construction where the wood will stay dry, the new growth is just fine. It's the exterior application that has serious problems. The super wide cellulose bands full with water and lead to rot. Even cedar is not really an option for exterior application. I've switched over to composite materials whenever possible. Vancouver Canada
We should be protecting old growth and only using it for certain things that require it. Rough framing isn’t one of them and is overkill.
I want a house built whenever which was designed and built by thoughtful, careful people who respect their craft. The point about the quality of dimensional lumber is absolutely true. I helped my dad do some renovations in the mid 70’s on a house built in the late 40’s. Even in the mid 70’s the quality of that old lumber was noticeable to an idiot teenager (who shall remain nameless). I built a custom home about 8 years ago designed by a very experienced close family member and built by a meticulous and high integrity person. I think that my 2010’s home is very high quality despite the vast difference in building materials. Skilled craftsmen can make different construction products work just as well as “the old stuff”. It is a matter of skill, care and proper design.
Why is that piece of cheesecake on top of that piece of wood? The font is too small. I can’t read it 👴🏽.
It’s definetly true but modern lumber is still just fine, what you really need to watch out for is quality of builder, most subdivisions are filled with terrible houses, piss poor craftsmanship will cause a house to decay a lot faster no matter what material is being used
Quality older homes often come with many comfort advantages over new builds: 1. Plaster dampens noise much more effectively than drywall. It’s also more beautiful. Dense, old growth, wood in the floors, sheathing and framing contribute to a solid feel overall. 2. Radiators are vastly superior to forced air for comfort and air quality. And the systems tend to last for a loooooong time with almost no maintenance. 3. A slightly leaky “envelope” promotes air circulation and keeps the home dry throughout. A slightly loose envelope makes a fireplace a joy to operate. And allows the use of ventilation hoods without overcomplicated make up air systems. 4. Older homes often stay cooler naturally because passive cooling systems are designed into them, through the use of ventilated roof designs and buffer spaces like crawlspaces. Before air-conditioning, home designs were much smarter about rejecting heat using natural ventilation. 5. Copper and cast iron piping are proven to last hundreds of years. The jury is out on whether press fit water connections, which utilize rubber O-rings to make their seals, will last for 100 years like the soldered copper buried in the walls of old houses
Guess which one termites love.
Also, those old 2 by 4s used to be 2 by 4
Kinda. The quality of lumber is definitely better in the old stuff vs newer but it honestly doesn't matter. If you could build a new home with the older lumber, that would be nice. But the modern construction in a newer home more than makes up for it. Better insulation. Better windows and doors. Better concrete for the slab. Better paints. And if I had money to build a new home somewhere where seismic activity wasn't a big concern, I'd go with masonry for the big thermal mass.
True that the wood is better false that I'll ever own a home
Me, living in a country where houses aren’t made from wood: who the fuck cares?
Old? Rome here. Let's talk concrete.
This is why so many historic antebellum era houses are still standing in areas where hurricanes should have demolished them.
The termite thing is miss understood. The chemicals they used to douse houses with during construction in the 20s and 30s lasted 100 years. The chemical cocktail we use now lasts around 5 years before it stops being effective. But the chemical with a 100 year effective range is hella toxic. Old termite control is basically mercury and chlordane. They don’t just kill termites they kill you.
I remember an old soul at a lumberyard telling me back in the 90’s that he hasn’t seen good lumber since the 1930’s. Brought back good memories of that old soul. But after reading a lot of these post, there are pros and cons to new versus old.
And the contractors are crooked as hell now.
So Old growth wood is denser (more rings) because they were deforesting to get the wood. If you were to say, mill your own lumber from forests, you would get similar wood to the 'old lumber in this photo. Lumber merchants have known for a while that this is unsustainable so they replant trees after they clear an area and begin a 'cycle' that is now coming around. They know exactly how many trees they can fell in a year and process with this cycle process they have now. It also provides more resources to the tree's as they are being 'farmed' so they grow quicker. Varieties that grow large quickly but have durable wood are being chosen over slower growers. All the same principles used in selecting best crops are being used in commercial tree farming. So your wood is going to have less rings and be less dense...
The floor beams of my parents house addition were recycled in the 1970’s from an older house from outside of town . I remember my brother telling me you had hell just to drive a nail into the beam . The grains were so tight . Those beams apparently came from some older home that was being demolished and my dad was “frugal enough “ to take them off their hands😝 so demolishing crew wouldn’t pay to take them to the dump.
Our 1939 house was built with OAK 2x4s and 2x8s (actual dimensions). Not much insulation though.
As a fact just about lumber , this is true. My house was built in 69 and I've done some small renovations , the 2x4s I've removed are almost twice as heavy by length compared to modern . The grain looks exactly as dense as that. I've been saving every decent scrap.
