An unfortunate downside to gang nail plates is their contribution to sudden roof collapse in fire situations, making it more dangerous for firefighters to attempt on-the-roof operations. The large surface area of the plate conducts heat into the wood joint area, encouraging it to burn first and fail faster than one fastened with nails.
What's terrifying to me is modern LBL construction. It's all just chipboard held together with glue. Although I hate seeing an old house burn, I'd much rather fight a fire on an old house compared to a new one.
@twillison8824 you plainly don't live in an area with old houses. In the Philadelphia area it's almost weekly that some family dies when their home goes up in flames in a few minutes. Modern homes rarely burn fast enough to trap inhabitants inside.
Over here in Germany these prefabricated trusses held together with gang nail plates became known for being the central failure point of many standardized discount store buildings in case of fire. As I understood it, once the roof space has reached a certain temperature the gang nail plates (at least the ones used over here) tend to just let go, causing sudden and unpredictable roof collapse. This is why fire departments will not enter these types of store buildings when they assume the fire has spread into the roof space above the shop floor.
By the time that happens you would either be dead from the fire or smoke - or you would have evacuated already. Fire departments can't magically save burning homes. Even if they try the water damage destroys the building anyways.
@Drcassette that is an interesting design difference, in the uk all such buildings are steel framed (like barns) and yes steel if not protected from fire will buckle under its own weight.
Super interesting, thank you! In case anyone's interested, this is in the domain of sustainability great example for what's referred to as a "rebound effect". Where an efficiency gain through innovation is eaten up by increased consumption. (think e.g. more energy efficient machines -> lower energy bills -> increased used of machines -> same energy bill as before)
I feel like all the people moving to trailers and small studios because it is cheaper is making it become more expensive and houses even more expensive, so it's essentially a race to the bottom.
@@eng-xv8bc the governments have a plan to make themselves more comfortable. Basically 1) sow chaos such as by encouraging violent crime, mass migration of incompatible people 2) use chaos to justify totalitarian measures 3) cull. Note that cull has started. See excess death rate.
not so much a rebound effect as elastic demand. "increased use" maybe because the fkfing demand was there, and it was price limited? stop being antihumanist.
Banks had a big effect on house size, my mother was a very successful Realtor and one of her gripes eas banks discouraging loans for smaller affordable homes and pushing people to buy bigger more expensive homes by convincing tgem they could afford it... Afford it by living paycheck to paycheck with no cushion though. Yes, she made more commission wirh a more expensive home but since aftee school id go to stay in her office break room i heard with my own ears her tell clients that it was better to buy smaller than they could, so they had that cushion and could always sell and uograde later. She prided herself on doing right for her client's vs maximizing profits.... And later her partner pushed her out because she wasnt maxing profit at the expense of buyers. Interesting life lessons for a kid.
We bought at the previous boom and the bank had approved double what we wanted to take on. Buying smaller meant our mortgage was shorter and our credit was higher. It has been easier to obtain car loans, etc. I'm very glad we didn't get a huge house.
Oh... if people REALLY looked at bank lending practices they wouldn't be so nice about bankers and loans. Also, economic prosperity and the resulting economic mobility (being able to become rich by hard work/sound investing) is what's most important... and it's what's been absolutely murdered by Obama and Biden and the DNC over the past 20 years. See also: Government making lending worse after CAUSING the 2007 sub prime mortgage crisis.
The one positive of truss plates is that it enabled me (a roofing contractor by trade) to build my own house and do the framing (with my roofing crew) ourselves. It is not impossible to learn roof framing, but it is SO much easier with trusses. But Mcmansions as a whole are the bane of my existence as a contractor trying to waterproof impossible angles with valleys terminating in walls and the such. I can waterproof them with the help of water & ice membrane because the siding is not yet installed enabling me to run the membrane up the walls. But...when these houses get re-roofed due to age or a hail storm, the next contractor will not be able to waterproof them near as easily. Long-term maintenance is rarely considered. I built a two-story colonial - simple yet elegant roof lines that never goes out of style!
that's the "perk" of housing as an investment, you never have to think long term because in 10 years you'll be on to your next one! Honestly, I feel sorry for ourselves in 30 years when all these houses are crumbling and look more like shanty towns than houses.
I'm a home inspector, those multi valley and stepped roof styles are hard to inspect....flashing nightmare...leaks are almost impossible to locate...advice is to re roof ra ther than try to fix one of these mult angled monstrosities. Over head trees.....gutters, don't get me started
Several years ago, the Delaware Association of Professional Engineers ( their license board) had an article in their newsletter reminding engineers to be very cautious about signing and sealing structural plans for McMansions. In really simple terms the Residential wood framing requirements offer two compliance paths. You can do either a complete engineering analysis and specify each connection. Or you can rely on the prescriptive requirements, which typically say something like use three X sized nails on Y centers for this application. The problem was that the prescriptive requirements are still assuming a fairly modest size building with modestly sized rooms. While many interior partitions in a conventionally sized house are not officially load bearing, they act as internal stiffeners (sort of an egg crate effect). With these enormous McMansions with their two and a half story great rooms and 20 x 30 master bedrooms, you don’t have the internal stiffness. On top of that, a lot of builders are using much weaker sheathing materials. Anyway, there were some fairly spectacular residential structural failures that were attributed to using the prescriptive code sections outside of their range.
As a 60 year old builder I’m very familiar with these truss plates. I think they are fantastic, and this examination of the larger effects they had (or contributed to) is just fascinating. It’s both educational and entertaining. Well done. This is the kind of content we need more of.
I think they're awful. Every house I've been in that was built after the mid-80s has been built with them, and they've all rattled and rocked at me walking through, and trying to minimize that is part of why I got fat in the first place (can't exactly run around and be a kid when the entire house shakes at the antics of a single 50 lbs child, so I focused on things that entertained me without me needing to move around so much, like reading, or videogames) They wouldn't be so bad if proper joinery was still used, but most of the time it's just a couple toe nails and a truss plate holding the house together, which might prevent it from actually falling apart, but it doesn't stop it from rattling and waving around dangerously when your grandkids run by your china cabinet, causing all your glasswear to bang against itself Seen too many new constructions that have creaky floors on move-in to like the damn things
This actually IS click bait content, because the gang nail plate has nothing to do with making trusses possible, it just reduces the cost slightly compared to other options, but at the cost of being much weaker.
