It's interesting how they explicitly brand themselves under the moral supremacy of progressive leftism but still retain the overall toxic arrogance and condescension of STEM culture. Thanks for covering this topic. Good work you guys!
As a German child I was very confused by the American media trope of people punching holes in their walls, because that's physically impossible over here. IIRC I concluded that it was supposed to be some sort of fourth-wall-breaking joke, calling attention to the fact that the room is actually a flimsy set? Only later did I learn that American houses are in fact built like movie sets.
Same! All the houses in my country (even the extreme low-cost RDP ones) are brick and cement. If we can build cheap houses that aren't made of cardboard and napalm in a developing country, it seems like the US should be able to as well.
They use prefab concrete panels for social housing here, they can totally use that in the US but nope, houses have to be cardboard and fibreglass. And keep in mind I live in a third world shithole
Walked out of wifi range while listening on earbuds, video cut out at 19:28 right after Justin said "let's try to think of the positive things about Saudi Arabia," and for more than a few seconds I thought the extended silence was some kind of bit.
@@kjj26k women aren't allowed to drive in saudi arabia. my aunt lived there and from her stories, women are treated like background characters. So it was kind of a fucked joke
Your A&E prof never understood why y’all were Laughing in class when he called it this, but he went along with it. When in reality, he grew up very poor and that was just his family’s version of “eating good” and between classes, he would retreat to his office, for a mom’s homemade pressed “granola”snack-, but he knew, to never show and or share it with his students, because they would approach the Dean, and that would ultimately lead to what he had been avoiding for years, ....a colonoscopy and a come to Jesus about what he has been eating, and what the definition of food truly is.
I live in San Diego, can we also talk about how none of the buildings here have any sort of external shade or shutters? That building at the 1:04:00 mark is fully exposed to the sun with large windows that barely open, but has no shutters, shades or blinds. Without the AC it turns in to a big greenhouse. Compare that to traditional hot-climate architecture around the world, which is full of small windows, shading structures and things like external louvered shutters - which allows for cool airflow without the harsh sunlight cooking you alive. Seems like big HVAC strikes again.
Hey, the original plans were built for an apartment complex in Denver, and we're only paying just enough to redraw them to California building code, not a penny over. Anyway that's how we end up with a draconian energy efficiency law set and a bunch of builders and developers complaining about government overreach just because "one or two" buildings melted last summer.
HVAC serves as a way to get away with poor building design. Not only is it usually cheaper to install AC (at least in construction costs) than to build appropriately for the climate, it also makes the building more valuable as you can better match it to the regional aesthetic. Companies like their steel-and-glass headquarters, and homeowners in the US want to live in the house from American Gothic.
@@vylbird8014 That's certainly true. I cringe inside every time a customer wants a black or dark paint scheme for their steel warehouse in the CA central valley, where 100+ F temperatures will occur regularly during the summer. I'm not saying everything needs to be painted stark white, but even just lighter color schemes on the exteriors would make them a lot more liveable and cheaper to operate.
@@nathaniellindner313 It's similar here in the UK: We have cities that are two thousand years old, and the council will guard their aesthetic as zealously as any homeowner association. You *will* have a black tiled slate roof, or you won't get planning permission. Unfortunately here, our housing has traditionally been designed to handle keeping warm in winter: Black roofs, thick insulation, draft exclusion and minimal ventilation, double-glazed south-facing windows. Hot summers are becoming more common every decade now, and in a heatwave, British housing roasts.
We use big windows but large overhangs over windows in the subtropics actually. Small windows is a cold weather thing. Usually windows have multiple panes, from glass to net (mosquitos fam) to shutters (outmoded) The most important thing is everyone uses bricks. Its all bricks. No wood and paper glued together to make buildings. Edit: big windows (that actually open all the way through) let the wind in and keep the air inside from becoming stifling. Seriously, big windows need to be appreciated more.
"I just, I swear to God, every time Pat Toomey tweets or opens his mouth I just want to drive up to Scranton and [5 seconds of a continuous beeping tone] and you may have to edit that out." Never change, Liam
I mean they actually edited it out this time. And given that they normally don't bother, we have to assume that it's not something you can even do as a parody in Minecraft.
Okay, so the biggest fire danger I feel isn't now, but rather in a space somewhere from 10-20 years from now in regards to five over ones. What you're going to get is a wonderful combination of physical decay, and, of course, what will inevitably come when the pools of foreign capital ballooning the housing market finally stop speculating on U.S. housing being a safe/wonderful investment. You will have a bunch of buildings sorely in need of repair from the damage from water ingress, wear and tear, and just general falling-apartedness because these buildings are shit, that aren't worth the value of the repairs needed to bring them back into working order. The initial investors will have made their initial investment back, and thus won't have any particular reason to maintain them in their asset portfolio, because well, they're in the building construction and development business, so you're likely to see these buildings getting sold off and passed between different slumlord acquisition partners, until the last person in the chain is financially underwater with a fire insurance policy that happens to be worth more than the value of the building. As any firefighter who lived through the 1970's in Bushwick, Brooklyn will tell you, the greatest fire protection in the world has nothing to do with sprinkler systems, partitions, non-combustible wall construction, but instead, property value, and well, this building certainly doesn't have much of that anymore. How did the fire start? I don't know, kinda hard to tell when the building is just a pile of matchsticks littered with corpses, the survivors say something about the sprinklers being broken, maybe even being turned off, but well that's no surprise, nothing in these buildings works anymore. Once the fire got into the common cockloft with no fire partitions, it just spread throughout the entire building, and flaming debris started making its way down into the apartments floor by floor as the structure gives way. Firefighters won't, and frankly can't go up onto the fire floor and the roof to do trench cuts, pull ceilings, and do aggressive interior attack. They know that the gusset plates on the pre-manufactured floor and roof trusses will pop in the slightest amount of heat, and that a fire hose is just going to turn the OSB that makes the up the floor and the shear walls into wet newspaper. So, the rescue and ladder companies will try to do a once around the building to get as many people out as possible, there won't be too many living though, then they'll pull out the tower ladders, and do a surround-and-drown to try to prevent the five-over-one next door from going up, but they're not staying in that building that long, these buildings aren't built like the old tenements their training prepared them for, they come down fast. Especially if this fire happens at night, which, for some weird reason most fires of these kind do, the occupants are likely to be woken up by clouds of billowing, acrid, black smoke from their petroleum filled furnishings, and all of the petroleum based adhesives binding the structure together, and they will swiftly die hacking up their lungs on the floor of their apartment, or if they're lucky, in the hallway which is also made of the same shit construction. As a result of the fire, as well as the water damage from the deck guns on the tower ladders, the building will be a total loss. You'll soon get scavengers who will further destroy the pile of rubble in their search for copper wiring, anything of value will be stripped, kids will come around and set the pile of wrecked timbers on fire, because as soon as that slumlord got his fire insurance check, he bounced right the fuck outta there, and what you'll eventually be left with is a concrete plinth, as a statue to the arrogance of the real estate market, and capitalism generally. Do you think I got that right Rocz?
Also a big reason you can't have a large HVAC unit on the roof is because you'd require a steel frame or a concrete masonry wall to rest the unit on. The big HVAC units are too heavy to rest on lightweight roof trusses
I knew you Americans love to built with wood but I thought only the people in tornado alley and Florida where dumb enough to built a house out of timber. I didn’t realize you guys also built 5 stories buildings out of the stuff. Sounds like a fun death trap to me. What’s wrong with concrete and brick
Considering the fact that I've literally seen RedVector just copy-paste and lightly-paraphrase a badly-written, publicly available government manual on how to design something without adding any additional value or interpretation to it and calling the resulting video a "continuing education course" instead of a "4th-grade book report", I think there's a good argument for making this podcast into a Continuing Education Credits mill.
I know, right? It's gonna be great. Seriously though, watch that be, like, their Episode 100 special when they decide the joke has finally run its course.
When I was in college there was a five-over-one that caught fire during construction right across from campus. Funnily enough, it was called "Fuse 47". They tried to act like they were just going to repair the damage and refused to give anyone's prepaid rent back for a while, since they claimed it was still safe to inhabit. Despite the fact that if you looked into the parking garages, all you could see on the lower level of this block-long building were massive steel jacks literally every four feet holding up the half-melted structure. Eventually they gave up and admitted they needed a partial rebuild. When it finally opened they named it.... "Alloy".
I once did an accident survey in Tampa, to measure the height above the pavement of the low point of a high tension electric line. What had happened was, they were building an apartment complex and there was a guy driving a Lull with a load of roof trusses, and he touched the high-voltage line with the fork. He managed to jump off without getting electrocuted, and then the Lull and those trusses caught fire. All around him were a bunch of incomplete four or five story wood building frames. They all lit up like a box of matches. Boy oh boy did they ever burn good; there was a century-old masonry cigar factory about fifty feet outside the property and the brick and concrete on the side facing the site was fire-spalled.
Every time one of the three leaves to grab something, we are reminded that podcasts are like revolutionary cells: it works best when you have exactly three people. Justin brings the facts and deadpan humor, Alice the weird insights and chaos, and Liam the maxims and righteous anger. Without any one, the other two don't really work... but with all three the result is great entertainment.
As a resident of a cheaply constructed apartment, I’m a big fan of not having to pay for heating because the floors are so badly insulated that my downstairs neighbors do it for me.
Last apartments I lived in did not charge for heating. Makes sense because somebody trying to heat their apartment from the surrounding apartments can cause water damage when the heat pipes freeze. The city requires that the landlord keep the heating system maintained such the the temperature can be maintained 20C. The lease also had minimum temperature requirements from the tenants.
the problems listed in 1 hour 26 minutes of the podcast are EXACTLY the problems that my father comments that existed in the overly complicated designs of the facades of some buildings of the 1940s / 1950s, here in Brazil. He made a lot of money doing renovations, but the water accumulation and infiltration points mentioned in this podcast seem like an echo that I've heard my whole life my old man complain about.
