Re:McMansion Hell: The Devil Is in the Details
by logfromblammo on Thursday October 20, 2016 @03:04PM
(#12755164)
The problem may be that you think 10 years is a long time for a house.
The materials with a MTBF of 10 years and those with a MTBF of 50 years may look about the same to the untrained eye, but a subdivision builder can grab a bit more in profit by choosing to use the former.
The homeowner then has to pay elevated maintenance and repair costs after the builder sells their last lot and packs up to go subdivide the next parcel.
The houses don't suddenly collapse, per se, they just start to experience annoying problems. Screws pop out of the drywall. Door frames get skewed. AC units freeze over thanks to coolant leaks. Paint peels off of metal flashing. Mold grows on inferior siding, just on the north side of all the houses in the neighborhood. Garage door frames bend away from brick lintels as the electric openers open and close the doors. Cooling costs for the whole neighborhood are through the roof, literally, because the builder used the bare minimum of blow-in insulation. The flush levers on all the toilets break, because they're made of plastic. Buried drainage pipes in the backyard collapse, leaving a potentially leg-breaking hole in the ground. Weeds grow up through the patios that never had proper barriers under their foundations.
The materials aren't bad. They just don't last. People end up paying the same price for a house that won't last 25 years as they might for one which would last another 100, because you can't see the difference at the point of sale.
The materials with a MTBF of 10 years and those with a MTBF of 50 years may look about the same to the untrained eye, but a subdivision builder can grab a bit more in profit by choosing to use the former.
The homeowner then has to pay elevated maintenance and repair costs after the builder sells their last lot and packs up to go subdivide the next parcel.
The houses don't suddenly collapse, per se, they just start to experience annoying problems. Screws pop out of the drywall. Door frames get skewed. AC units freeze over thanks to coolant leaks. Paint peels off of metal flashing. Mold grows on inferior siding, just on the north side of all the houses in the neighborhood. Garage door frames bend away from brick lintels as the electric openers open and close the doors. Cooling costs for the whole neighborhood are through the roof, literally, because the builder used the bare minimum of blow-in insulation. The flush levers on all the toilets break, because they're made of plastic. Buried drainage pipes in the backyard collapse, leaving a potentially leg-breaking hole in the ground. Weeds grow up through the patios that never had proper barriers under their foundations.
The materials aren't bad. They just don't last. People end up paying the same price for a house that won't last 25 years as they might for one which would last another 100, because you can't see the difference at the point of sale.