My parents house is an 1890s dairy farm house. Very tight rooms, solid oak floors and log joists. Very sturdy old house but also compact. Some time in the 70s the previous owner sold their farm land to developers. Every house surrounding my parents’ house is a mcmansion style home. Its insane
I watched a TH-camr modernize one of those houses he had to reinforce a bunch of stuff. In particular the floor. Just because it's older doesn't make it stronger. We can model and design for the forces much better now.
@@sulljasonAgreed. Husband has been helping remodel an old (1910) farmhouse. The thing was built by the farmer and added onto by family over generations. It’s a nightmare. Crooked stairs, electric panel IN THE SHOWER, floors that sag and bounce in certain areas, interior wall that literally swings back and forth with just pressure from pushing on it with your finger, insane upstairs rooms just slapped together with such unsafe “construction” methods. Some older homes are well-made. Some are hot messes. And the hot mess homes are really unsafe and expensive to remodel. Hubby says “they should’ve just torn that thing down and started new” every day he comes home from working on it.
That’s just sad. Recently I was back in my hometown. Took a ride around my neighborhood that had custom built homes 70-73. Just 25 homes surrounding the old Gimbel Estate. Mostly 4-5 bedrooms & 3 baths with large dens. All different styles too. Tudor, Center Hall Colonial, French Provencial Ranches, Plantation style with columns out front. All that character is gone now. No color & they all look the same. Big additions on all. Sad
My house is from the '70s (1875!) It's a modest middle class rowhouse in the city with 3 occupied floors, and It's the opposite of "open floor plan". It has many small rooms and dozens of doors, For this I'm THANKFUL. Victorian architecture has been criticized for excess, but that's in mansions, not normal middle class homes, The architects then were not idiots, The high ceilings, tall windows and rooms that ALL have doors in my house are pre- A/C climate control! I can control the temp in every room, (entirely "ignoring" any room being unused at the moment..) and the floor plan allows more privacy than modern homes (important when my kids still lived at home) and all available space is used, Being a "Mansard" roof design, the otherwise wasted "attic" has two full bedrooms,. I live in Pittsburgh, So hurricane winds are not a "thing", But I'm gonna say that the 1870's design WAS "sustainable" as 150 years is a good "ROI".
That's a good point about the doors = temperature adjustment. I notice a huge difference in my bedroom's temperature (warm or cool) when I close my BR door vs leaving open a crack.
@@VAwitch Yes, additionally i can open or close heating/cooling vents (forced air system) in each room and having doors closed to them isolates them instead of affecting the whole house.
@@kromsukit Cool! I know that mansard roofs were considered "obsolete" by the dawn of the 20th century, But for the life of me, I don't know WHY? (fickle tastes, I guess). Good luck on your project. I'm all in on restoring/renovating historic buildings. Ultimate "recycling" (And let's face it MOST new buildings are ugly), LOL
In the late 1960s my father was working in Illinois for a company that built simple buildings for farmers that were primarily wooden posts covered with aluminum siding; incredibly simple construction. But I remember him bringing home a few of these gang nail plates (I guess when his company had just started using them) and wanting me to marvel with him at their incredible elegance and strength. He told me that these were a bit part of the future in building construction, but I don't think he was envisioning McMansions.
@@llamasugar5478 No, his employer was a (much) smaller competitor. But I actually remember him showing me that (at least at that time, perhaps around 1967) the plate that Morton was using was actually inferior. He had a sample of the plate that (supposedly) Morton used and, instead of these straight cuts that dug deep into the metal, the other plate was designed with _circular_ holes (instead of straight one). They still had the metal bent inwards to be pounded into the wood, but instead of a spike, it was a circle of (shorter) daggers. Kind of hard to explain. I'm sure they weren't used for long.
@ I remember those. Uncle showed us one; I don’t recall if it was when they were using them, or if he picked it up when they stopped using them. He worked in metal fabrication.
My grandfather took a sketch of trusses at a factory thinking it was a good design and then when he built his own 1,600 sq foot house in 2 years after work (no big deal 🤯- and he didn’t work in construction either), he used homemade trusses, monster overbuilt things. I had an engineer friend look at it and he said it was just like homes are made today only way stronger. Brilliant guy with an 8th grade education. When he was 80, he climbed the utility poll at my first home (foreclosure) and turned the power on even when I protested. Tough as nails. RIP grandpa.
Sounds the same as my house. My grandpa dropped out in 7th grade, built his own house, and the homes of others. Some things leave you scratching your head. But then you have to stop and think that there was no internet, this was built by a guy just figuring it out. He dug the freaking basement by hand... Unreal. We had a tree (massive one) drop on our house last year, and it has old the old designed roof. And 0 damage was done to it. It has a ton of angles to the roof and is just massively over built. We don't have hurricanes here, so lifting forces probably would be harder for it to tolerate, but it can take a ton of extra weight being dropped onto it, even if that weight is focused.
As a journeyman carpenter I have set thousands of trusses, I have built Mc Mansions and mansions, the last one I worked on sold for 23 million dollars, I think any large house with stick frame and stucco is a Mc mansion. The real mansion here are built with masonry construction. Fortunately I’m a finish carpenter now lots of woodwork in those big houses. Great video.
I'm a builder and concur. Trusses are more often used on smaller track homes with larger homes using stick framing as the roof lines are usually more complicated.
In the UK our houses are concrete block and brick, some are now steel framed and block / brick outers with slate, stone or artificial slate - they dont blow down but alas are probably 25 - 40% the size of yours!
I've worked on both as well. People with McMansions got to home depot and pick out the most expensive countertop. People with mansions go to Italy, where the marble is quarried and have 8 countertops cut so they can pick out their favorite one and have that one installed.
A gang nail plate cut a gash into my leg when I was using an unused wooden truss as a ladder for a treehouse I built during the construction of my parents' house as an 8-year-old kid, when I slipped and tried to catch myself. I still have the scar. 21 years later, I am now in graduate school for architecture at IIT in Chicago. Thanks to this video, I finally have a name for the piece of metal that left that scar, and another explanation for why I don't like McMansions.
I'm from Naperville so sometimes I have a little soft spot for certain McMansions but you're so lucky you get to hang out at that gorgeous mies van der rohe campus
My high school drafting teacher at Bishop Noll Institute, Caesar Qeyqep, was simultaneously a professor at IIT. Thought I’d become an architect. Not to be. Instead, I became a carpenter builder/renovator. I had NOOOO idea at the time just how much this fellow’s instruction would have on my life. My renovation “see through vision” is directly down stream of those four years of drafting studies. College level in high school!