Those aren’t pueblos they’re adobes, pueblos are made of stacked stones bound with mortar, while adobes are made of packed mud and clay reinforced with logs
A 5 over 1 that was under construction burned down near the University of Maryland back in 2017. Classes had to be cancelled due to air quality concerns after the smoke drifted over the campus. So there were a bunch of college students gawking at a 5 alarm fire that was like 2 blocks away from a firehouse and about 2500 feet from the fire protection engineering college. Also the apartments were called Fuse 47 because things weren't ridiculous enough.
alice you're not missing out on much not doing voice training it's basically just making cat noises all day - if you have a cat you don't seem quite as insane bc you just pretend you're talking to the cat (and then start genuinely talking to the cat, and wondering months in why the ten minute long conversation of chirps and purring is more engaging than any other conversation you've had that week) this might be the reason i'm starting to slide down the slippery slope of unironically wanting to be a catgirl
that's crazy, it's the exact same shit I do to sing higher notes better. And I also just end up talking to my cat in cat noises, great bonding experience.
A scrapyard near where I lived as a child caught fire, along with the massive piles of tires around the site..... The fire brigade turned up, spent half a day trying to put it out, then gave up and instead set light to another few spots to help accelerate it, and even with that it still took a week to burn itself out. That whole time a fire engine had to sit onsite as their rules say they can't leave a active fire
The barely opening casement windows is indeed a part of code. It is required that the windows are outfitted with limiters in order to prevent the windows from being opened enough for someone to fall out of it. At my job we once had a GC+Developer client decline to install them in order to save money, and sure enough, a child fell out. Luckily the kid was okay and didn't break anything.
@@GigasGMX Then the ceilings need to be taller, and you know how possessive rich folk can be of certain concepts. Jk, there are lots of good reasons rooms are as tall as they are, I'm sure.
Holy crap, you know about the leaky condo crisis? The vast majority of low rise apartment buildings in Vancouver are now constructed with steel reinforced concrete thanks to that scandal. The developers should have known better to engineer buildings that could withstand moisture, as we live in a TEMPERATE RAINFOREST. But if you've ever done anything related to property development in Vancouver, you'll realize that the entire local industry is a corrupt scam.
@@jakexd5524 Yes, we do, we either plaster the brick walls, are use drywall against the brick wall. Although last week I passed a house that was being build with american style wood frame construction. The first time in 30 years I ever saw that in belgium. We usually build with what we call "snelbouwsteen", large perforated bricks, then a cavity wall is build of normal small bricks.
I used to work for a house cleaning company, we hated single-occupancy 'greebled' homes that are so popular in the more expensive suburbs because there was no safe way to secure our guys to the roofs. The all end up eventually looking like shit because a pressure washer can only spray so high up, plus I've seen a few get hit with hailstones and end up with holes in the cladding.
So the apartment in New Jersey was basically that one Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke: “They said I was daft for building a castle in a swamp, but I did it anyway! ...Then it sank into the swamp.”
As a carpenter that deals with all of this garbage, i.e. osb, mdf, etc. It has pained me to be forced to use this garbage! Many of my fellow carpenters think I’m off my rocker every time I bitch about the use of the engineered materials! Not just because it’s mostly garbage but that it’s also excellent tinder, has many health issues related to it but also from a finishing standpoint it’s a nightmare! I have seen so much new construction start cracking, shifting and literally falling apart in less than 5 years! It’s all GARBAGE and fits in nicely with our capitalistic, consumer driven dipshittery!
northern virginia is filling up with McManshions made of mdf etc, that use of the whole lot for lack of any restrictions, i just wish they all would fall down ASAP. the real shame is the "developers" cut every tree down, clear the lots of every tree- thats the worst part of the hall charade -ruining the town. My small split level house was built in 1955. Its held up ok.
I work at lowes, and I just discovered last week that we aren't supposed to be cutting OSB in-house for the same reason we don't cut pressure-treated boards; of course, management usually bullies the poor building material dept guys into doing it ANYWAY, so that's a fun thing to know.
I went to a few worksites north of the Twin Cities back when my dad worked on them. I want _no_ part of that, thank you. I can't smell it from the street, but I _know_ the stench of cheapness just emanates from them
Oh hey it's an episode on every single university hall in the UK built after 2000 I lost my security deposit and developed 2 STDs just looking at these slides
"Stick frame" construction (using wood framing or light gauge cold-rolled steel framing) is so prevalent in the U.S. because it's cheap, and cost is really the only thing developers care about. Masonry and concrete construction requires more labor, and labor costs are higher in the U.S. than in many of the developing countries that you see masonry being used, so it's usually avoided where possible. Steel, of course, is the most expensive building material/method. In addition, in seismically active areas like California, buildings have to be light and rigid - the amount of reinforcement required to make a masonry building stable increases the price as well. Another confounding variable is the average lifespan of a building in the U.S. (residential or commercial) is crazy short-term compared to most of the world. Developers want to keep tearing stuff down and putting it back up the same way over and over again as cheaply as possible, because it's how they make money. "Sustainability" was a buzzword that was trendy to use in architecture about 10 years ago (think "LEED" certification, etc) and now most firms don't even bother to make an effort faking it. To a builder, throwing up a few RTU's on the roof, and making the tenants foot the cost of having a higher energy bill saves more time and money than installing operable windows and allowing for natural ventilation and lighting to work properly. Unfortunately, most designs eventually get distilled down into a big ugly box that aims to maximize square footage, and minimize cost per square foot, inflating the building as big as it can get within Planning and zoning limitations. In fact, if it weren't for certain Planning Dept. and local municipal guidelines, these buildings wouldn't even have "greebling" or any attempt to make them less aesthetically offensive. It's just the nature of the business models being employed by everyone involved in the building industry at the moment.
I mean, labour costs in wealthy European countries are high too, and developers are cheap and greedy everywhere. But houses here are all concrete and/or brick and people would balk at the idea of living in a building made of plywood (nevermind buying a house built that way).
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballsthing is that North America and hasn’t been logged out for millennia to rebuild after every major conflict since the Bronze Age and clear space for farmland.
0:00 - Liam treats discord like a fish. 0:25 - Introductions 1:50 - Emergency mobile podcast 4:08 - Alice channels her inner Bob Wells 5:15 - Let's build with oil, just like we all learned with Legos. 6:56 - My grandmother's furnace from the Great Depression 8:45 - Cogeneration of heating, electricity, electric cars, and tires. Everyone loses 40 IQ points. 14:10 - If you want to kill your family - GO FOR IT. 16:12 - The CIA has found the pod. 17:25 - The pod keeps going back to the well. 20:17 - The Fa and the Kaiser stopped the French and the English from doing the Colonialism to the Arabs. This was good? 27:25 - Suburb Ugly 33:13 - Discuss the grains, why don't you? 42:30 - A "Wherefore" in the wild. 47:31 - Fyre Festival 50:25 - King Arthur went to New Jersey. 57:03 - Justin tries to explain CDD, HDD, HVAC, DX, VAV, AHU, VFD, and AC. 59:35 - Alice does not realize that HVAC is the armpit of the mechanical engineering world. 1:03:15 - The Armory at the Kink. 1:06:45 - No more defenestrations. 1:14:12 - Roz goes to meet RBG? 1:16:45 - 5 over 1's are Star Destroyers 1:19:45 - Can a building be sustainable it if isn't LEED Platinum, but it has been sustained for longer than everyone currently living? 1:28:00 - It's not just the window on the top left. 1:34:15 - Roz does not like the 5x1's trying to look like the Hancock Tower. 1:39:45 - Is there an advantage to 5x1's? 1:48:30 - A wheel within a wheel. Of oily wood. 1:51:50 - Alice finds out about how land use law in the USA works. 1:53:15 - You don't say that this gigantic building is a mansion? 1:56:00 - Roz goes to meet RBG at the toilet? We hear a discussion of who is the real third wheel. 1:58:50 - Safety Third 2:06:20 - Kaptialism! (More as I have time.)
So thats what they're called, I've been living in one of these for the last three months and I was like, "this multi-story wooden structure is sketchy as shit."
Were you folks aware, when talking about the financial incentives being more often the deciding factor rather than code or zoning laws, that Houston actually has no zoning whatsoever? Honestly, Houston itself would make a pretty good episode.
Those pics of downtown Houston with all the massive flat parking lots is so fucking funny. Houston is, improbably, even funnier and more poorly conceived than Dallas.
These buildings look like something a 3D modeler who's never studied any kind of architecture would put into a video game to fill out space in a level.
My whole town, a college town has been obsessed with these garbage buildings for the last two decades... About 1/3 of our town looks like a low resolution video game.
Exactly. So many modern buildings look like the 'architect' is just drawing completely random cube and rectangle shapes, with a random bit of roof at a non-90 degree angle if you're lucky. Sectioning up a flat facade isn't necessarily bad - it prevents buildings from feeling looming and dominating, but so much modern architecture is just random badness.
Five over One does not refer to the number of floors on the building. They are references to the type of construction as defined in the building code. Type 1 is masonry and type 5 is wood frame. Previously type 5 construction was not allowed on apartment buildings over a certain height. Until a change was put in that said, as long as you use fire-retardant lumber, you can now build up to 5 stories of type 5 construction. Either on the ground or above 1 or 2 levels of type 1 construction. An apartment building with 4 wood frame floors over 2 masonry floors is still 5 over 1.
Bradford's Fire Brigade are called West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue. BTW Forensic Architecture have got in on your act - they have a video on Vimeo reconstructing the Beirut warehouse explosion in great detail, working out what caught fire when, and what was stored in the warehouse & where, based on footage they managed to sync and build a 3d model from & testimony from various fire experts. It seems that too was in part at least a tyre fire. It makes for some interesting watching - their verdict was that given the materials stored & how it was stored & where, it was a warehouse-sized bomb ready to go off at any time. They conclude that there was no way to store that amount of ammonium nitrate that close to residential buildings without breaking every internationally respected safety rules on the storage of ammonium nitrate. Even if they'd taken the greatest care with it, it was about half a mile too close, but these guys had it leaking out of sacks, crystals of it gradually turning dark, haphazardly stacked all over the place. It should make a really good WTYP.
@@ASS_ault Leaded petrol ("leaded gasoline" as Americans call it) in cars was common until the 1990s. The lead was used as an anti-knocking agent. But there is evidence that lead exposure causes brain damage (and in fact the decline in violent crime since the 90s may have been caused in part by the decline in lead exposure). For more information, see Donoteat's Industries DLC video.
