(First posted 08/06/21, updated December 2021) During my latest neighborhood stroll, I decided to focus on some building sites, as there are also many construction enthusiasts (to say the least) around here, in the CC-world of wheeled items.
The tour’s starting point is what us Dutch call een kast van een huis, that’s a big, almost mansion-type of house. The large steel plates in the foreground are used as a temporary pavement for all types of vehicles, from compact cargo vans to big rigs. The small blue building on the right is temporary too. I may hope so.
The green silo is a dry mortar dispenser. These are placed (fully filled) and collected by a heavy truck, usually an 8×4, equipped with a roll-off system. No crane needed.
The masons are still working on the attic. On the right, their brick cutting machine. This is a high-end, high-quality new house, built by a renowned local contractor. Normally, it will outlive all of us and anyone who will be born in the upcoming 50 years or so. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Update, picture taken on September 18, 2021. All scaffolding still in place.
Update, picture taken on November 14, 2021. Things are getting much clearer now. From here one, most work will be an inside job.
Somewhat further, the steel skeleton for the new plant of the Exner company (specialized in robot technology). All main contractors involved in the project are listed on the lower half of the sign.
Currently, the Exner company is operating from a much smaller building, at a few miles from this location. So they’re expanding their business, so to speak.
The grey stubs are the outer ends of the long, concrete piles, slammed deep into the ground.
The Huisman hauling company will have an additional, new warehouse soon.
Well, let’s be honest, there’s not much to see here yet, apart from the outer foundations.
Nearby, Huisman’s own FM station. As an aside, strictly linguistically speaking, a huisman is a male housewife.
Moving on and back in town again, this home is clearly almost finished. At least on the outside.
I like this picture because it clearly shows many major components of a brick house: both the outer- and inner walls, the insulation material inbetween, the window frames and the concrete floor plates (with the holes in them). Out of sight, the foundation of reinforced concrete on which all walls are built.
This new house, adjacent to the one in the previous picture, recently got its tiled roof. Or roof tiled.
And in the blink of an eye, we’re time travelling to the Middle Ages, featuring this former church tower. Just like that.
Many years ago, they even found the remainders of a church foundation in the ground, dating back to the days of the Roman Empire. Welcome to my minuscule part of the Old World.
Just a few steps from the old church tower to Van Kerkhof’s panel van. Appropriate, in a way, as kerkhof is Dutch for graveyard.
It’s a typical landscaper’s combination. In this case, a 2004 Renault Trafic 1.9 dCi (100 DIN-hp) with a multifunctional, 2010 Agados tandem axle trailer. Flatbed, dump trailer and machine hauler (it had retractable ramps underneath its bed), all in one.
Say, that’s an outstanding, recently built house in the background!
It’s a good thing that new construction is done with consideration and quality in the NL. If you did it the way we did, chewing up farmland with junk you’d only last about 2 years.
Very good idea, that site specific mortar dispenser…
The house at top appears to have steel framing. That is hardly worth noting in much of the world, but in the U.S. it would probably be wood instead. American house builders don’t seem to realize, or care, that wood expands and contracts considerably with weather changes, gets chewed up by termites and carpenter ants, is easily damaged by water, sags and settles, and oh, can catch fire and burn to the ground. If I ever build a house, it will be held up by metal and masonry only.
Working in the US with people who have relocated from all over the world, it’s always interesting when we discuss our preferences for building materials and practices used in the construction of our homes.
Within my totally unrepresentative group, it seems that the totally unscientific conclusion (How do you like that disclaimer?) is that North American housing is squarely in the middle of the pack: Some expats see it as just barely good enough to last for the term of a 30-year mortgage, while others see it as far better than what they could have afforded in their home country. Let’s face it, even within the US we build in a variety of ways to suit a multitude of climactic and seismic variations, not to mention the types of building materials that are readily available in a given region.
The main point of my comment is this: There’s no one right way to build a house, and my sincere hope is that the comments don’t devolve into, “Your way sucks, and our way is better,” which I’ve seen happen on other forums.
High quality clay, sand and gravel have always been readily available around here, so there’s that, concrete-, brick- and roof tile-wise.
From a European perspective seeing houses being built in the US for the first time was shocking.
I knew they were made of wood but it was like the fake town in Blazing Saddles.
