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Re: GBlist: Re: comments on housing costs



Jim (James G) Hardwick CPA wrote:
> 
> 97.08.29        1453    edt
> 
> Did the timberframer poster really write that German house
> construction ran
> $300/sf some years ago?  Does anyone even have the power to conceive
> of the
> implications for our market of that level of costs?
> 

One of the implications is that not everyone owns a house or even
expects to, and (I'll step softly here) I believe the right to home
ownership is protected in the american constitution so what we have are
really two different products serving two entirely different social
goals. What I am trying to conceive of is what the real difference in
cost is.

Buzz made an excellent point about the real value of lumber (which in n.
america is heavily subsidized through low stumpage fees, low lease cost
of government land, etc.) The real cost of this practice is overuse and
under utilization of a resource which in the long term will have greater
shared financial and quality of life implications for everyone i.e.
fewer jobs in resource industries, shared cost of watershed restoration,
water shortages, air quality problems, etc.

Europe is a bit farther ahead in trying to factor in the consequences of
a products cost and cost of reuse and/or disposal over its life - and
factoring that cost into the market cost of a product or service. Here
that is simply a debt we have yet to pay. The market implication of this
are far greater than longer term mortgages because of the extreme
wastage involved in the underutilisation of any resource. Its difficult
to recover what is lost.

The overall higher cost of housing also reveals a greater investment in
infrastructure. Better planning and design choices around land use,
density, transportation, etc. And all of this results in a higher
quality of life for the general pop. not just the property owners. An
aspect of this is a less financially speculative market because the
economics of ownership/investment have to be sustained over generations.

Green building or architecture is not an 'affordable' practice within
our current market structure. Like the notion of 'green business'  it is
a bit of an oxymoron. You cannot 'sustain' something that in its origins
(design, manufacture, marketing) is not designed for sustainability but
rather the opposite - is designed not only for consumption but is - to
recover low end cost - designed for repeated consumption.

We have a wood processing facility here that services principally german
and italian window manufacturing companies. It is a very sophisticated
CAM process that uses fingerjointing to produce a consistently fine
grained (hemlock) window stock with minimal wastage. The window stock is
approx. 3" thick (to allow for hardware). The windows and hardware will
because of design, material choice and sizing last for generations and I
will never in my life time be able to afford them. I might however if I
work harder be able to afford some Pella windows with a pine interior
and aluminum clad exterior. These windows will probably deform after
about 5 years because of stresses in the building frame, expansion and
contraction differences and problems in the materials and sizing of
materials used and because I have to bang on them to overcome the
stiffness or distortion of the hardware that started to corrode after
losing its finish to either atmospheric pollution or acidic moisture
trapped in the casing after the moisture shield became to brittle. At
least I'll have the beauty of natural pine to look at and enjoy - if I
remember to forget that the pine was treated with Butyl Carbamate (a
fungicide) and Choropyriofof (Dursban an insecticide) in a pure solvent
dip. I will however be able to enjoy the appearance of that wood for
15-25 years until the effects of that treatment (on the wood anyway) are
long gone and the moisture encased between the aluminum cladding and the
pine have done their work - but at that point it will be have been time
for at least one or two renovations and lots of new windows.

I get discouraged about my 'green' practice because so much of what I do
is a juggling act balancing one unacceptable product or practice against
another, trying to balance its effects and trying to cover it all in a
budget that doesn't go far enough. It is nice to look at another country
and at least pretend that what they are doing is more acceptable

John
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