@@ASS_ault Not really. There are lots of people alive who were born in the 50s, 60s and 70s and were exposed to lead throughout their childhoods. I was born in 1989 and clearly remember leaded petrol (it was still available when I was a child, though unleaded was more common by then).
1:43:17 Parking garages are notoriously difficult to maintain, as stated because of temperature fluctuations, moisture, road salt as well as other reasons. The parking garage in the building i worked in suffered structural damage because the engineers that designed it didn't account for snow plow drivers plowing all of the snow into one corner of the top floor. They had to install a heated collection pan and drainage system before the top two floors were serviceable.
@@alicecaldwell-kelly9530 I have no Twitter any more, so I emailed the podcast account. But I am a fool who forgot to include my address in the original email, so I am not sure if you got the follow up email with my address? Also, you are great and the Group B episode was really good.
The reason why they construct these buildings with those varied facades, numerous textures, and all the stuff that makes the building leaky is due to zoning ordinances. The codes claim they want interesting facades on buildings and for things not to look monotonous. These rules were interpreted in an absolutely horrible way.
Hey I do HVAC Engineering, I feel like I just saw myself on TV! Honestly, one of the reasons I went with HVAC was so I wouldn't end up on an engineering disaster podcast. All I have to do to not kill people is make sure there is more than enough outdoor air. Although, Justin mentioned Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) which I only worked with once, but you have to design for the case that the refigerant leaks and suffocates everyone. So, waiting for the episode where that happens and the HVAC engineer didn't do the calc right. But VRF offers individual zone control and energy efficiency at the same time, so worth the risk?
@@Skunkhunt_42 sounds about right, but I haven't really done residential. ASHRAE Standard 15 "...sets limits, based on occupancy classification, for the maximum refrigerant charge by volume of occupied space ... Some options could include: increasing the room volume, relocating or removing refrigerant piping, or dividing the refrigerant circuit to reduce the charge."
Until 2017 or so, my job was actually working on building sites installing fire protection (sprinklers). By spooky coincidence, my last day on the job was the same week Grenfell Tower happened. Anyway, we did quite a few sites that were either totally timber frame or had this 4/5-over-1 type design. Building firms like them because they're relatively cheap and quick to throw up with minimal skill and you can still charge stupid prices for them - one of these places is currently valued at £835k, which... lol. Anyway, they were marketed as "smart homes" (basically, you can turn the lights on and off with an app) to idiots with too much money as second homes or investments. Usually we were in there installing our stuff first, as soon as the roof went on, so that any of the other trades couldn't burn the place to the ground with shitty electrics, a stray gas torch, etc. Would I buy one? Fuck no.
1:36:00 "engineered lumber" should _not_ be a structural member of multiple-owner buildings. If you're the sole owner you'll either take care of it or face the costs, but if you share that compressed cat-litter with anyone else they _will_ screw it up for you.
This episode hits way too close to home with the housing crisis we currently have in Germany. Imma see myself out till the next episode that makes me laugh (and perhaps cry) instead of just cry.
I've just clicked on this but I was thinking is this about German housing? First picture could be anywhere in West Germany. I live in Cologne and damn the housing sucks here. But at least it's better than the UK or New Zealand. 😂
@@roborovskihamster5425 Singapore I think has no housing crisis. Finland I believe is also investing in massive public housing? I remember reading that Vienna has a very good public housing program. But yea, capitalism fucking sucks.
@@mgmcdb7606 Really, New Zealand can't solve housing? And I thought they had figured out most of this stuff; but then again, that is compared to the rest of the planet... So, low bar.
Live in a 5 over 1. Built in 2015, the bike storage room had a leak IN THE SUMMER from the hallway HVAC not draining, so that wont age well in Portland Oregon of all places (notably a place that doesn't ever rain). The floor in my apartment looks like wood but it's actually just linoleum tiles, which if my ass sits in a chair long enough, gets divots, and is starting to come up where I sit for my desk. The worst is my place has a Juliette balcony because apparently I don't deserve outside space and the door is the typical swing door like you'd have for a normal balcony, except it doesn't stay open on its own due to the settling of the building. Also yes, those dumb stupid windows that don't open.
As someone who lives in a colder climate, my first thought regarding roofs is "how difficult is it to remove the snow from the roof and how often am I gonna have to go up there to push the snow off?" And I don't even live in the Great Lakes area where the Lake Effect means they get a ton of snow every year! Although these days, we get more ice than snow. Gotta love Global Warming, amirite? And ofc ice is much harder to remove from your roof than snow and is also why roof solar panels are not terribly popular here (plus we also get a bunch of hail from thunderstorms when it's not winter so hail damage is basically inevitable). Two years ago in February, we had a solid 2-3 inches of ice coating everything for an entire month. The few thaws we had barely melted any ice, but it did melt plenty of snow on lawns - which promptly refroze on the roads and sidewalks. We live on a small hill, so I had to sort of slide my way down the hill on the sidewalk and have my partner catch me at the base of the stairs to our porch.
As another trans person -- to hell with the voice work! I was very concerned about it for a while until I realized it wasn't causing me any dysphoria and I didn't need to do it except to cater to the opinions of other people.
I keep seeing these getting built everywhere in the Midwest, especially in Rust Belt cities starting to improve a little, and they keep burning down. Every single "the whole building went up in flames" fires we've had in my hometown recently have been this type of apartment building, albeit usually shorter because no one's building a 5-6 story building in my hometown. One of the worst parts has to be that they're still automobile dependent usually, so all the negatives of living in an apartment with almost none of the positives.
Even with the multitude of problems with the 5 over 1 buildings, they are still infinitely better than the Apartment Complex + stripmall setup that we were forced to build 20 years ago. Some walkability is better than no walkability, you can't expect America to kick its car dependency cold turkey
01:34 "sunshades that don't do anything" are actually about slowing and turbulating the wall convection before it reaches the roof for "purposes" it makes the roof-top aircons work better
A couple of my uni buildings had aluminium external sunshades that _did_ work; didn't look like they'd be expensive to buy or design installation for once you're in the thousands of units.
I'm pretty sure the term "greebles" comes specifically from the world of prop-building, a lot of those old sci-fi scale-model props have bits of, say, WWII tank models incorporated into them to give them a more technological feeling. See also - "kitbashing".
Yeah, I build terrain for tabletop gaming and the word gets used a fair bit as just "random bits added to increase visual interest," and it's much more common in scifi themed terrain because fantasy terrain tends to replicate fantasy styles so you don't have large flat textureless surfaces, but in sci-fi buildings there's a lot of adding random pipes, vents, fans, wires, boxes, whatever, and the word gets used for that miscellanea
See also 'Aztek-ing', the equivalent concept from the Star Trek side of things. Most starkly seem in the two different models used for the Enterpride-D, the earlier model used in the first few seasons being fairly smooth and sleek, with the model used in later seasons loaded down with extra detail and texturing. Debates range to this day as to which looks better.
A Master Chief mask does not count as a mask for the purposes of preventing yourself from transmitting, but it does work as a plastic guard to lower your risk of getting infected.
I'm always a little surprised when Alice mentions people not hearing her voice as feminine, because without her bringing them up, it never would've occurred to me to not hear her voice as such.
@@MrJimheeren Never really noticed any of it, to be honest. It might just be that my native language has a lot more gravely consonants than English though.
@@lasschesteven I'm in the same boat, might be that I haven't heard her accent before so I have no comparison to say her voice sounds masculine. That or I thought it was a little masculine but when she gave her pronouns I just started thinking of it as feminine because it is the way that a female is talking.
I would pay tuition for a Certificate of Problem Identification. it can go on the cube wall along with my nuclear accident prevention training. No that's not sarcasm. And yes, I deeply exasperate my management.
When i lived in a 5 over one, the windows practically funneled water into my apartment and on a particularly rainy weekend, I could collect over a gallon of water leaking from the windows. God it was a shit place to live.
I love Alice’s attitude towards working to change her voice towards more feminine sounding, I think her attitude encapsulates just about how everyone feels about our current life situation in 2020 due to the rona. “Ehh it’s too much work”
Me too. I always zoned out during the intros until Alice would say "my pronouns are she and her". I realised my mistake several episodes in when I finally decided I should learn their names.
...as for your voice work, Alice: respect for having the integrity and courage to affirm your identity on your own terms, rather than trying to conform to a more binary definition of gender. Of course, I suspect it may have more to do with sheer laziness, but hey. Perhaps a bit of both.
30:10 on is so on point. Massive alienation, tremendous, we love to see it folks. _"The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. "_ - I don't know, Michael Scott, or Marx probably. Arbitrary Marx quote I just had in the clipboard, the whole thing is about this shit AS WE KNOW. WE LOVE ITTTTTTTTTTTT
We have loads of buildings in London that are new builds that have “poor doors”. If you’re a social housing tenant of the building, you have to use the same door as the cleaners and workers maintaining the building. Your key fob to enter the door doesn’t work for the glitzy front door of the building, it only works for access. There’s a tower block in Aldgate where their tax break was dependent of social housing which is 20% of the amount of apartments, and they really fucked over the social housing tenants by banning them from using the amenities of the building and relegating them to “poor door” usage. These buildings are constructed poorly and made of shit materials but because they’re central London, they’re six figures for a “rabbit hutch”.
my parent's house isn't part of a HOA but it IS a townhouse in a condominium which means that the condo actually owns the outside of the house and gives us even less control over the place we live in and pay for. (It supposedly reduces cost on our end for things like windows, doors, and roofing while upping property value but what it's actually done is prevent us from fixing our broken kitchen because one appliance was put in too low for code and fixing it would mean knocking out a few bricks in the outer wall, which we can't do without a permit.) Partial ownership leads to even more entitled assholes than a HOA bootlicker such as the asshole old couple across the street getting pissed as us for having our snow shovel out at our front door in April because it was against condo policy to have anything like that out past a certain date. The most baffling thing is that those two quite literally have no actual stake in the condo because they're renters and property value doesn't affect them in any way, they just genuinely like being dicks to everyone in the complex.
@@godminnette2 Wall mounted microwave is too close to the stovetop. With the way the ventilation is attached to it is we'd need to move the vent outside up as well. The people who previously owned the house in the 90's made a lot of very stupid renovation decisions that we are still dealing with to this day like the upstairs toilet having a square bowl or the asbestos tiles in the kitchen.