When I bought a house here I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was paying too much for something that seemed so vulnerable and impermanent. My house was built in 1924 LOL.
My parents must have told me the story of the 3 pigs too often.
These construction practices are very impressive, especially in comparison to typical residential construction in the US. I was particularly astonished when I moved from the Northeastern states to Florida, as it seems in many areas of this state there were virtually no discernable building codes until maybe 50 years ago. Having grown up around many relatives in the building trades, some of the things I noticed in older properties I rented here were absolutely shocking to me. Granted, a home built in the 1940’s is rare in Florida, with most of the building having taken place 1950 or later, but even that “newer” stuff is so often razed and replaced that there’s no mystery why the build quality of most homes is sketchy at best. Hurricane codes since the mid 90’s have improved the overall quality, I think, but in comparison to what Johannes shows us, well….there really IS no comparison.
Is it common to put a detached house that close to the sidewalk/pavement? There’s one near me from the 1920’s that’s weird to walk by.
Casement windows or sliders?
Detached houses close to the sidewalk (or road) are quite common, regardless the age of the house. Casement windows. BTW, how do you call a window that can open at the top (so hinged at the lower end) or, after first being closed again, can also open sideways?
Johannes, a window hinged at the bottom is usually called a hopper window. Those hinged at the top are referred to as awning windows.
fintail jim (architect and automobile enthusiast)
Thanks Jim! Yet I was more thinking of this type of window:
I almost used these openable picture windows in a recent renovation, which look like fixed large windows up to 6′ x 8′, but actually pop open for ventilation, complete with screen on the edges where it opens but not where you look through the glass. Very cool.
Demo video:
I guess these are designed for some ventilation with some security. A kid couldn’t fall out and a burglar/rapist would have to break the glass to get in.
Dear Johannes, this is a great pictorial with explanation of construction in The Netherlands. Indeed, BuzzDog points out that sourcing local materials and cost factors count in home construction. Still, I would not mind have a home of this fine construction as illustrated. We have a friend who lives in this type of construction with some wood in it that was build in the late 1940’s. You enter the home and there is a feeling of permanence to it. Not that we should discount preserved homes made of wood that we have in The U.S. that are of wood construction. However, here in The Hudson River Valley and environs and the nearby Pascack Valley in northern New Jersey, there are many fine homes that have remained in use from the 1700’s. They are constructed of native limestone for the first floor, rocks for the foundation, and then the second floor is of wood. Thanks for sharing your country with us. Tom
Very interesting to see this new residential construction. I can’t remember when was the last time I saw a newly-built all-brick house.
One of the lots in back of me is being redeveloped into 5 very large houses, and it’s been interesting watching the construction process. The hardieplank siding is up now, and we can see, when the shadows hit it right, that it’s not on terribly straight, which amazes me for the price they’ve sold for.
And just out of curiosity, in the picture below, is that a garage? To me, it seems awfully narrow (not just the door, but the overall width too), but maybe that’s just the perspective.
When I zoom in on my original photo, those definitely seem to be wooden doors, with hinges on the side.
Most folks don’t use the garage for their car anyway.
Having visited the Netherlands many times over the years (first time in 1975), as well as many other European countries, I witnessed first-hand many of the differences in construction methods compared to those in Canada. All my travel was work related, sometimes involving repeat visits to the same places.
The differences I noticed apply mostly to houses, whereas commercial building methods tend to be very similar wherever I went.
I think the most telling difference is the time it takes to build a house in Canada vs Europe. I remember being surprised that it took about one year to build a standard 3-bedroom house in the Netherlands. Here in Quebec, it normally takes 3-4 months. My own house, built in 1995, took just over 9 weeks, from digging for the foundation to move-in day (2400 sq ft = 225 sq m, 2 levels + full basement, double garage, brick cladding over wood frame). I think my contractor must have set some sort of record… The house is still standing 26 years later, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t still be there for 100 more years.
The biggest physical difference is of course materials, i.e. wood-frame vs masonry construction. Not surprising that the Netherlands would use masonry extensively since wood is not available locally in any meaningful quantities. On the other hand, there are enough mature pine trees on my property to build a few more houses. Wood-frame construction is also common in e.g. Sweden.
In Quebec, most houses have poured concrete foundations with full basements due to winter frost reaching 3-4 ft (~ 1 m) below the surface. In much the Netherlands, such basements would quickly become indoor swimming pools.