We build with concrete in the Caribbean. Pretty much the same thing happens here. Less people buy large family homes since they’re expensive and people don’t reproduce as much as before. Still, most builders construct 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes or larger because it can be sold for much more. There is a need for 2 bedroom homes for smaller families or a single person, but the profits won’t be as great since it takes roughly the same amount of time to build. Similar to trusses, we can use concrete beams to create large open floor concepts instead of needing load bearing walls or columns.
The next invention that changed building was the joist hanger. Roofs with trusses could only go in one direction and basically have a single roof line. Hangers paved the way for hipped roofs and multiple roof lines. It probably did more for the McMansion than the gusset plate.
But then they took short cuts with the number of nails in the joist hangers! But they can be handy. I built a 49ft geodesic dome where a lot of the floor joists required custom angle joist hangers. Made things simpler and stronger.
@@johnwhite2576 Simpson has minimal nailing but some applicants require more nailing in their hardware the circular holes are common nailing and the triangle holes are for more depending on the application. Every hole doesn’t always require nailing like you stated
Thinking about all of the of hipped buildings in the UK that predate joist hangers and trusses,was proper carpentry not a thing in the US? Boiler plate pre/post ww2 building would be a 4 hip block.
My parents have a 20 year old McMansion that has rotting siding because it’s a glorified cardboard material. While I have 1900 farmhouse with original siding. The lumber from back then was virgin lumber. The grain was tighter and encouraged durability. Even with softer woods like pine. Now lumber is farmed. Irrigated and the grain is less durable. More likely to warp. Newer homes have particleboard sheets. They literally are barely a step above paper.
Georgia Pacific had a siding that had numberous lawsuits as it was defective pressboard like system. Not reliable. Failed within 10 years or less. It might have been something like that. Ick!
I live in a double wide. it is a brand new double wide but naturally it is a small, simple floor plan that lends itself to incredible efficiency. It also helps my wife and I pay attention more to needs and wants in regards to "stuff". It is easy to heat and cool, has a beautiful front porch built right into it with a bigger master suite I'd ever thought I'd have. I love my little, simple house and could never imagine having a biger house much less one that costs more and causes more issues
That's another issue altogether. Politicians crow on about "affordable housing" then put roadblocks in the way of wide utilization of Mobile/Modular/whatever homes. Although I'm in a conventional house now, I grew up in, and spent most of my adult life in Mobile Homes of one sort or another. I actually prefer them, they're generally better built as they have to withstand the equivalent of a force 8 earthquake when they roll down the road, more thought is put into them with regards to storage, and the traditional "tin can" style needs MUCH less maintenance.
I used to have a double wide on an acre north of phoenix. It had better insulation and craftsmanship than any of the stick built houses I have owned. Cost way less to air condition because they actually put in decent insulation at the factory.
Amen. When I lived in hippy land there were many many double-wides that had expanded as needed over the years. Need an extra bedroom? cut half the wall of the trailer out and frame a box on stilts. Often the original trailer was erased after 30 years :)
This is a great video. As someone that grew up in the USA in that exact time period, new homes on offer changed dramatically from 1985 to 1995. Even as a teenager, it left an impression on me, just the difference in scale of ceilings, interior dimensions, all that, when I would visit other schoolmates houses who had the newest units.
I started doing roof repairs in 1976. I soon realized that I could find a neighborhood full of those houses and simply put flyers on the mailboxes when the houses were about 3 or 4 years old. If there was one leak in the neighborhood there would be many more. I made a good living working alone for about 20 years.
@@larrywelch9738 ok boomer... thats how yall " work smarter not harder". lol no wonder this country is fucked. did you pay tax on those advertising costs? openly admitting to commuting multiple serial felonies in a crime spree in a neighborhood to exploit homeowners sounds like a great business model
If you want an attic in a modern house, you can opt for "attic trusses", which are trusses with a central section that is open. A cross tie at the top becomes a way to easily install a roof. A beefy chord at the bottom gives you the floor joists. The sides can be drywalled. Instant finished attic.
I'm a crane operator and I set wood trusses every day. The level of engineering for the load points on floor and roof systems in a modern mcmansion is insane. A week ago I did a house where a set of mono trusses hangered off a girder, which hangered off a beam, which hangered off a girder. I'm glad im not the cut man putting the sheathing up on the roof.
my house may be older but screw all that nonsense lol. Mine has 4x4 every 1/8 the distance of the long side of the house and 4x6 on the outer corners and middle and in the middle of the house the other direction where the joists meet. Sorry not a framer so have no idea what all it’s called, I’m a nerd so I go by diagrams. But yeah and anytime I want a larger span like I did for my kitchen area… LVL. I do agree it’s not and will never be as cheap but ehh I’ll live. I can afford it and I don’t want a balancing act house LOL Nor do I want a fire to swallow it in 10 minutes. These comments about fire and trusses and nail plates scare me.
I live in a mid-century modern neighborhood, all houses built in the 1950s. One of my neighbors builds McMansions (although he prefers modern architecture). I asked him about this just a couple days ago, and he also said the banks play a role. The borrowers are very timid about lending to build anything "out of the ordinary", although he could build small, modern homes, the bank often won't lend to build houses like that.
It’s the same concept of a bank not giving out car loans for a $6,000 car you can afford - but they will gladly hand you a loan for a $60,000 car you can’t afford. The whole banking system is a scam to keep you enslaved with debt, and the proof is in their actions.
I was working on a 3 story house in Florida, and saw the dudes putting up the trusses, and that thing started SPINNING and the one guy just held on and spun like a disco ball 🪩 …. Legend
Great, I just built a ranch open floor plan and my floor is a little bouncy. Best way to reduce? Installed fancy steel x braces and didn't do much. Thinking about 2x4 perp to the TJIs. I within the TJI span chart so WTF :)
@@SoidHoid LOL I'm the designer / builder and I agree I f'd up a little. It's not horrible, I've seen horrible. Looking back I would up my TJI to 14" instead of 12". The span chart said I was good, my gut said get 14" then I figured I could save $300 on $500K home :) We live, we sometimes learn. Thanks!
With the new truss systems, you can have an attic space again. You have to order it, spec houses are done as cheap as possible so, many don't have an attic.