1:49:00 You could convert this „Texas Donut“ or whatever easily into a Barcelona style super block! Barcelona city blocks are amazing, they look really nice, a lot of your windows are away from the streets and you have some green space right next to your building.
@@amorpaz1 well I'm glad you are able to imagine that, knowing nothing about me nor where I live. Just so we're on the same level, you do understand that your imagination does not necessarily correlate with reality, right? Just checking
Trying to find the right unit to repair on one of those rooftop condenser farms after they've been in service a few years and the sun has baked all of the number stickers/sharpie scribbles off of them is a real shit sometimes.
Your commentary on the fires definitely rings true for me. There was an apartment complex about half a mile from me that caught fire during construction, and there were chunks of charred wood that had blown into our yard from it. It actually melted a road sign that was next to the site.
Fun fact, my grandfather worked in recycling and one of the things they hooked up is recycling tires as additives to the fires in cement kilns. I.e. tire fires have already been happening and in much more productive ways :D
My Aunt got ruined by the leaky condos, and when I was looking for places to live myself, I found most apartments had retrofitted mini-awnings to try to deal with the issue.
For perspective; my father did plumbing and gas piping on and off for 20 years in UK homes using a blowtorch for braising and soldering. Wooden joists, old enamel paint, and wallpaper all round but zero fires set, through cunning use of forethought and a heat mat.
I live one town over from Edgewater and I remember that fire very well. They stationed pumper tucks on top of the Palisades to shoot water down on houses ( and subsequently froze them over) and the fire itself. It was so bad they had companies driving in from as far north as Upper Saddle River and Bloomingdale to help fight it. Any chance you guys could do the Marcal Paper Mill fire?
These buildings are not just problematic for renters, developers and owners find an issue with them as well. The main problem that the developers articulated was selling and partitioning of the mixed-use development, which is not allowed based on the bank loans used to finance the projects. Developers don't like dealing with them because buyers either want to deal with the commercial part of the property or the residential part of the property, rarely both if ever. This explains why so many storefronts remain vacant in newer buildings around the country. "U.S. Federal residential policies prohibit lending for developments in which more than 20% of the building space is used for commercial, which means that a mixed-use building with ground-floor retail must be at least five stories tall, higher than allowed in many urban areas (Affordable-Accessible Housing in a Dynamic City: Why and How to Increase Affordable Housing in Accessible Neighborhoods 2020)." When developments get this big, construction requirements mandate concrete and steel, driving up the cost of the development exponentially which is passed off to potential renters and buyers.
fun fact: when I did concrete reinforcement in vancouver, we used milimeters for the bar diameters and feet for the length (tho the bars clearly came in 10m standard lenghts)
@@TheSullie1 Nope. We had bars in 5mm increments from 5mm to 35mm in diameter. Now that I think about it, the standard 15mm bar length right off the docks of Shiu Wing Steel was 9 meters, which we'd obviously call 29-6. I've heard of full metric job sites but never partook in one. Looking at at conversion table, that gets you really close to 3/16th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 13/16th, 1inch, and so on in 3/16th inch increment, maybe it's the same bars?
so i know it's been 2 years, but i feel compelled to point out that the "greebling" (is that how it's spelled?) alice points out is *intended* to be "humane design" - it's supposed to make these giant blocks of building look less like the oldest house from control and more like a street of buildings for people.
as someone who works as a ramp agent at the big local airport and who keeps having to work an infuriatingly increasing amount of Delta flights every day I really felt seen by that shoutout, thanks guys
@@herrklugscheiser2330 Could be, but from historical documents we know that they were usually built very sturdy. Most of the ones that have been destroyed over the years were either from allied bombing or to make room for new buildings like malls and other stuff. Also with brick and mortar construction you can't skimp out and cut corners that much.
Regarding 1:07:25: I have 2 fold out windows. One day about a month after moving in and the rest of our small building was being built, a workman came to install something to prevent the windows from opening like more than an inch. Our AC kept breaking down and I was dying one day so I took out a screwdriver and mirror and uninstalled it so I could get some cooler air in. I was going to put it back if I ever leave. Also one window is now mostly blocked by a growing tree. Some loose ends like that exist, and I could drop dead one day and these unsafe things exist in the world. Another one was when I finished my parents basement I managed to convince the inspector to allow me to store things under the stairs, which is a fire hazard. I was wanting to drywall over that spot before they sell it, but I probably will not get a chance.
Thank you very much for a very interesting (as always) topic. Have wondered for years how these things can exist. They seem to be held up by insurance and fossil fuel based electricity waste. I used to be in construction and was witness to how 2x4’s became 1.5x3’s, and floor joist 2x10’s became 2 2x2’s connected by stamped steel webbing, and that was 30 years ago. Just a matter of time before we see a large loss of life due to fire in one of these tissue paper disposable apartment buildings.
It's interesting how they explicitly brand themselves under the moral supremacy of progressive leftism but still retain the overall toxic arrogance and condescension of STEM culture. Thanks for covering this topic. Good work you guys!
bruh what
Did you eat lead paint chips as a child
You know you fucked up when they have to unpin the previous worst comment to pin yours instead
I would call it deserved arrogance and condescencion.
@@armamentarmedarm1699 Yeah, wth even is that? 😁😁😁😁
As a German child I was very confused by the American media trope of people punching holes in their walls, because that's physically impossible over here.
IIRC I concluded that it was supposed to be some sort of fourth-wall-breaking joke, calling attention to the fact that the room is actually a flimsy set? Only later did I learn that American houses are in fact built like movie sets.
Same! All the houses in my country (even the extreme low-cost RDP ones) are brick and cement. If we can build cheap houses that aren't made of cardboard and napalm in a developing country, it seems like the US should be able to as well.
yo nice username
They use prefab concrete panels for social housing here, they can totally use that in the US but nope, houses have to be cardboard and fibreglass. And keep in mind I live in a third world shithole
I just accidentally punched a hole in my wall last week!
@@TheWhale45 lol at least he doesn't sit around in this video's comments picking fights with strangers. THAT would be absurd
as another trans woman who has put barely any effort into her voice, i feel represented by this podcast.
same here
I'm not trans but somehow felt inspired by Alice's genuinely heartfelt "mehhhh" nonetheless.
Same
Same here too!
I'm just here to support not putting effort into things. 🗽
Walked out of wifi range while listening on earbuds, video cut out at 19:28 right after Justin said "let's try to think of the positive things about Saudi Arabia," and for more than a few seconds I thought the extended silence was some kind of bit.
pros: not everyone drives
cons: everything else
@@TheRadiantSoap
Is there good public transportation there?
@@kjj26k women aren't allowed to drive in saudi arabia. my aunt lived there and from her stories, women are treated like background characters. So it was kind of a fucked joke
An extended bit like Kate's gender
@@kjj26k its like the Alabama of the middle east so I would say no
My architecture and the environment professor referred to all kinds of mdf, pressboard, masonite, lvl, and osb as "pre-chewed mold food"
Your A&E prof never understood why y’all were Laughing in class when he called it this, but he went along with it. When in reality, he grew up very poor and that was just his family’s version of “eating good” and between classes, he would retreat to his office, for a mom’s homemade pressed “granola”snack-, but he knew, to never show and or share it with his students, because they would approach the Dean, and that would ultimately lead to what he had been avoiding for years, ....a colonoscopy and a come to Jesus about what he has been eating, and what the definition of food truly is.
True that. OSB City boards start delaminating when you look at them the wrong way lol
@@tramplamps are you insinuating that OPs A&E professor was 2 mold colonies in a trenchcoat?
❤❤❤❤z
My construction professor in community college called OSB turkey board
as a person living on the west coast, yes i am
✅ a child
✅ afraid of weather
I live in San Diego, can we also talk about how none of the buildings here have any sort of external shade or shutters? That building at the 1:04:00 mark is fully exposed to the sun with large windows that barely open, but has no shutters, shades or blinds. Without the AC it turns in to a big greenhouse. Compare that to traditional hot-climate architecture around the world, which is full of small windows, shading structures and things like external louvered shutters - which allows for cool airflow without the harsh sunlight cooking you alive. Seems like big HVAC strikes again.
Hey, the original plans were built for an apartment complex in Denver, and we're only paying just enough to redraw them to California building code, not a penny over.
Anyway that's how we end up with a draconian energy efficiency law set and a bunch of builders and developers complaining about government overreach just because "one or two" buildings melted last summer.
HVAC serves as a way to get away with poor building design. Not only is it usually cheaper to install AC (at least in construction costs) than to build appropriately for the climate, it also makes the building more valuable as you can better match it to the regional aesthetic. Companies like their steel-and-glass headquarters, and homeowners in the US want to live in the house from American Gothic.
@@vylbird8014 That's certainly true. I cringe inside every time a customer wants a black or dark paint scheme for their steel warehouse in the CA central valley, where 100+ F temperatures will occur regularly during the summer. I'm not saying everything needs to be painted stark white, but even just lighter color schemes on the exteriors would make them a lot more liveable and cheaper to operate.
@@nathaniellindner313 It's similar here in the UK: We have cities that are two thousand years old, and the council will guard their aesthetic as zealously as any homeowner association. You *will* have a black tiled slate roof, or you won't get planning permission. Unfortunately here, our housing has traditionally been designed to handle keeping warm in winter: Black roofs, thick insulation, draft exclusion and minimal ventilation, double-glazed south-facing windows. Hot summers are becoming more common every decade now, and in a heatwave, British housing roasts.
We use big windows but large overhangs over windows in the subtropics actually. Small windows is a cold weather thing. Usually windows have multiple panes, from glass to net (mosquitos fam) to shutters (outmoded)
The most important thing is everyone uses bricks. Its all bricks. No wood and paper glued together to make buildings.
Edit: big windows (that actually open all the way through) let the wind in and keep the air inside from becoming stifling. Seriously, big windows need to be appreciated more.
im not aging im greebling
"Today we're gonna talk about five over ones."
"Thats some low viscosity oil."
Its a shame this joke went unappreciated.
The joke didn’t go over because everyone was busy mentally objecting, “Actually, that would be ‘HIGH viscosity oil.’ Gaaaah!”
i dont get the joke
5w/1 oil is indeed extremely thin, especially when hot.