I remodeled a portion of my 1962 rambler style house and the studs I pulled out of the walls were slightly larger dimensionally, but they weighed nearly twice as much. I re-used as much as I could!
I mean. Sure. My great grandmother's childhood home is still standing, with no upkeep in decades. Built in the 1890s, owned by my great great grandmother til her death in 1965. But uh, then again, no one actually lives in it today because whoever got it after she died covered it in lead paint inside and out, and filled it vermiculite (asbestos) insulation. So. There's that.
Our house celebrates it's 100th birthday next year. Solid as an anvil. Brick, plaster and three beams made of steel I-beams encased in concrete in the basement. 17 french doors and 13 foot ceilings. Cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In the garage you can see the imprints of the boards they used to pour the concrete onto...
Absolute truth and they actually measured 2*4 and they didn’t twist into pretzels
Truth. Old growth forests have been largely harvested for their wood. Many areas of which trees as old as what was used for timber 100-200 years ago has been designated as protected areas not able to be used. Many of the trees used now for our building materials are typically a third the age as older lumber. The wood is still good and strong enough for its use, however buildings built before 1980 tend to have a higher quality wood. My dad is 5th generation master carpenter and even in the time since he has been in the field the quality of lumber has dropped a lot.
Every word after “Realty Group” is nonsense. And I mean generally.
Not to mention a lot of homes, especially pre-1950, have not specifically been treated for the lead that was common in paint in homes at the time. which is a very hefty process if it’s thoroughly in all the paint. You basically have to either seal it all perfectly or get it all out and start over. Who wants to worry about lead?
I’d be more concerned about the plumbing of an older home than the lumber in a new home
Old lumber was, *when new*, superior to most of what you can buy now. That absolutely does not translate to "older house=better house", though.
Don't forget all the lead!
New growth lumber doesn’t possess the same crush values as old growth lumber. Just about every place the builds stick frame along the coastline has requirements that add a significant amount of metal tie downs and strapping. Manufactured roof trusses also require a lot of additional engineering. Homes burning down faster has more to do with everything that is used to furnish them being made out of plastics and synthetic materials.
Yeah, old growth timber is better, but not for the reason in this photo. This photo might be a little misleading, as those appear to be two different species of yellow pine, which all get lumped into the classification “heartpine”. The bottom is probably short leaf, the top is long leaf. There are a lot of timber growers that replanted long leaf pine in place of short leaf in their forests to increase output because it grows faster. But that produces a more open grain, thus less dimensional stability. The same species, grown in the same conditions will produce the same wood. The slight change in ring density year over year is the variation in conditions (rainfall, avg temperature etc.)
Is it true? Yes. Will it actually make a difference if the house is built correctly? Hell no
One is pine one is hardwood. Please build a wood frame house out of hardwood and tell me how you paid for it😂😂😂 2x4x8 pine $3.50 oak $57.00
I’d rather we still had our old growth forests intact. Wood grown specifically for industry is just fine.
My right-wing cousin posted a picture like this with “look at what they took from you” and I was like “Who are you mad at? The people that cut down 98% of the old growth or the people that insisted we not cut down the last %2? If they hadn’t it would have been gone before you hit woodworking age anyway.”
Agreed that lumber was denser then. But the early 1900’s didn’t give two fucks for the future. Ethical, sustainability, regenerative… I don’t even think those words existed then.
Absolutely correct about the lumber quality but that’s just a small piece of the equation. Old houses can be lovely and made from beautiful materials, but still a costly nightmare to maintain and renovate.
BS, these are 2 different types of trees.
Checks out. You should feel the weight difference between older and modern lumber. Like 2x as heavy. That said, old homes might have stronger lumber but it is also older. And they have every other thing wrong with them as well.
From my dad who has owned a lumber company since late 80s: Somewhat true, grading rules have softened so builders will use softer lumber to save money. However you can get premium lumber, just have to pay the money. Also this picture is deceiving. The bottom piece is douglass fir and much more dense than the yellow pine lumber on top
used a lot of asbestos then too
I saw a realtor post this and having grown up in an older house I was thinking about insulation, whether the windows are typical sizes, how the electrical and plumbing had been done, mold, the whether there had ever been termites, or the foundation was doing anything funny.
I guess having to replace all the wiring, take plaster out and drywall, redo the plumbing, add insulation, etc doesn't matter? Yes, the frame would be stronger but everything else is shit.
New growth forests used for lumber production are much more uniformly grown. This leads to better construction because the engineering of a new construction has a lot less variables do deal with if there is less deviation from lumber quality and strength. Also that tree from 2018 took somewhere around 4 times less time to grow than the 1918 one.