My suburban ranch style home was built in 1978 with stick framing. Last year during a snow storm/load on our roof our walls moved out about 1/2". After ripping things apart we discovered that they were only toe nailed using 1-2 nails. Fun time correcting that issue.
As a contractor I spend so much time inspecting and repairing trusses because of these plates. It's crazy how easily these trusses can be damaged so it's important to make proper repairs!
Another factor in the rise of the McMansions is banks over-lending. One company said we were eligible for a house that would cost 70% of our monthly income, and we said "Nope!". Interesting perspective on the drawbacks of an open floorplan, but I have to agree on the noise and lack of solitude. We lived in a newer home for many years, recently moved into a house built in 1941, and the differences are shocking. Granted, structural brick, wet plaster walls, and very nice craftsmanship make a huge difference, but the house is wonderfully quiet and we've never slept so well. Our youngest son is autistic, and he used to go around holding his ears at our former house, almost crying in his room because he could not escape the noise when family with younger kids visited. Now his room is on the 2nd floor where the walls are 3/4 inch thick knotty pine, his windows overlook the woods behind us, and he just loves the quiet and solitude.
I know this isn’t the point of this video, but as someone who stresses a lot about lighting in my own videos, I’m really impressed you were able to film this video quickly enough enough that the sun didn’t set. It looks like you filmed it during the golden hour.
I think he's using a green screen, buddy. I was just looking at "light" coming from the left of the picture and it didn't move once throughout the whole video (or shift in any direction).
That's awesome! Yeah build quality should definitely be the biggest determining factor in a house's resale value, just like how certain cars have a much higher resale value than others. I kind of wish every house sold must come with the architectural drawings or in depth inspection for a "build rating" that comes with the title. In fact I'm surprised insurance companies don't demand such a thing! 😅
As a civil engineer / project manager for a State transportation agency from the early 80's up to the pandemic, I witnessed many an advancement in tech for all aspects of my job. For actual Civil work, we went in reverse - from capturing all flows into concrete pipes & culverts to allowing rainfall to penetrate the earth via porous pavement or "rain gardens" in between parking lot aisles or large retention basins at the bottom of large parking lots. We went from More Pipes to Less Pipes. We did large wooden structures for salt storage sheds. We used the gang nailed trusses from the early 80's but they were problematic - they left too much "give" so the shingles fell off, they provided too convenient a nesting roost for pigeons & crows, they were obstacles to the trucks delivering the salt, getting hit & broken all the time. We went to glue laminated arches - yes the fancy type used for churches & such - for a mundane salt shed - but they solved all those problems stunningly well & ended up being cheaper in the long run.
I've seen these metal plates in the roof triangles, when they were stacked at a new building site or on the back of some trucks delivering them to new construction sites. I always wondered what the story behind them was. This was very interesting. I took wood working in High school back in the 90's. But we never leaned about these. Thank you.
Gang Nail plates, (also on as gusset plates too) has had an extremely adverse overall affect fire has on a home. It went from 20+/- minutes of fire exposure before roof failure with more traditional construction to as little as 5 minutes with modern truss sustems. Would love to see an in depth video catering to both people in the know and the layperson explaining the adverse affects of modern, lightweight construction on fire loads. *If you do ever make this video, i’m sure me and many others would love to use it for training purposes for others
@@BS-vx8dg The gang nail plates start to let go when they get hot. Steel loses strength as it get hotter. A 16d nail fully buried in a 2x6 is insulated from the heat, while the relatively thin plate is fully exposed to the heat, and the short "nails" get hot quickly, charing the wood and reducing their holding power. The smaller lumber used in a truss (relative to traditional framing) will also weaken faster as it burns.
As a retired volunteer firefighter home built with gusset plates in their roof structure is something you definitely have to be aware of and be cautious of. When he gets up into the attic and fire these plates get weak and tend to fail so the quicker you can get the fire out in the attic the safer everybody is.
Yeah, 100 mph winds is a minor hurricane (IIRC category 2) that happens every other year in much of the Caribbean and in the southern USA, but now we're at the stage in which category 5s (157 mph and above) happen every other year, or at worst we get multiple in a year.
Open floorplans were my dream, until I realized that noise and solitude become rather difficult problems for me what with having small children. It'll work out how I'd like in the long run though, they grow up. Side note I did not use trusses in my build.
Real-estate industry also started to push for legislation to enlarge the minimum size of bungalows. That caused the smaller sizes to go out of code requirements about the time the gang nail plates became the norm. Tax base increased with the property needed for McMansions making suburbs more profitable by the larger minimum standards. By the early 2000's building codes in CA made making granny flats even difficult to permit and build. Fortunately that seems to be trending the other way.
The IRC building code sets certain minimums such as minimum headroom in a stair (6'-8") and minimum room size, 70 sf for a habitable room and minimum dimension of 7-ft but nothing on the order of magnitude that would result in a McMasion.
@@chrisscharff6518 Our county demands homes of a minimum size. They no longer allow smaller homes, even in so called senior developments where people would like to downsize due to age. It's crazy but the bankers rule the county.
@@blammers my sister and her husband found a work-around. They sold their big old house in upper NY State, and bought 2 used camping trailers about 26 feet long. One at a campground along Lake Ontario in NY State they live in May to October. Another at a campground in the Florida interior (Ocala) they live in November to April. He does construction work both places, she is a part time hairdresser both places. They have no insurance for their trailers, if one is destroyed they have the savings to immediately buy another used trailer. They built huge outdoor decks for both to make up for the small indoor square feet.
It's pretty common that someone invents something with a certain viewpoint of how to make use of it, and later is shocked that someone else is "using it wrong", unintended consequences arise quite often. You can't always imagine every unintended consequence, but you can bank on human nature being what it is, someone will come up with a reason, usually economics-related, to pervert an invention. I interviewed the guy that created the modern confinement system for hog production. (Trust me, this is related) He regrets it and feels like Doctor Frankenstein. He envisioned a very small operation to supplement an individual family farm for home production and some diversification of output, to keep small family farms strong. Instead, factory farming of hogs using his slatted-floor setups have driven small family operations out of business. The meat companies have turned the pork producing families into high-tech sharecroppers on their own land, with highly restrictive contracts, that split the farrowing and finishing stages of the pig life cycle, making the farmers bear the costs of production while the company pockets all the profit, and the effluent coming out of these contained animal feeding operations (CAFO's) makes the equivalent of a small town's sewage output, every day, untreated and sitting in open ponds that can leak into streams and groundwater.