"I just, I swear to God, every time Pat Toomey tweets or opens his mouth I just want to drive up to Scranton and [5 seconds of a continuous beeping tone] and you may have to edit that out."
Never change, Liam
Same
I like to think that Liam suggested shoving Pat Toomey into the firebox of Baldwin Locomotive Works #26 (in Minecraft).
"I want to drive him up to scranton and treat him to a cold pizza from Dandy's"
I mean they actually edited it out this time. And given that they normally don't bother, we have to assume that it's not something you can even do as a parody in Minecraft.
He should change, I like to hear 10s of continous bleeping.
Okay, so the biggest fire danger I feel isn't now, but rather in a space somewhere from 10-20 years from now in regards to five over ones. What you're going to get is a wonderful combination of physical decay, and, of course, what will inevitably come when the pools of foreign capital ballooning the housing market finally stop speculating on U.S. housing being a safe/wonderful investment. You will have a bunch of buildings sorely in need of repair from the damage from water ingress, wear and tear, and just general falling-apartedness because these buildings are shit, that aren't worth the value of the repairs needed to bring them back into working order. The initial investors will have made their initial investment back, and thus won't have any particular reason to maintain them in their asset portfolio, because well, they're in the building construction and development business, so you're likely to see these buildings getting sold off and passed between different slumlord acquisition partners, until the last person in the chain is financially underwater with a fire insurance policy that happens to be worth more than the value of the building.
As any firefighter who lived through the 1970's in Bushwick, Brooklyn will tell you, the greatest fire protection in the world has nothing to do with sprinkler systems, partitions, non-combustible wall construction, but instead, property value, and well, this building certainly doesn't have much of that anymore.
How did the fire start? I don't know, kinda hard to tell when the building is just a pile of matchsticks littered with corpses, the survivors say something about the sprinklers being broken, maybe even being turned off, but well that's no surprise, nothing in these buildings works anymore. Once the fire got into the common cockloft with no fire partitions, it just spread throughout the entire building, and flaming debris started making its way down into the apartments floor by floor as the structure gives way. Firefighters won't, and frankly can't go up onto the fire floor and the roof to do trench cuts, pull ceilings, and do aggressive interior attack. They know that the gusset plates on the pre-manufactured floor and roof trusses will pop in the slightest amount of heat, and that a fire hose is just going to turn the OSB that makes the up the floor and the shear walls into wet newspaper. So, the rescue and ladder companies will try to do a once around the building to get as many people out as possible, there won't be too many living though, then they'll pull out the tower ladders, and do a surround-and-drown to try to prevent the five-over-one next door from going up, but they're not staying in that building that long, these buildings aren't built like the old tenements their training prepared them for, they come down fast. Especially if this fire happens at night, which, for some weird reason most fires of these kind do, the occupants are likely to be woken up by clouds of billowing, acrid, black smoke from their petroleum filled furnishings, and all of the petroleum based adhesives binding the structure together, and they will swiftly die hacking up their lungs on the floor of their apartment, or if they're lucky, in the hallway which is also made of the same shit construction.
As a result of the fire, as well as the water damage from the deck guns on the tower ladders, the building will be a total loss. You'll soon get scavengers who will further destroy the pile of rubble in their search for copper wiring, anything of value will be stripped, kids will come around and set the pile of wrecked timbers on fire, because as soon as that slumlord got his fire insurance check, he bounced right the fuck outta there, and what you'll eventually be left with is a concrete plinth, as a statue to the arrogance of the real estate market, and capitalism generally.
Do you think I got that right Rocz?
Also a big reason you can't have a large HVAC unit on the roof is because you'd require a steel frame or a concrete masonry wall to rest the unit on. The big HVAC units are too heavy to rest on lightweight roof trusses
I knew you Americans love to built with wood but I thought only the people in tornado alley and Florida where dumb enough to built a house out of timber. I didn’t realize you guys also built 5 stories buildings out of the stuff. Sounds like a fun death trap to me. What’s wrong with concrete and brick
@@MrJimheeren more money, more skilled labor.
goddamn, dude
This should go out to everyone renting or buying in a building like this.
Considering the fact that I've literally seen RedVector just copy-paste and lightly-paraphrase a badly-written, publicly available government manual on how to design something without adding any additional value or interpretation to it and calling the resulting video a "continuing education course" instead of a "4th-grade book report", I think there's a good argument for making this podcast into a Continuing Education Credits mill.
your post is intriguing to me and i wish to subscribe to your newsletter
"An hour and something"
The something, it turned out, would be another entire hour.
Another hour has hit the podcast
So glad that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster episode is finally coming out next week.
I know, right? It's gonna be great.
Seriously though, watch that be, like, their Episode 100 special when they decide the joke has finally run its course.
tbh i fully expect them to either never cover it or have it be an unremarkable number specifically to blindside us
@@zhijki we the people will not allow them to do such a thing, they promised the tacoma narrows bridge and by god we're going to get it
They're going to actually release it on April fool's that's my bet
Didnt they already do the Tacoma Narrows? I thought it was episode 13
It delights me that the unofficial mascot of this podcast has returned:
"Activate Windows"
When I was in college there was a five-over-one that caught fire during construction right across from campus. Funnily enough, it was called "Fuse 47". They tried to act like they were just going to repair the damage and refused to give anyone's prepaid rent back for a while, since they claimed it was still safe to inhabit. Despite the fact that if you looked into the parking garages, all you could see on the lower level of this block-long building were massive steel jacks literally every four feet holding up the half-melted structure.
Eventually they gave up and admitted they needed a partial rebuild. When it finally opened they named it.... "Alloy".
Hey wait... my girlfriend lived in that building
Soaking a bunch of sawdust board in water and then eating the wall oatmeal
mmmmm... oil-y!
Mmmhhh, construction cereal bar.
lov the cronch
It’s MDF’n delicious
"Stop gnawing on the drywall!"
I once did an accident survey in Tampa, to measure the height above the pavement of the low point of a high tension electric line. What had happened was, they were building an apartment complex and there was a guy driving a Lull with a load of roof trusses, and he touched the high-voltage line with the fork. He managed to jump off without getting electrocuted, and then the Lull and those trusses caught fire. All around him were a bunch of incomplete four or five story wood building frames. They all lit up like a box of matches. Boy oh boy did they ever burn good; there was a century-old masonry cigar factory about fifty feet outside the property and the brick and concrete on the side facing the site was fire-spalled.
That guy really shook hands with danger
Every time one of the three leaves to grab something, we are reminded that podcasts are like revolutionary cells: it works best when you have exactly three people. Justin brings the facts and deadpan humor, Alice the weird insights and chaos, and Liam the maxims and righteous anger. Without any one, the other two don't really work... but with all three the result is great entertainment.
This is true! The podcast wouldn't be the same without all three of them.
It's funny how Heinlein analyzed this so well in 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' yet still campaigned for fucking Goldwater
So true
As a resident of a cheaply constructed apartment, I’m a big fan of not having to pay for heating because the floors are so badly insulated that my downstairs neighbors do it for me.
Last apartments I lived in did not charge for heating. Makes sense because somebody trying to heat their apartment from the surrounding apartments can cause water damage when the heat pipes freeze.
The city requires that the landlord keep the heating system maintained such the the temperature can be maintained 20C. The lease also had minimum temperature requirements from the tenants.
Unfortunately then you also overpay for AC in the summer, so...
My woodworker's heart started to glow when Justin started yelling about stout and hardy structures
the problems listed in 1 hour 26 minutes of the podcast are EXACTLY the problems that my father comments that existed in the overly complicated designs of the facades of some buildings of the 1940s / 1950s, here in Brazil. He made a lot of money doing renovations, but the water accumulation and infiltration points mentioned in this podcast seem like an echo that I've heard my whole life my old man complain about.
Those aren’t pueblos they’re adobes, pueblos are made of stacked stones bound with mortar, while adobes are made of packed mud and clay reinforced with logs
yeah
i hope someone got fired for this blunder
these are more like photoshops
You passed fifth grade social studies in California
I don't know the exact definitions, but I've been to Taos Pueblo, and that's definitely a picture of Taos Pueblo.
Alice, I still loved that when you were sick you said you were the virus colony inhabiting that body and your pronounds were "they/them".
please ignore the typo. I meant "pronouns".
@@spyone4828 pronounds
@Ouro Boros prynodes
Pronounds
pronounds
A 5 over 1 that was under construction burned down near the University of Maryland back in 2017. Classes had to be cancelled due to air quality concerns after the smoke drifted over the campus. So there were a bunch of college students gawking at a 5 alarm fire that was like 2 blocks away from a firehouse and about 2500 feet from the fire protection engineering college. Also the apartments were called Fuse 47 because things weren't ridiculous enough.
alice you're not missing out on much not doing voice training it's basically just making cat noises all day - if you have a cat you don't seem quite as insane bc you just pretend you're talking to the cat (and then start genuinely talking to the cat, and wondering months in why the ten minute long conversation of chirps and purring is more engaging than any other conversation you've had that week)
this might be the reason i'm starting to slide down the slippery slope of unironically wanting to be a catgirl
jfc that was a rollercoaster to read
@@MannoMax it's a rollercoaster to experience too lmao i own cat ears now
@@OutbackCatgirl wow youve made me more interested in doing voice training now
that's crazy, it's the exact same shit I do to sing higher notes better. And I also just end up talking to my cat in cat noises, great bonding experience.
based
A scrapyard near where I lived as a child caught fire, along with the massive piles of tires around the site.....
The fire brigade turned up, spent half a day trying to put it out, then gave up and instead set light to another few spots to help accelerate it, and even with that it still took a week to burn itself out. That whole time a fire engine had to sit onsite as their rules say they can't leave a active fire
as a child caught fire
Did the fire brigade manage to extinguish the child, or what? Feel like you left us hanging here.
ok bart simpson
seriously though what the fuck.
I didn't know these were called five over ones, I always just called them "the gentrification buildings"
yup, likewise
Developer blocks
Capital T capital A "Those Apartments"
@thedog556 The Gentrification At Downtown
same
The barely opening casement windows is indeed a part of code. It is required that the windows are outfitted with limiters in order to prevent the windows from being opened enough for someone to fall out of it.