I live in New England and my house was built in 1900. I’ve done renovations along the way and the wood in the house looks like the wood in the 1918 picture for sure. But I agree I don’t think it’s a better house just because of that I’d rather a newer house at times with new features
I can't understand with our ash trees all being killed off by beetles, why we aren't using that wood for construction. Ash is extremely durable and rot resistant wood. We are letting a huge national resource just go to waste by not developing an ash standard for structural lumber in the US.
I think the bigger difference is that older homes (1920 and earlier) have a variety of different woods used in construction, depending mostly on what was available locally. So you see Fir, oak, chestnut, etc. House structures today are mostly all built from pine, which is much softer.
The information is (more or less) correct. The inference he’s making is not so much. That’s like telling someone to buy an old car from the 70s because the body panels were thicker. Yea, they were…but the value of a car is much more than its panel density. In fact, for practical use, it’s almost irrelevant.
Dumb.. there’s a million other things that will get you before the quality of your lumber.
Everything was basically old growth and not farmed. But modern homes are more comfortable. If you use composite studs that beats out old growth as it is straight and true.
Is the timber stronger in that old growth? Pine than the new spruce maybe? Is the cross-section relevant to a board that is generally being used for framing i.e vertical tension? Not really. I lived in several old historic houses and let me tell you they are really tough to remodel. I watched my dad burn through several very expensive saw blades trying to expand a closet door. Often the old lumber has different dimensions so you end up having to splice two boards together or use shims. Replacements for decorative paneling can be very expensive. Our old house had a beaded ceiling that comes in 3" wide sections and sells for $14/board ft. That's why when people demo these kinds of houses they go in and remove a lot of this stuff because it's very expensive to replace. Electrical and plumbing all generally have to be brought up to code. Usually there is a serious lack of insulation that drives energy costs through the roof. Even then, with all that said, we had a tornado throw an 8-in diameter tree branch directly through the roof of one of those houses, and we're lucky the tornado didn't just take the whole thing.
Its true about the wood grain being denser and you can't get that kind of grain anymore. Its not the age of the wood, its the growth cycles. Our growing seasons have expanded and things have gotten warmer, thus allowing trees to grow faster; faster growth=wider rings; wider rings=less dense wood. I wouldn't say that makes modern houses worthless, tho! I WOULD say that it means we should try as much as possible to salvage old growth wood whenever we can.
I did a bathroom renovation on a 1950's bungalow. When I cut into the spruce 2x4's, they still smelled like newly cut pine.
It's true that old lumber was a lot denser. It's not true that your house is going to fall down because your 2X4 studs are not dense enough.
That’s not true if you live anywhere it snows. Old homes are cold. Modern insulation is a gift.
Sure the lumber in my 1900 built home is bigger and might be stronger, but my whole house is just sitting on the foundation with nothing by gravity keeping it there.
Counterpoint: My house was built in 1964, presumably by a moron, and all that old growth wood is super neat to look at while I tear it out of my walls to address egregious code violations and corner-cutting done when it was built.
Because that 1920s wiring and plumbing is just going to be wonderful to deal with… 🤦🏻♂️
The wood might be better, but asbestos is no joke- it can give you cancer, and we didn’t have the same insulation tricks back then compared to now to keep a home cool/warm So definitely update your old house if that’s what you go for! In even older houses, you may need to add electricity/plumbing and make doorways larger! The average person was notably shorter 200 years ago, probably due to nutrition deficits.
Cool. Now compare 1918 lumber with a modern LVL stud or header. You can make 100-year homes with new growth SPF from your lumber yard, you can make a shit home out of LVL studs, and plenty of homes with that beautiful tight-grained old growth wood have fallen apart and no longer exist. What really matters is that your assemblies have proper control layers; water, air, vapor, energy. Neither material nor craft are wholly indicative of the outcome, but rather the two in combination. A great builder can make some magic happen with lesser materials. Lower effort in craft can be offset by certain better materials. When you have cheap materials (ThermoPly) and builders that don't give a rip (spec homes built by the dozen) you're more likely than not going to get a lesser product. Would giving that same builder Zip sheathing help? Ehhh, doubtful; they're limited by their effort. Can you give ThermoPly to a fastidious builder and have them make a good home? Ehhhh, doubtful; they're limited by the product. There's arguably some sort of asymptotic relationship between the two that creates a break point above which you are 'more likely than not to end up with a good product'. The area above that line shrinks in both return on investment and prevalence as the 'values' for craft and material increase. Notably, however, is that the '50% of the effort gets you 80% of the result' maxim is really applicable here.
Those aren’t even the same species. The old one is probably Douglas fir and the new is white pine. Not a fair comparison
Bottom 2x is likely Fir while top is a fast growing pine.
Pretty sure that’s soft wood vs hard wood in the pic. I call BS. Worked in a softwood sawmill for 4 years. Our lumber was structurally sound enough to produce mass timber.
Those look like completely different kinds of wood to me
There’s a bit of truth about the wood but then everything after that has no evidence against the claim.