I’m from a family that had to sell all of our hogs. We couldn’t afford to raise them anymore. I like to think they were pretty happy, while we had them.
That's for sure. I call it The inventor's paradox. People use an invention for their goals, not the inventor's. For instance, the Wright Brothers thought that the airplane would end war.
10:21 This brings to mind The Law of Unintended Consequences: "Whether or not what you do has the effect you want, it will have three at least you never expected, and one of those usually unpleasant."
Sounds like a key ingredient in "analysis paralysis". As someone who suffers from that occasionally, I've learned to "not let perfection get in the way of good enough".
@@coolraul07No it’s just a matter of balancing the desirable and undesirable effects. Having worked in actual old mansions without gang nail plates or joist hangars, it can still be done. It’s just done differently.
It's also an example of Jevon's paradox: when you make something straight-up more efficient, more of that thing usually happens. More efficient cars? More miles driven. More efficient house construction? Bigger homes. LEDs made lighting cheaper? So we made cities brighter. Shipping container made for more efficient shipping? More shipping happened. ATMs led to more efficient use of banks? More bank locations opened.
@@24HoLTeam93 On the LED comment, I really enjoy the dimmable LEDs with color adjustment. It makes winding down at night much easier with dim warm lighting.
We built our own house, using truss plates for the roof...but also guided by Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" concept. We have both an open downstairs plan AND "away spaces" for privacy and solitude!
9:50 this is the same irony with productivity gains. They matched wages and would either continue to go up together, or people were going to be able to work less for the same pay. Obviously that didn't happen, we just try to extract as much value as possible both out of our labor, and also our homes
Yup. Not too closed off, but I’d like to be able to take a phone call without whoever’s watching tv having to pause it because they’re in the living room and I’m in the kitchen past the dining table, but it’s just one giant space
An open floor plan is great when the kids are small and you want to keep an eye on them, but not so great when they get a little older and they start playing vidio games with their friends.
Truss plates did not cause the mcmansions. It was to build track homes cheaper and faster. As an architect vary rarely do I see prebuilt trusses used in the DFW area.
A couple things on trusses, that weren't quite mentioned that (I believe) make them more beneficial, especially here in the northeast are 1) Energy Heels. Trusses made energy heels possible by moving the slope of the roof above the bearing point of the truss itself. This creates more room over the exterior walls for insulation, where in the northeast, using standard insulation methods, needs a more space for the amount of insulation needed for meeting the R-value required. A common issue here on older homes is ice damming, where heat loss through the insulation melts snow and ice on the roof which sheds down over non insulated spaces, like porches and other overhangs, and refreezes, creating a dam where the water above will gather and work under shingles, making leaks in the interior of houses. Having more space for insulation alleviates this, somewhat. Along with other methods such as ice and water shield, since you can't stop ice damming completely, but it prevents leaks in the house. And 2) Floor trusses. People's need for deeper garages and floor space with open space below needs a member than can span further without support. TJIs can do this, but the real max span for a TJI (even the biggest ones) is in the realm of 32'-8" (this being a 560 series 16" TJI, 12" O.C. [which is nuts, expensive, and hard to find]). Plus, with open webbing, it allows for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC to be run without cutting or modifying the member, plus larger tops for sheathing ease. Only down side is it creates a large open cavity for fires, which is accounted for in the code with maximum cavity size. All of that being said, there are still many houses and needs where a raftered roof is preferred. Great video!
+1 for the open webbing of trusses which facilitates a much-easier installation of mechanical systems. As for the void space and fires, the code allows for blocking or draftstopping to compartmentalize and manage the fire risk.
One more thing to add: girder trusses. Big trusses that are meant to support other trusses. You can support more with a 4' deep girder truss than you can with a lot of steel beams...
This video captures a microcosm of the problems / unnecessary excesses in America. I've been in, and lived around McMansions in multiple US cities, and what I can definitively say, is that families that live in these enormous houses, stay almost exclusively in 2 rooms during the day--the kitchen and the "TV room"..(About 800 square feet of space).. ALL the other square footage of these monstrosities is wasted space, excepting a few bedrooms where people only sleep, or your teenager hides out. But otherwise, there are areas in these homes that no one ever steps foot in..
That was true of my family of four (grandparents, uncle and myself) growing up in a 1600 square foot 3/2 mobile home 😂 The bedrooms, kitchen and 'family room' were used, the 'living room' was basically just an oversized and furnished hallway people had to pass through when they weren't using the actual hallway on the other side of the equally unused dining room. In our case we weren't sofa diners, but our kitchen had a nice bar extension of the counter where we all ate together. 800 square feet is probably in the ballpark of the space we actually used as well.
My rich friends growing up always had a "family room" they never used and were forbidden to step foot in and a formal dining room they only ever had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner in; otherwise, these rooms were never touched. I know a guy who grew up and lives in one of these houses so I have since learned, some of them also have 2 - 3 bedrooms that are either storage, guest rooms, or a room that solely houses a doll collection. That house also has an In-Laws quarters. Rich people are insane.
I calculated how much power you used to distribute your opinion to a world that does not care and have deemed it unnecessary excess. Now get back to your abbot and resume self flagellation. :)
Then there are people with nowhere to stay at all, and families spending their lives renting trailers and small apartments that sap equity and doom them and their descendents to poverty. What a dystopia...
gang-nail plates hold so well that you pretty much need to tear the wood apart to separate the connection. The connections made with these plates seem to be stronger than the wood itself.
Interesting theory.. as a designer working in this space and scale frequently I can admit that pre fab trusses do allow for a decoupling from rational plan layouts and thinking - and therefore proportions and scale. For whatever deeper reason, a roof line and facade proportioned off more traditional roof framing limitations is more pleasing to the senses - and results in interior plans that are more orderly, human scaled and comfortable..
@@entertainme121 You didn't watch the video... It is a cheap joint hundreds of times stronger than a handmade nailed truss. Strong enough you can make long trusses out of short wood. Strong enough that modern houses have all the strength in the roof and basically nowhere else.