At my job we once had a GC+Developer client decline to install them in order to save money, and sure enough, a child fell out. Luckily the kid was okay and didn't break anything.
Why not just put the windows further up the wall so dumb children can’t reach them?
@@GigasGMX
Then the ceilings need to be taller, and you know how possessive rich folk can be of certain concepts.
Jk, there are lots of good reasons rooms are as tall as they are, I'm sure.
how does Germany do this oO
. like you can open windows like a door and most you can tilt...if people fall out that's more a parent problem, right?
@@a_lethe_ion Thats just natural selection imo lol
couldn’t you just put screens in the windows?
They'll activate windows the day the Tacoma Narrows Bridge episode comes out.
Yes
It honestly took me about 5 or 10 episodes to realize that was a bit and they hadn't just kept fucking up and had to do something else instead.
@@willowrabbit Oh yeah same
Not activating Windows is praxis
I'm sure that it'll happen eventually, either as a sub/patreon goal or at the 50 or 100 mark.
Holy crap, you know about the leaky condo crisis? The vast majority of low rise apartment buildings in Vancouver are now constructed with steel reinforced concrete thanks to that scandal. The developers should have known better to engineer buildings that could withstand moisture, as we live in a TEMPERATE RAINFOREST. But if you've ever done anything related to property development in Vancouver, you'll realize that the entire local industry is a corrupt scam.
I think the point of this is the the GLOBAL construction industry is a corporate scam
Finally, developing world privilege: houses not built out of papier-mâché and petrol.
houses with walls you can't punch through
Europe doesn't have these either lol. Its just americans
@@uilsoum875 do Europeans not use drywall?
@@jakexd5524 I don't know, i'm not european. i can tell you that here in Brazil our walls are made with bricks
@@jakexd5524 Yes, we do, we either plaster the brick walls, are use drywall against the brick wall. Although last week I passed a house that was being build with american style wood frame construction. The first time in 30 years I ever saw that in belgium. We usually build with what we call "snelbouwsteen", large perforated bricks, then a cavity wall is build of normal small bricks.
I used to work for a house cleaning company, we hated single-occupancy 'greebled' homes that are so popular in the more expensive suburbs because there was no safe way to secure our guys to the roofs. The all end up eventually looking like shit because a pressure washer can only spray so high up, plus I've seen a few get hit with hailstones and end up with holes in the cladding.
Or holes from woodpeckers. Yes really. (in Prince George, a day's drive north of Vancouver BC)
So the apartment in New Jersey was basically that one Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke: “They said I was daft for building a castle in a swamp, but I did it anyway! ...Then it sank into the swamp.”
As a carpenter that deals with all of this garbage, i.e. osb, mdf, etc. It has pained me to be forced to use this garbage! Many of my fellow carpenters think I’m off my rocker every time I bitch about the use of the engineered materials! Not just because it’s mostly garbage but that it’s also excellent tinder, has many health issues related to it but also from a finishing standpoint it’s a nightmare! I have seen so much new construction start cracking, shifting and literally falling apart in less than 5 years! It’s all GARBAGE and fits in nicely with our capitalistic, consumer driven dipshittery!
northern virginia is filling up with McManshions made of mdf etc, that use of the whole lot for lack of any restrictions, i just wish they all would fall down ASAP. the real shame is the "developers" cut every tree down, clear the lots of every tree- thats the worst part of the hall charade -ruining the town. My small split level house was built in 1955. Its held up ok.
Well yeh. Let's ram wood full of volatile organic compounds for that carcinogenic whiff we've been craving since we've lost arsenical wallpaper.
I work at lowes, and I just discovered last week that we aren't supposed to be cutting OSB in-house for the same reason we don't cut pressure-treated boards; of course, management usually bullies the poor building material dept guys into doing it ANYWAY, so that's a fun thing to know.
I went to a few worksites north of the Twin Cities back when my dad worked on them. I want _no_ part of that, thank you. I can't smell it from the street, but I _know_ the stench of cheapness just emanates from them
@@adams3627safety third contender!
Oh hey it's an episode on every single university hall in the UK built after 2000
I lost my security deposit and developed 2 STDs just looking at these slides
I think the UK ones are on steel frames - they still love to cover them in flammable cladding sheets.
"The Church demands a retractable roof or else they're going to move the franchise."
a.k.a. The Avignon Papacy
"Stick frame" construction (using wood framing or light gauge cold-rolled steel framing) is so prevalent in the U.S. because it's cheap, and cost is really the only thing developers care about. Masonry and concrete construction requires more labor, and labor costs are higher in the U.S. than in many of the developing countries that you see masonry being used, so it's usually avoided where possible. Steel, of course, is the most expensive building material/method. In addition, in seismically active areas like California, buildings have to be light and rigid - the amount of reinforcement required to make a masonry building stable increases the price as well.
Another confounding variable is the average lifespan of a building in the U.S. (residential or commercial) is crazy short-term compared to most of the world. Developers want to keep tearing stuff down and putting it back up the same way over and over again as cheaply as possible, because it's how they make money. "Sustainability" was a buzzword that was trendy to use in architecture about 10 years ago (think "LEED" certification, etc) and now most firms don't even bother to make an effort faking it. To a builder, throwing up a few RTU's on the roof, and making the tenants foot the cost of having a higher energy bill saves more time and money than installing operable windows and allowing for natural ventilation and lighting to work properly.
Unfortunately, most designs eventually get distilled down into a big ugly box that aims to maximize square footage, and minimize cost per square foot, inflating the building as big as it can get within Planning and zoning limitations. In fact, if it weren't for certain Planning Dept. and local municipal guidelines, these buildings wouldn't even have "greebling" or any attempt to make them less aesthetically offensive. It's just the nature of the business models being employed by everyone involved in the building industry at the moment.
I mean, labour costs in wealthy European countries are high too, and developers are cheap and greedy everywhere. But houses here are all concrete and/or brick and people would balk at the idea of living in a building made of plywood (nevermind buying a house built that way).
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballsthing is that North America and hasn’t been logged out for millennia to rebuild after every major conflict since the Bronze Age and clear space for farmland.
0:00 - Liam treats discord like a fish.
0:25 - Introductions
1:50 - Emergency mobile podcast
4:08 - Alice channels her inner Bob Wells
5:15 - Let's build with oil, just like we all learned with Legos.
6:56 - My grandmother's furnace from the Great Depression
8:45 - Cogeneration of heating, electricity, electric cars, and tires. Everyone loses 40 IQ points.
14:10 - If you want to kill your family - GO FOR IT.
16:12 - The CIA has found the pod.
17:25 - The pod keeps going back to the well.
20:17 - The Fa and the Kaiser stopped the French and the English from doing the Colonialism to the Arabs. This was good?
27:25 - Suburb Ugly
33:13 - Discuss the grains, why don't you?
42:30 - A "Wherefore" in the wild.
47:31 - Fyre Festival
50:25 - King Arthur went to New Jersey.
57:03 - Justin tries to explain CDD, HDD, HVAC, DX, VAV, AHU, VFD, and AC.
59:35 - Alice does not realize that HVAC is the armpit of the mechanical engineering world.
1:03:15 - The Armory at the Kink.
1:06:45 - No more defenestrations.
1:14:12 - Roz goes to meet RBG?
1:16:45 - 5 over 1's are Star Destroyers
1:19:45 - Can a building be sustainable it if isn't LEED Platinum, but it has been sustained for longer than everyone currently living?
1:28:00 - It's not just the window on the top left.
1:34:15 - Roz does not like the 5x1's trying to look like the Hancock Tower.
1:39:45 - Is there an advantage to 5x1's?
1:48:30 - A wheel within a wheel. Of oily wood.
1:51:50 - Alice finds out about how land use law in the USA works.
1:53:15 - You don't say that this gigantic building is a mansion?
1:56:00 - Roz goes to meet RBG at the toilet? We hear a discussion of who is the real third wheel.
1:58:50 - Safety Third
2:06:20 - Kaptialism!
(More as I have time.)
Thank you very much for this
So thats what they're called, I've been living in one of these for the last three months and I was like, "this multi-story wooden structure is sketchy as shit."
Were you folks aware, when talking about the financial incentives being more often the deciding factor rather than code or zoning laws, that Houston actually has no zoning whatsoever? Honestly, Houston itself would make a pretty good episode.
lars lerup is def worth checking out regarding houstons unique situation
Houston as an engineering disaster would make a great ep, for sure
Those pics of downtown Houston with all the massive flat parking lots is so fucking funny. Houston is, improbably, even funnier and more poorly conceived than Dallas.
Houston has a lot of rules that resemble zoning though
what really gets me about that array of AC compressors is that they're just out in the sun surrounded by black
These buildings look like something a 3D modeler who's never studied any kind of architecture would put into a video game to fill out space in a level.
I've never resonated with a comment as much as this.
My whole town, a college town has been obsessed with these garbage buildings for the last two decades... About 1/3 of our town looks like a low resolution video game.
You're missing it bro, shitty uninspired architecture is the American way.
The NPC of buildings. Excellent comment.
Exactly. So many modern buildings look like the 'architect' is just drawing completely random cube and rectangle shapes, with a random bit of roof at a non-90 degree angle if you're lucky.
Sectioning up a flat facade isn't necessarily bad - it prevents buildings from feeling looming and dominating, but so much modern architecture is just random badness.
Five over One does not refer to the number of floors on the building. They are references to the type of construction as defined in the building code. Type 1 is masonry and type 5 is wood frame.
Previously type 5 construction was not allowed on apartment buildings over a certain height. Until a change was put in that said, as long as you use fire-retardant lumber, you can now build up to 5 stories of type 5 construction. Either on the ground or above 1 or 2 levels of type 1 construction. An apartment building with 4 wood frame floors over 2 masonry floors is still 5 over 1.
Bradford's Fire Brigade are called West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.