There are also historical and cultural differences. Throughout Europe, you find houses built in the 15-19th centuries that have remained in the same family, and have been maintained and upgraded regularly. So houses are more than a placeholder or a financial investment – they’re a legacy. So, if you’re building for future generations, you might be willing to build more quality and durability into the house from the start.
My own ancestors came to Canada from France in the early 1600s. In those days, if you arrived in September and had to clear some land and build a house before winter, you probably built a log cabin using the trees you cut down. If you were a mason (like my own great x 8 -grandfather), and had more time, you might be able to build yourself a small stone house from the stones you dug out from the field. I suspect it was much warmer inside the log house!
Your comment is spot-on.
As you noted, commercial construction has become mostly the same globally because of inherent efficiencies of certain techniques.
And residential construction reflects local factors, but not just readily available materials. Europeans tend not to move as much, so a house is seen as a very long term investment. Not many Americans stay in their house forever, and then subsequent generations.
Wood construction done properly has a number of positive qualities and advantages, including very significant environmental ones, as wood is a renewable resource and has carbon captured from the atmosphere, whereas cement and steel production are very carbon-intensive. Also wood inherently has more insulating qualities, and is easier to insulate additionally.
Engineered wood is increasingly being used for ever taller buildings, including over ten stories, because of these qualities. As long as the building envelope is well engineered and constructed, there is no intrinsic age limitation to wood construction.
And of course when it comes time to tear it down, wood can be recycled.
The heavy masonry construction in the Netherlands reflects a deep tradition, and will certainly make for a building worth maintaining for the very long haul. But then there are wood buildings that have lasted for centuries too. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons.
One advantage of simple older wood houses was that it was relatively easy to move them to a new location when they were in the way of redevelopment. Ask me how I know:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/auto-biography-moving-on-to-moving-houses/
Here in earthquake country, wood framed structures can better flex and move in a tremor compared with a stone or brick building.
It’s interesting that the internal masonry walls reach to the roof. My US house, built in 1931, is similarly constructed although it’s unusual. All construction since then has framed/drywall internal walls. Lots of mid- higher-end houses being built in my state have similar external wall construction with brick veneer over steel or wood framing. It’s durable and efficient with that layer of rigid foam insulation in between.
What drive me nuts on most U.S. houses built in the last 50 years or so are roofs that are held up by trusses, making the attic all but useless as a storage space and ruling out finishing the attic and putting a room up there without major renovations.
You can get attic trusses; they’re fairly common. I used them in the new house I built to create upstairs living areas. But they have to be specified ahead of time.
If you’re going to buy a spec house, you get what they specified. If you have a house built, you can get what you want.
One of the biggest reasons attic storage went away is because of the very deep insulation that’s now used in attics. You’d have to create a second “floor” a coupe of feet higher than the joists even if you were building a traditionally-framed roof structure.
This. My house has a very open attic with 10′ headspace in parts of it. But the ceiling joists are only 2x4s and wouldn’t support much load at all. In decades past I thought of marrying 2×6 or larger joists to the existing 2x4s to create rooms up there but then I’d have to remove a not small amount of lower square footage of the first floor for stairs and decided it wasn’t worth it.
Walking up there now is tricky because 12″ of bat insulation hides the joists and I have to be careful not to put my foot through plaster and lath.
Bat insulation? I know they’re ugly, but that’s just cruel.
When I gutted and rebuilt my old house, I had them sister 2x10s to the center room’s ceiling joists. But it’s just too damn hot to store anything up there. I accidently left the attic lights on once, and the bulbs browned the fixtures before burning out. Now I use oven bulbs and switched to porcelain fixtures.
Why not use LED bulbs? They don’t get very hot.
I get the impression from TV programs (Grand Designs etc) that wooden construction is getting more popular in Germany, and this is spreading to the UK. Of course this is mostly ‘engineered timber’, as raw construction timber tends to be very poor quality. The increasing price of concrete is also a factor.
The main thing that struck me about US buildings is the wiring – the crude way of joining two wires together….
How are wires joined in Europe?
The engineered lumber is used for key structural members, but I’m quite sure that regular 2×6 milled lumber is used for studs. All lumber has to be graded. FWIW, I find the lumber in recent years to be significantly better quality than it was some 15-20 years ago. For one thing, kiln dried lumber is now required and the Doug Fir version we get (and grow) here is generally very good quality. But YMMV.