@@entertainme121are you able to think critically? If you have extensive brain damage, then I can let this slide. Otherwise, how do you not understand that a truss system that is lighter, uses less material, and faster to construct that allows the roof span to widen would contribute to the proliferation of McMansions? It's simple arithmetic bud
@@entertainme121 If you're older than 15 you should feel embarrassed for being so dramatic about unsubscribing from a youtube channel. You seem like a pretty unpleasant, unreasonable person.
that was thoughtful! and super well paced with good details, thanks. our 1997 house has 1800 sq. feet, but we have 5 bedrooms, and doors everywhere. it is nice when living with family to have some solitude sometimes!
You Sir... are creating some of the finest content I've encountered on TH-cam. Interesting subjects, depth of understanding, nicely paced, accurately researched and extremely well presented motivated my comment. I truly enjoyed this video and have become a subscriber... looking forward to viewing past and future content. Thankyou
I'm just a focus group of one, but in my life I have had three houses, all older (the newest built by the owner in 1948) and had very few problems with any of those, yet both my mom and sister bought fancier new build houses (the 1980's through early 2000's) and I they both have had constant issues. Admittedly (and thankfully) none with framing which is the topic of this as usual great Stewart video. But at least with my experience I will never consider a new build houses no matter how much showy lipstick decorations they put on it.
Fascinating video. For those who are curious about the term McMansion, as I was: "McMansion" associates the generic quality of these luxury houses with that of mass-produced fast food by evoking McDonald's, an American restaurant chain.
It's a fun theory but I don't agree with it. Traditional rafter construction is still common here in California in home construction. Code requires hurricane/earthquake ties to greatly strengthen the roof structure. The modern truss system is cheaper to build and faster to install but is associated with lower quality construction. McMansions are a developer's attempt at maximizing profit and thus it makes sense that they'll employ the cheapest roofing system. If factory-made truss systems didn't exist, developers would still build McMansions with traditional rafter construction since that would be the only method allowed them.
I totally agree with you. We (california framers) were cutting and stacking complex roofs for decades. McMansions existed in the 19-teens. In track homes where piecemeal production framing was born, framers like Larry Haun could cut and stack a roof in a day. The only change these plates had was lowering the cost of complex roofs, maximizing profits for developers.
You think they'd exist at the scale they do now? I think the point he touches on that you're not giving sufficient weight to is how the offsite preconstruction allowed the proliferation.
@@ekjswim As I mentioned, truss systems are cheaper to design, build, and install versus traditional rafter construction. It saves money regardless of the home type whether it's 600 square feet or 6000 square feet. Developer's have it easier with truss systems but it's not a make-or-break situation in my opinion.
What we now have here in Florida are houses with steep "snow roofs" as shown in the video. Completely stupid, and they just project further into the wind stream increasing the total wind load on the house significantly. And as noted, you can't even use the attic space, at least not very well. Open floorplans - oh, excuse me, I mean "Open Concept" floorplans as HGTV crows on about - suck. They always have sucked - might as well live in a barn.
First time I visited the US I was shocked at the size of homes in general. Yes, we have big homes in Australia, but you guys really take the cake. I’m still wondering how you afford the electricity to heat the rooms (and the garages! That never happens here).
The utility bills for HVAC depend quite a bit on insulation the contractor puts in, along with what type of HVAC system(s) are incorporated into the design. Heat pumps are really being pushed by all the "climate change" scolds, and work well in many areas and can be very cost efficient. However, in places that get cold you HAVE to have an alternate heating source as they don't work well below about 15°F. Where I live in ND we regularly get at least one consecutive week each year with the high temps never getting above 0°F (-18°C), let alone the nightly low temps.
Big homes also mean going outside less. Good and bad for health purposes. A lot of the younger generation look far younger in their face, than they are. They look like very tall children...😮
A McMansion isn't a home. It's a glorified box. A barn with a garage, essentially. America may look big and splendid on the outside, but on the inside it's flimsy and cheap. Maybe when Americans and Brits start getting chalk dust in their bread again, they'll realize Reagan and Thatcher sold them back into 19th century Gilded Age penury.
Most houses here in cold climates use gas or oil heating, pretty much the only places using electric heating are in hot climates where it gets cold for very little of the year.
I am a Architect in Los Angeles. The change in FAR is what enabled the existence of McMansions not the gusset plate. The FAR change allowed the total square footage on the site to fill up a site all the way to front, side yard and rear yard setbacks for two stories, and developers took advantage of this, because of a housing storage and the cost of real estate in Los Angeles. There are a number of other ways to get greater spans, one is manufactured beams and rafters. The gusset plates were invented to reduce the cost of construction and highly skilled labor was not required to set the trusses. You have to be a pretty go framer to frame a hip roof with all the compound angle cuts, the gusset eliminated a lot of skilled jobs.
And setbacks also enforce what I call the "English Manor House" model - which is OK if you want/like that. I'd prefer a middle eastern style where the house is built right up to the property line and faces inward to a central atrium. This style has been around since at least Roman times, probably far earlier. But good luck building such a home in the US.
You hit on the main reason I don't like truss construction, unusable attic space. I feel as though if I am paying to enclose that space, I should be able to use it. With the size of the McMansions, there is a fair amount of floor space that could be finished into living area. It could provide that private space for when one wants to get away from it all, or a nice little hobby niche. That is also a reason why I want a basement, preferably with 8 or 9 foot ceilings.
It's cost that you don't understand. You can pour foundation and frame space under trusses cheaper than you can frame an attic. Also understand if youre doing a basement that it isn't valued the same as above grade. It's about 1/10th the value. If your house is a thousand square feet at $100sf with a full finished basement valued at $10sf. $110,000 at appraisal. If it's two stories on slab at $100sf. At appraisal $200,000. If your basement walls are 51% above grade It's valued at $100sf. So if you have flat land leave the basement exposed and put retaining walls out around 10 feet from the wall Only bury up to the bottom of the standard windows and you should be good. Lift a drink to me when you're done with you above grade basement that was cheaper than a second floor. Pocket the extra 90k when you sell or use it as the equity on a 60% loan to value and get better rates. If you're paying cash you now have a nice flower bed or pet area outside the basement windows instead of .etal window wells.
@@sparksmcgee6641 Your point in hte first paragraph makes some sense. In the area where I live, most homes have basements and many people, myself and my wife included, would not even consider buying a house without one. As for your second idea, most urban and suburban areas are not going to let a person build such an odd house and few lots have the room for it. If you look at the video you see these McMansions being built up five feet from the lot line. Personally, I think it looks ridiculous to build such a large house on what is proportionally such a small lot, but that is a trend.