BTW Forensic Architecture have got in on your act - they have a video on Vimeo reconstructing the Beirut warehouse explosion in great detail, working out what caught fire when, and what was stored in the warehouse & where, based on footage they managed to sync and build a 3d model from & testimony from various fire experts. It seems that too was in part at least a tyre fire. It makes for some interesting watching - their verdict was that given the materials stored & how it was stored & where, it was a warehouse-sized bomb ready to go off at any time. They conclude that there was no way to store that amount of ammonium nitrate that close to residential buildings without breaking every internationally respected safety rules on the storage of ammonium nitrate. Even if they'd taken the greatest care with it, it was about half a mile too close, but these guys had it leaking out of sacks, crystals of it gradually turning dark, haphazardly stacked all over the place. It should make a really good WTYP.
wait Alice is trans? I tought she was chainsmoker
Pronouns are *cough*/*wretching*
Does it have to be one or the other
Not really now that you mention it...
l-l-l-lemme take a selfie
@David Fakename Yeah, they all sound so English up there.
15:27
As an American, can confirm. It's like living in a country where EVERYONE is Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman.
In addition to having brain damage from leaded gas
@@ASS_ault Leaded petrol ("leaded gasoline" as Americans call it) in cars was common until the 1990s. The lead was used as an anti-knocking agent. But there is evidence that lead exposure causes brain damage (and in fact the decline in violent crime since the 90s may have been caused in part by the decline in lead exposure).
For more information, see Donoteat's Industries DLC video.
@@ASS_ault Not really. There are lots of people alive who were born in the 50s, 60s and 70s and were exposed to lead throughout their childhoods. I was born in 1989 and clearly remember leaded petrol (it was still available when I was a child, though unleaded was more common by then).
@@ClaudiaNW let alone the amount of crumbling leaded pai t everywhere back then
1:43:17
Parking garages are notoriously difficult to maintain, as stated because of temperature fluctuations, moisture, road salt as well as other reasons.
The parking garage in the building i worked in suffered structural damage because the engineers that designed it didn't account for snow plow drivers plowing all of the snow into one corner of the top floor.
They had to install a heated collection pan and drainage system before the top two floors were serviceable.
I'm honestly considering asking for a card with
First name: 'Uh, are Pennsylvania'
Last name: 'Secret Service cards still available?'
THEY ARE ALWAYS AVAILABLE UNTIL ALICE SAYS THEY ARE NOT
See, I'm just stuck wanting one but refusing to create an account on the nazi bird site to order it.
I have printed a secret service card for the concept of the secret service card, containing a photo of the card
@@alicecaldwell-kelly9530 god that's high art
@@alicecaldwell-kelly9530 I have no Twitter any more, so I emailed the podcast account. But I am a fool who forgot to include my address in the original email, so I am not sure if you got the follow up email with my address?
Also, you are great and the Group B episode was really good.
The reason why they construct these buildings with those varied facades, numerous textures, and all the stuff that makes the building leaky is due to zoning ordinances. The codes claim they want interesting facades on buildings and for things not to look monotonous. These rules were interpreted in an absolutely horrible way.
They’re being interpreted in a cheap way
Hey I do HVAC Engineering, I feel like I just saw myself on TV!
Honestly, one of the reasons I went with HVAC was so I wouldn't end up on an engineering disaster podcast. All I have to do to not kill people is make sure there is more than enough outdoor air. Although, Justin mentioned Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) which I only worked with once, but you have to design for the case that the refigerant leaks and suffocates everyone. So, waiting for the episode where that happens and the HVAC engineer didn't do the calc right. But VRF offers individual zone control and energy efficiency at the same time, so worth the risk?
Also, it's true you get paid well for HVAC, but it seems like you podcasters get to keep your happiness/sanity
VRF is great stuff! How many lbs is the total system charged with for an avg 5 over 1? Less than 300lb?
@@Skunkhunt_42 sounds about right, but I haven't really done residential.
ASHRAE Standard 15 "...sets limits, based on occupancy classification, for the maximum refrigerant charge by volume of occupied space ... Some options could include: increasing the room volume, relocating or removing refrigerant piping, or dividing the refrigerant circuit to reduce the charge."
@@jacobedward2401 my man, quoting the Bible! Are you on east or west coast by chance? I'm in pdx
@@Skunkhunt_42 DMV ;)
This episode was brought to you by the colour "bleh" and the word "greebled"
Until 2017 or so, my job was actually working on building sites installing fire protection (sprinklers). By spooky coincidence, my last day on the job was the same week Grenfell Tower happened. Anyway, we did quite a few sites that were either totally timber frame or had this 4/5-over-1 type design. Building firms like them because they're relatively cheap and quick to throw up with minimal skill and you can still charge stupid prices for them - one of these places is currently valued at £835k, which... lol. Anyway, they were marketed as "smart homes" (basically, you can turn the lights on and off with an app) to idiots with too much money as second homes or investments. Usually we were in there installing our stuff first, as soon as the roof went on, so that any of the other trades couldn't burn the place to the ground with shitty electrics, a stray gas torch, etc. Would I buy one? Fuck no.
In my area, a five over one under construction burned down before the fire protection was installed. Definitely smart installing that stuff first
1:36:00 "engineered lumber" should _not_ be a structural member of multiple-owner buildings. If you're the sole owner you'll either take care of it or face the costs, but if you share that compressed cat-litter with anyone else they _will_ screw it up for you.
How about that big fire in Oklahoma? It looked like the five-over-one king of kings.
This episode hits way too close to home with the housing crisis we currently have in Germany. Imma see myself out till the next episode that makes me laugh (and perhaps cry) instead of just cry.
I've just clicked on this but I was thinking is this about German housing? First picture could be anywhere in West Germany. I live in Cologne and damn the housing sucks here. But at least it's better than the UK or New Zealand. 😂
@@mgmcdb7606 Yeah, and at least in Germany the ugly apartment blocks are built of concrete and brick, not plywood.
Germany too? Good lord where is there NOT a housing crisis right now?
@@roborovskihamster5425 Singapore I think has no housing crisis. Finland I believe is also investing in massive public housing? I remember reading that Vienna has a very good public housing program.
But yea, capitalism fucking sucks.
@@mgmcdb7606
Really, New Zealand can't solve housing? And I thought they had figured out most of this stuff; but then again, that is compared to the rest of the planet...
So, low bar.
Live in a 5 over 1. Built in 2015, the bike storage room had a leak IN THE SUMMER from the hallway HVAC not draining, so that wont age well in Portland Oregon of all places (notably a place that doesn't ever rain). The floor in my apartment looks like wood but it's actually just linoleum tiles, which if my ass sits in a chair long enough, gets divots, and is starting to come up where I sit for my desk. The worst is my place has a Juliette balcony because apparently I don't deserve outside space and the door is the typical swing door like you'd have for a normal balcony, except it doesn't stay open on its own due to the settling of the building. Also yes, those dumb stupid windows that don't open.
As someone who lives in a colder climate, my first thought regarding roofs is "how difficult is it to remove the snow from the roof and how often am I gonna have to go up there to push the snow off?" And I don't even live in the Great Lakes area where the Lake Effect means they get a ton of snow every year! Although these days, we get more ice than snow. Gotta love Global Warming, amirite? And ofc ice is much harder to remove from your roof than snow and is also why roof solar panels are not terribly popular here (plus we also get a bunch of hail from thunderstorms when it's not winter so hail damage is basically inevitable).
Two years ago in February, we had a solid 2-3 inches of ice coating everything for an entire month. The few thaws we had barely melted any ice, but it did melt plenty of snow on lawns - which promptly refroze on the roads and sidewalks. We live on a small hill, so I had to sort of slide my way down the hill on the sidewalk and have my partner catch me at the base of the stairs to our porch.
As another trans person -- to hell with the voice work! I was very concerned about it for a while until I realized it wasn't causing me any dysphoria and I didn't need to do it except to cater to the opinions of other people.
Plenty of cis women sound the same.
I've always wondered what to call this style and "Death Star Modern" fits well
I keep seeing these getting built everywhere in the Midwest, especially in Rust Belt cities starting to improve a little, and they keep burning down. Every single "the whole building went up in flames" fires we've had in my hometown recently have been this type of apartment building, albeit usually shorter because no one's building a 5-6 story building in my hometown. One of the worst parts has to be that they're still automobile dependent usually, so all the negatives of living in an apartment with almost none of the positives.
So glad the finally got to the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster
Next week, at last, again! Looking forward!
The what now?
If listening to the podcast counts as lecture hours, does safety third count as a coop?
Extra Credit
More like office hours
study group
Only if you _guitar_ *SHAKE HANDS WITH DANGER*
Even with the multitude of problems with the 5 over 1 buildings, they are still infinitely better than the Apartment Complex + stripmall setup that we were forced to build 20 years ago. Some walkability is better than no walkability, you can't expect America to kick its car dependency cold turkey
Yeah but Finland though
01:34 "sunshades that don't do anything" are actually about slowing and turbulating the wall convection before it reaches the roof for "purposes" it makes the roof-top aircons work better
A couple of my uni buildings had aluminium external sunshades that _did_ work; didn't look like they'd be expensive to buy or design installation for once you're in the thousands of units.
Alice, your voice is magical and never let anyone tell you it's not. You be you.
I'm pretty sure the term "greebles" comes specifically from the world of prop-building, a lot of those old sci-fi scale-model props have bits of, say, WWII tank models incorporated into them to give them a more technological feeling. See also - "kitbashing".
Yeah, I build terrain for tabletop gaming and the word gets used a fair bit as just "random bits added to increase visual interest," and it's much more common in scifi themed terrain because fantasy terrain tends to replicate fantasy styles so you don't have large flat textureless surfaces, but in sci-fi buildings there's a lot of adding random pipes, vents, fans, wires, boxes, whatever, and the word gets used for that miscellanea
See also 'Aztek-ing', the equivalent concept from the Star Trek side of things. Most starkly seem in the two different models used for the Enterpride-D, the earlier model used in the first few seasons being fairly smooth and sleek, with the model used in later seasons loaded down with extra detail and texturing. Debates range to this day as to which looks better.
A Master Chief mask does not count as a mask for the purposes of preventing yourself from transmitting, but it does work as a plastic guard to lower your risk of getting infected.
Shit. I had an NCR Ranger helmet for Corona. :v
hey if it works against the Flood...
Wear a surgical mask underneath. Solved
@@bigmouthprick5852 the ranger mask should be good if it's constructed around a functional respirator.
We came to this place because Avalon 5 over 1 at Edgewater was our last, best hope for peace.
I'm always a little surprised when Alice mentions people not hearing her voice as feminine, because without her bringing them up, it never would've occurred to me to not hear her voice as such.