I did a bit of Googling to answer my question: European junction boxes have screw terminals, instead of just wires connected with wire nuts in the US. I suppose that’s somewhat superior, but properly connected wires with wire nuts seem quite adequate to me. I’m not aware of any issues with that.
I’ll add electrical junction boxes to my wish-we-did-it-that-way-here list. Wire nuts are a damnuisance. The 3-piece Marrette type with the bakelite cap that threads down onto the brass insert with its side setscrew is somewhat less so, but still.
I wish we still used metal-shielded wire in residences. I’ve had squirrels in the attic, and they like to nibble on plastic.
This (armored cable or BX cable) is still sometimes used at least here on the east coast at least, and is readily available. More expensive so not used unless specified.
The 1950s basement apartment I lived in 10 years ago still had knob-and-tube wiring with wiring joints out in the open but the entire joint area wrapped or coated with various soft materials, and the hot and neutral wires inches apart from each other. This type of wiring hasn’t been allowed by U.S. electrical code for a long time, though the last time I checked it was still alright to extend existing knob-and-tube wiring with new knob-and-tube wiring. The main concern with old K&T wiring nowadays is that you can’t cover it with insulation, as it depends on open airspace to keep cool. That and it didn’t include a ground wire.
About 10 years ago we built a new house using ICF, which is not common in Ontario. At the time I was working with Dutch clients and I showed some of them some photos of the construction. What interested them the most was a photo of the excavation for the basement with only the footings poured. They were surprised that there were no pilings and that the footings just sat on undisturbed earth. I guess the soil in the Netherlands, being basically a river bed, is not stable enough to avoid using piles. For residential buildings in southern Ontario I have only ever seen pilings used for a couple of houses built on a slope along a river.
On my visits to Netherlands I was surprised to see many thatched roofs once I got out of the cities. I even saw a new, and quite large and expensive house that was being built with a thatched roof. The Majority of houses had tile roofs, but in one village there were a number of new buildings using North American style asphalt shingles, which seems like a backward step from tile.
When you start digging here, you’ll hit (ground)water soon, it will never be “rock bottom”. Often, construction pits have to be pumped permanently to keep the water out, till all concrete is in. Otherwise the whole pit will be flooded soon.
Calculating the bearing capacity of the soil is highly essential, this process starts with an AWD field truck, often with auxiliary tracks. Piling (as seen in the picture of the new Exner plant) is customary. You see, we have to prevent that buidlings, their floors included, sag (sink into the ground, sort of), with major cracks in the foundation and walls as a result.
Basements are often prefab, see below. The house in the first pictures happens to have a basement underneath the whole building. There’s pretty much an extra house in the ground.
Thatched roofs can be found on old farm houses and younger/new detached, upper segment houses.
The prefab basement is really interesting. I find it interesting that in North America we can’t build a basement that does not flood every year and yet Dutch buildings that are right beside a canal seem to have dry basements. You are obviously doing something right.
Building a house is one. Building houses that will last on “floating”, swamp-type of land is another thing.
I lived in the Netherlands for a few months on an exchange program with my architectural school in Canada and I lived in a very solid Dutch brick house in Eindhoven. It was a stark contrast to the wooden houses I grew up in. However, when in Rome…so most of the houses I designed were wood which at least gives a great deal of stylistic leeway, much more than an all brick building which is why (I trust Johannes would agree) Dutch houses are somewhat similar to each other.
I did do one all brick house for a brick company who were trying to promote that type of construction. It didn’t really catch on.
My impression is that bringing more variety (type of house, brick color, roof style, facade) into new streets or blocks has become an important point of concern, in the more recent years.
I like the titled roofs.
Not sure American homes are designed to withstand the added weight if retrofitted.
Fascinating ! .
What is ‘engineered wood’ ? .
Not TREX I assume .
-Nate
Engineered wood refers to wood products that are manufactured, beyond just cutting trees into standard dimensions, such as the ubiquitous 2x4x8 (2 in. x 4 in. x 8 ft.) studs used for framing houses in North America (mostly 2x6x8 nowadays).
Engineered wood typically uses wood scraps or wood chips or even sawdust as a starting point.