I'm in upstate NY and a building inspector in a small rich town. People still do this with homes here but there's almost no truss homes. Lots of stick frame roof with purlins to cut the spans of lumber. It's effectively a site built truss system. We don't have a problem with hurricane or wind forces though, we have snow load problems. That being said, if I build, even though I've been in more $1 million dollar plus homes than anyone I know, I would build a simple ranch with trusses than any of these crazy homes I go into with 2 story greatrooms heating the ceilings that you can't reach with a 10ft step ladder, rear walls with nothing but glass (because glass is a great insulator at 1/8" thick), immaculate spiral staircases to the second story, elevators, heated driveways so you don't have to shovel snow it have a plow contract, etc. I just don't see the point. It's dumb to me. You have a less structurally sound house that uses more energy than ever necessary with nothing but flash to show for it. I'm not some crazy eco nut or socialist crazy person, I just don't know why anyone wants these things. It's not important to me.
I agree. If put a basic rambler at the back, far from the road. Then I would put a big garage/shop/studio/lab? Out behind the house. That's what it's all about.
I'm old enough to remember when a million dollars would get you a beautiful home. Now it will get you a 1200 square foot tear down or a condo in Ontario, Canada. Home ownership is a pipe dream for many now. What a sad state of affairs.
because behind every millionare is someone who was wronged or hurt by someone and they spend there whole life in a fear fueled panic to posture for the chance of that person catching wind or eye of them and " damn, there in ground swimming pool is on hydraulic stilts and lifts from the court yard to the 2nd story balcony when the courtyard gates close at sunset doubling as a security break from ground level. wow i guess i was wrong about them."
You are, like me, an upstate NYer. Appreciate quality, history, natural materials, see no reason to build or buy wasteful stuff. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They built the buildings, communities, and towns right two centuries ago and there's little point in messing with what was done right. Especially when EVERYTHING that used to last forever, with 100-year-old technology (e.g. washer-dryers) and metal parts, now lasts five years and is built elsewhere, poorly.
Im a housekeeper and was recently asked to clean a rental mcmansion between tenants. I always do a walk through first & this place is a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom train wreck. Its already falling apart and its only 12 years old. It has an amazing tile shower "room" though..
The ability to make trusses like this allowed some people with mobile homes to build additional roofs for them when the manufactured ones were inadequate. The irony is that the increased house prices caused by the McMansions made all of the mobile homes virtually unsellable.
The pricing by square foot ratios used by lenders and appraisers when valuing homes are a big factor in the choice to build these homes with much higher square footages.
We decided to add a 30x26 addition to a small house built in the 1950's. My husband had done major renovations on our former home by himself so he decided to build it himself again. He submitted plans with a traditional roof frame (like we had done in our former home). The county said no- it had to be trusses.
Don't blame the tool, truss plate..... blame the people wielding them, developers, which are spured by supply and demand. Think levittown PA. in the 40's.
When pickup trucks sales slow down all it takes is to lower the gas price 50 cents to revamp the buying frenzy. People are strange. Developers capitalize on ignorance as what is genuinely a "quality construction".
@@miltonwelch4177 Not strange at all. There are clearly many, many people who want pickup trucks, and high gas prices force some of them to revert to buying something else.
My house was built in 1977. It has cathedral ceilings, so up to the attic to see these truss plates and…not used to build this house! Guess they really don’t build them like they used to. Great video!
I find open floor plans to be awkward to deal with. Rooms are so swiss-cheesed with openings that they aren't really rooms but partially partitioned areas of a larger space. When open plans are used for small apartments, arrangement of an area is even harder! It's become hard to find a solid living room anymore. I also love attics and basements which are now thought of as an additional costs. Once upon a time, they were multi-purpose spaces that could be creatively repurposed. I've often dreamed of being able to design my own home so I can actually get the kind of floorplans that I want: discreet rooms, no can lighting or boob lights or track lighting, normal 8' or 9' ceilings, sash windows, all in a two story townhome of about 1,600 square feet in a walkable neighborhood with virtually no yard. I don't mind the first floor and basement levels being smaller homes. Not everyone wants as much space as I'm looking for. I can at least dream...
Europe: The invention of this early type of concrete allowed us to build massive castles 500 years ago. USA: This metal plate allowed us to build larger wooden houses in the 1990s.
My German home has solid brick walls and steel-concrete floors of 10 inches. It will probably still be around in 200-300 years. My great-grandchildren may have to get the roof tiles changed around the year 2100, though (they are already 53 years old today).
@@MarkBonneaux The worst is all the ultra crappy foundations that get poured where I live. There's no reason that foundation repair should be the thriving business it is.
Yeah, God forbid if I'd like a formal dining room to invite a dozen friends and family over for Thanksgiving, or high ceilings so I can fit my barbell rack inside.
1:50 diagram is wrong. High download pressure on wind side. High uplift on the lee side. I enjoyed your insights on the gang nails and Mcmansion homes. 😊
Frankly, cheap home loans is why we have McMansions. People didn’t get limits on what they could borrow, so developers only had an incentive to build big.
Also, there's a ton of fixed costs associated with building a new house. Land, permitting, design, regulatory review, utility hookups and more are fairly inelastic with respect to house size. If it's costing 250k before you even break ground, trying to build a starter home (think Chicago bungalows) is going to result in a house that's too expensive for consumers looking to buy a house of that size.
You're right. The only way to solve the housing crisis is to make it harder to buy homes on credit. Frankly, loans for homes shouldn't even be allowed. Only people with cash should be permitted to purchase a single-family home.
I was a building inspector (new construction) from 2004 to 2010. I could never wrap my mind around why the roofs were so enormous except to add that over the top architectural element. Some of them were definitely beautiful, but some just seemed completely out of place, especially on a 3 bedroom ranch when with a skyscraper roof on top. Those roofs were an absolute pain to inspect for bracing too. It wasn't at all uncommon to find trusses installed without the engineer required bracing. Overall the trend seems to have come back a bit on the grandeur of roofs and with the skyrocketing cost of real estate I imagine that kind of excess will soon be a relic of the past.