Don’t get me wrong Alice is awesome. But she has a pretty low gravel in her voice which sounds pretty manly
@@MrJimheeren Never really noticed any of it, to be honest. It might just be that my native language has a lot more gravely consonants than English though.
@@lasschesteven I'm in the same boat, might be that I haven't heard her accent before so I have no comparison to say her voice sounds masculine. That or I thought it was a little masculine but when she gave her pronouns I just started thinking of it as feminine because it is the way that a female is talking.
@@MrJimheeren Many cis women have low voices.
*Says a cis woman who sings the bass line in choir...*
@@LungaFermata I feel the same, Alice is a woman so her voice is a woman's voice
thank u for filling my parasocial needs
I would pay tuition for a Certificate of Problem Identification. it can go on the cube wall along with my nuclear accident prevention training.
No that's not sarcasm. And yes, I deeply exasperate my management.
When i lived in a 5 over one, the windows practically funneled water into my apartment and on a particularly rainy weekend, I could collect over a gallon of water leaking from the windows.
God it was a shit place to live.
As one of the 5 people from North Carolina, I approve.
I love Alice’s attitude towards working to change her voice towards more feminine sounding, I think her attitude encapsulates just about how everyone feels about our current life situation in 2020 due to the rona. “Ehh it’s too much work”
I'll be honest, I'd thought it was a bit at first too, Alice. But then that all got cleared up during the Tacoma Narrows episode
Me too. I always zoned out during the intros until Alice would say "my pronouns are she and her".
I realised my mistake several episodes in when I finally decided I should learn their names.
@@alfalafelstine1536 it took me more episodes than I care to admit to distinguish between Alice and Liam DESPITE the clear accent
Alice, glad I am not the only lazy voice training, slow burn gag, edgy, poke the bear, pot stirrer in the crowd...
...as for your voice work, Alice: respect for having the integrity and courage to affirm your identity on your own terms, rather than trying to conform to a more binary definition of gender. Of course, I suspect it may have more to do with sheer laziness, but hey. Perhaps a bit of both.
People like Alice are at the forefront of pulping gender norms entirely
30:10 on is so on point. Massive alienation, tremendous, we love to see it folks.
_"The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
"_ - I don't know, Michael Scott, or Marx probably. Arbitrary Marx quote I just had in the clipboard, the whole thing is about this shit AS WE KNOW. WE LOVE ITTTTTTTTTTTT
We have loads of buildings in London that are new builds that have “poor doors”.
If you’re a social housing tenant of the building, you have to use the same door as the cleaners and workers maintaining the building. Your key fob to enter the door doesn’t work for the glitzy front door of the building, it only works for access.
There’s a tower block in Aldgate where their tax break was dependent of social housing which is 20% of the amount of apartments, and they really fucked over the social housing tenants by banning them from using the amenities of the building and relegating them to “poor door” usage.
These buildings are constructed poorly and made of shit materials but because they’re central London, they’re six figures for a “rabbit hutch”.
hey my grandparents met at a normal school
my parent's house isn't part of a HOA but it IS a townhouse in a condominium which means that the condo actually owns the outside of the house and gives us even less control over the place we live in and pay for. (It supposedly reduces cost on our end for things like windows, doors, and roofing while upping property value but what it's actually done is prevent us from fixing our broken kitchen because one appliance was put in too low for code and fixing it would mean knocking out a few bricks in the outer wall, which we can't do without a permit.)
Partial ownership leads to even more entitled assholes than a HOA bootlicker such as the asshole old couple across the street getting pissed as us for having our snow shovel out at our front door in April because it was against condo policy to have anything like that out past a certain date. The most baffling thing is that those two quite literally have no actual stake in the condo because they're renters and property value doesn't affect them in any way, they just genuinely like being dicks to everyone in the complex.
Which appliance, btw?
@@godminnette2 Wall mounted microwave is too close to the stovetop. With the way the ventilation is attached to it is we'd need to move the vent outside up as well.
The people who previously owned the house in the 90's made a lot of very stupid renovation decisions that we are still dealing with to this day like the upstairs toilet having a square bowl or the asbestos tiles in the kitchen.
1:49:00 You could convert this „Texas Donut“ or whatever easily into a Barcelona style super block!
Barcelona city blocks are amazing, they look really nice, a lot of your windows are away from the streets and you have some green space right next to your building.
My best friend and I see these buildings everywhere now. And all that we say is, "Oh look another gentrification building!"
Almost the exact same buildings went up downtown where I live. Rent went up almost $800 too
it doesn't even look appealing to live in
@@carlosandleon It relies on sunk cost fallacy to get tenants
@@slickmcCoolhighly doubt the buildings caused your rent to go up
@@amorpaz1 well I'm glad you are able to imagine that, knowing nothing about me nor where I live. Just so we're on the same level, you do understand that your imagination does not necessarily correlate with reality, right? Just checking
Just picturing Liam wearing an RV like a giant onesie
Like Truckules from the Venture Brothers.
Trying to find the right unit to repair on one of those rooftop condenser farms after they've been in service a few years and the sun has baked all of the number stickers/sharpie scribbles off of them is a real shit sometimes.
Laughed for a solid couple of minutes at "five-grover-one"
I love how this is now just justin dragging arguments over from numtot
Your commentary on the fires definitely rings true for me. There was an apartment complex about half a mile from me that caught fire during construction, and there were chunks of charred wood that had blown into our yard from it. It actually melted a road sign that was next to the site.
Fun fact, my grandfather worked in recycling and one of the things they hooked up is recycling tires as additives to the fires in cement kilns. I.e. tire fires have already been happening and in much more productive ways :D
My Aunt got ruined by the leaky condos, and when I was looking for places to live myself, I found most apartments had retrofitted mini-awnings to try to deal with the issue.
For perspective; my father did plumbing and gas piping on and off for 20 years in UK homes using a blowtorch for braising and soldering. Wooden joists, old enamel paint, and wallpaper all round but zero fires set, through cunning use of forethought and a heat mat.
I live one town over from Edgewater and I remember that fire very well. They stationed pumper tucks on top of the Palisades to shoot water down on houses ( and subsequently froze them over) and the fire itself. It was so bad they had companies driving in from as far north as Upper Saddle River and Bloomingdale to help fight it. Any chance you guys could do the Marcal Paper Mill fire?
These buildings are not just problematic for renters, developers and owners find an issue with them as well.
The main problem that the developers articulated was selling and partitioning of the mixed-use development, which is not allowed based on the bank loans used to finance the projects. Developers don't like dealing with them because buyers either want to deal with the commercial part of the property or the residential part of the property, rarely both if ever. This explains why so many storefronts remain vacant in newer buildings around the country.
"U.S. Federal residential policies prohibit lending for developments in which more than 20% of the building space is used for commercial, which means that a mixed-use building with ground-floor retail must be at least five stories tall, higher than allowed in many urban areas (Affordable-Accessible Housing in a Dynamic City: Why and How to Increase Affordable Housing in Accessible Neighborhoods 2020)." When developments get this big, construction requirements mandate concrete and steel, driving up the cost of the development exponentially which is passed off to potential renters and buyers.
I longtime fireman friend of mine will talk for hours about their flammability.
The irony of Liam talking about his 5 day road trip intermixed with the chiding about Thanksgiving travel is a bit much lol
fun fact: when I did concrete reinforcement in vancouver, we used milimeters for the bar diameters and feet for the length (tho the bars clearly came in 10m standard lenghts)
Wait you didn't use inches and fractions for bar diameters? Canucks get different rebar than the US?
@@TheSullie1 Nope. We had bars in 5mm increments from 5mm to 35mm in diameter. Now that I think about it, the standard 15mm bar length right off the docks of Shiu Wing Steel was 9 meters, which we'd obviously call 29-6. I've heard of full metric job sites but never partook in one.
Looking at at conversion table, that gets you really close to 3/16th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 13/16th, 1inch, and so on in 3/16th inch increment, maybe it's the same bars?
@@atn_holdings
American bars go by 8ths for diameters
@@TheSullie1 yeah makes sense. Yeah I even found some labels on some bar bundle clearly stating they were measured in millimetres
Pretty sure the word was meant to be "exacerbated" (worsened) not "exasperated" (irritated or frustrated)
so i know it's been 2 years, but i feel compelled to point out that the "greebling" (is that how it's spelled?) alice points out is *intended* to be "humane design" - it's supposed to make these giant blocks of building look less like the oldest house from control and more like a street of buildings for people.
as someone who works as a ramp agent at the big local airport and who keeps having to work an infuriatingly increasing amount of Delta flights every day I really felt seen by that shoutout, thanks guys
The Texas Donuts look like a 19th century building style from Germany. We call them Rent Barracks.
Die Mietbaracken sind aber gemauert, und ziemlich langlebig
@@MannoMax there could be also surviver bias in that, all the shitty ones burned down and/or where demolished.
Only the sturdy once’s survived.
@@herrklugscheiser2330 Could be, but from historical documents we know that they were usually built very sturdy. Most of the ones that have been destroyed over the years were either from allied bombing or to make room for new buildings like malls and other stuff.
Also with brick and mortar construction you can't skimp out and cut corners that much.
Regarding 1:07:25: I have 2 fold out windows. One day about a month after moving in and the rest of our small building was being built, a workman came to install something to prevent the windows from opening like more than an inch. Our AC kept breaking down and I was dying one day so I took out a screwdriver and mirror and uninstalled it so I could get some cooler air in. I was going to put it back if I ever leave. Also one window is now mostly blocked by a growing tree. Some loose ends like that exist, and I could drop dead one day and these unsafe things exist in the world. Another one was when I finished my parents basement I managed to convince the inspector to allow me to store things under the stairs, which is a fire hazard. I was wanting to drywall over that spot before they sell it, but I probably will not get a chance.
Thank you very much for a very interesting (as always) topic. Have wondered for years how these things can exist. They seem to be held up by insurance and fossil fuel based electricity waste. I used to be in construction and was witness to how 2x4’s became 1.5x3’s, and floor joist 2x10’s became 2 2x2’s connected by stamped steel webbing, and that was 30 years ago. Just a matter of time before we see a large loss of life due to fire in one of these tissue paper disposable apartment buildings.