One example are the engineered wooden I-beams used to construct the floors of my own house. The top and bottom plates of the I-beams are similar to plywood in construction, but are about 2 inches thick and 3 inches wide. The web (the vertical part of the “I”) is made of wood chips. In my house, the I-beams are 10 in. high, but are much stronger, and lighter, than similar-sized dimensional lumber.
Since these are structural members, very high strength glues are used to form the plates and the web, and to glue the plates to the web.
These wooden I-beams have many advantages:
– puts scrap wood to good use
– can be made in arbitrary dimensions to span great lengths, and support enormous loads, simply by increasing the dimensions of the web and plates
– performance (loading, breaking point, stability, etc.) is consistent and predictable, and easily calculated
– engineered lumber will not twist/crown/shrink/expand as much as natural wood does with changes in humidity
– its OK to make holes in the web for routing wires, plumbing, HVAC (only small holes near the ends, larger holes OK nearer center of span)
Besides I-beams, wood chips are now uses to make standard-sized substitutes for 2x4x8 studs (and other dimensions), so houses can be built entirely of engineered lumber.
There are limitations, however. I would not use these engineered wood products for decks, fences etc, or in any other location directly exposed to the elements for extended periods.
consistent and predictable
That’s very important. My otherwise good carpenters didn’t notice a 2×12 joist they put in the middle of the kitchen floor had a vertical crack causing a slight sag until I pointed it out. They bolted two more on either side, but since the renovation/rebuild was cost plus, I got to pay for their mistake.
The two rooms of my house built in 1875 were carefully assembled with mortise and tendon joints, but the lumber sizes were inadequate for the spans (2x3x11′ studs, 2x8x16′ floor joists). When my grandparents added rooms and moved windows in the 20s, before building codes and inspectors, the carpenters were not careful about bearing loads, so floors sagged and all the plaster cracked eventually. The wood siding was the structural element that held the house up, there was no sheathing.
“The two rooms of my house built in 1875 were carefully assembled with mortise and tendon joints, but the lumber sizes were inadequate for the spans…”
I’ve also found this to be the case in two of the five old houses I’ve lived in and remodeled, the worst one being an old farmhouse of indeterminate age. I can only surmise that the problem was a farmer-turned-carpenter guessing at the joist size/spacing needed, and let’s face it, people fill their rooms with more stuff than they did in the first half of the 20th century.
Surprisingly, the best construction I’ve seen was in a 1956 pre-fab I owned that was in a tract development built during America’s mass exodus to the suburbs. The walls were all constructed on jigs in a factory and then trucked in, so things were almost perfectly square and plumb. The studs were also some of the densest I’ve ever had to work with; the cordless drills of the 1990s had a tough time boring a 1” hole through them, using a spade bit. A new 2×4? No problem.
The wood was denser then, but the resin in wood also hardens with age and heat (it also turns the wood into a conductor of heat). I bent a bunch of 8d nails hammering into 20 y.o. attic rafters in 2019. The 80-120 y.o. wood not weakened by powder post beetles went through a lot of rep saw blades in 1998.
In the 20s reconstruction, they didn’t worry about studs being the same size or straight, they let the wood-lathe plaster hide irregularities.
Glad to see this subject discussed here from time to time; thanks, Johannes, for your investigations and reporting.
It should be mentioned that OSB (oriented strand board) is made not from scraps but from milled flakes which are carefully oriented in crossed layers using more than one kind of adhesive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriented_strand_board
Since this is an auto forum, I was expecting to see what kind of wheeled equipment was used in construction. I’d still kind of like to.
But as one who lives in California and spent a career as an electrician, it does interest me. Many of the different construction techniques are local, in a global sense, and make sense for the area. We have earthquakes here, some areas more, some less, but slow and active spells. So wood frame makes sense, it has elasticity that masonry does not, so when that shaker comes, the structure moves back and forth, there might be surface damage, but the bones so to speak, do well. With masonry, brick, concrete, etc, they don’t flex well, they break. Or if there is concrete used in a slab or perimeter foundation here, there is lots of steel in it so if it does crack, it stays more or less intact since the strength is in the steel, not the concrete.
Wiring. I’ve heard of the euro systems, but never seen it in use. Seems mostly different, not really better or worse. Might be tougher to do hot work on though.