The use of joining plates and cleats allows a lot of workers with minimal skill to assemble lumber into poorly built homes. The roof may remain tied to the house in a strong wind thanks to Simpson Strong Tie, but the houses are wonky boxes that have structural issues forever. Skill enhanced with technology and quality materials results in long-lasting quality construction. No technology can save not having the skill to do a good job. This is my opinion (and I'm sticking to it) from personal involvement working on the home I grew up in (built with skilled workers), restoring older homes, and observing neighborhoods of homes sprout like mushrooms after a rain as Plano, Texas rapidly grew from a population of ~75,000 in 1980 to just under 300,000 in 2018. The million dollar McMansions were constructed by people who slapped crappy materials together, put a roof on it, and left town before things started coming apart. We currently live in south east Texas in the 1927 small farmhouse with seven gables my husband grew up in. The house is quirky 1920's style construction but stable as a rock.
Another downside to these truss systems besides no attic is the much shallower pitch to the roof. This is a problem in the northern parts of the country that get snow. With the shallower pitch the roof doesn't shed the snow. The snow freeze/thaws sitting on the roof which leads to shingle damage, which in turn leads to underlayment damage, which means expensive roof replacement costs. My roofer loves my old house here in the northeast. He replaced the shingles and noted with satisfaction that the underlayment was in very good condition. He explained to me that this was a direct function of the steep pitch. And yeah, I have an attic, too. 🙂
Yes, I hate the look of low-pitch roofs. So much excess roofing material. No attic is a big problem for me. Such a waste of potential space. The snow problem is relevant too. Roof trusses seem like a good way to speed up construction or to make roofs for small structures like manufactured homes. I'd rather see good quality homes get built close to city centers.
they make them steep, with or without attics, with or without bonus room, etc. Not sure what your talking about. We have an attic, a full room over the 12/12 pitch garage and a vault over a large section of family room. all on the same house
Architect sets the roof pitch and the trusses are designed to fit within. The truss passing or failing can certainly place restrictions on what slope is possible, but ultimately this is determined by the AOR/EOR/Bldg Designer & then the truss manufacturer designs to those specs. And you can totally design attic rooms & areas within the trusses, it's a pretty common thing.
During my college years in 1967-1968, I worked at a lumber yard assembling house trusses with plates similar to today’s gang nail plates. The key difference was that these plates didn’t have pre-punched teeth; instead, they had holes for nails, which we drove in by hand. Despite the occasional mishap-like smashing my left thumb more times than I’d like to admit-I really enjoyed that job.
This is fascinating, but it hurts. There's nothing worse than a giant, busy-roof house alongside 200 others built on what used to be farmland. Especially those with flat walls that have random windows scattered everywhere.
They have tremendously increased labor productivity which has the effect of ... nothing. Any such improvements just results in greater efforts to make it harder to develop and raise expectations with respect to required building standard and purchasers expectations.
@ From the video: “I personally cannot think of a single invention that is so simple that has created such a profound effect on the way that we build.” I was pointing out the effect of power tools on home construction (although not as simple as truss plates). I get your point, but you are speaking about what is built, not how something is built.
I’m a contractor. Over the years I have thought of a lot of simple solutions and tools that I think are a really good idea…. This video made me realize I need to pursue these ideas. Who would have thought a pice of metal with some holes could have such a large impact
I hate Open Floor Plans. Everyone says it’s great for parties but I’ll venture 90% of the people who get an open floor plan thinking about having a bunch of parties doesn’t end up having hardly any. Rooms are separate because they each have their own function. Open floor plans basically say it’s all one room with many functions. If you wand to put like wooden sliding shutters on a bar on a kitchen wall shared with a living room so you could talk to people by opening them, and close them to have a conversation with people in the kitchen, fine. But come on the VAST MAJORITY of people are not going to be hosting such a large party that they need a wallless floor plan.
Plus, it's nice when parties are held in a series of rooms you can wander between. Tends to keep the noise levels down and you get more chance to talk to people.
I used to build trusses, its incredible how many just us 4 guys could build in a single day. Depending on the size we would build 40-80 trusses or so, some 80ft long for massive warehouses and such. All of them we use the plates big and small. We would even use them for certain types of shear frame walls.
Regarding complicated rooflines, please see Victorian architecture. It's not that these plates made varied rooflines possible, it's that trusses made them less expensive to construct. (These kinds of videos just increase my love for my 1910 house with its giant joists.)
An unfortunate downside to gang nail plates is their contribution to sudden roof collapse in fire situations, making it more dangerous for firefighters to attempt on-the-roof operations. The large surface area of the plate conducts heat into the wood joint area, encouraging it to burn first and fail faster than one fastened with nails.
What's terrifying to me is modern LBL construction. It's all just chipboard held together with glue. Although I hate seeing an old house burn, I'd much rather fight a fire on an old house compared to a new one.
Considering that being on fire isn't a natural trait of a home, I would not call this a "downside" of the gang nail plate. 🤓
@twillison8824 you plainly don't live in an area with old houses. In the Philadelphia area it's almost weekly that some family dies when their home goes up in flames in a few minutes. Modern homes rarely burn fast enough to trap inhabitants inside.
@@DavidSaintloth literally part of building material rating is how long it would last ina fire.
@@lilbtyt7928 yeah, but how are these different than nails, for how long it lasts in a fire? I find it hard to believe it lasts ANY longer
Over here in Germany these prefabricated trusses held together with gang nail plates became known for being the central failure point of many standardized discount store buildings in case of fire. As I understood it, once the roof space has reached a certain temperature the gang nail plates (at least the ones used over here) tend to just let go, causing sudden and unpredictable roof collapse. This is why fire departments will not enter these types of store buildings when they assume the fire has spread into the roof space above the shop floor.
Great info, thanks
By the time the building is hot enough to weaken the plates you wouldn't be entering anyways.
By the time that happens you would either be dead from the fire or smoke - or you would have evacuated already. Fire departments can't magically save burning homes. Even if they try the water damage destroys the building anyways.
Would adding a few screws or conventional nails help with this problem?
@Drcassette that is an interesting design difference, in the uk all such buildings are steel framed (like barns) and yes steel if not protected from fire will buckle under its own weight.
Super interesting, thank you! In case anyone's interested, this is in the domain of sustainability great example for what's referred to as a "rebound effect". Where an efficiency gain through innovation is eaten up by increased consumption. (think e.g. more energy efficient machines -> lower energy bills -> increased used of machines -> same energy bill as before)
Just like more highway lanes -> people move farther away -> more cars -> traffic jams same as before. Man, suburbia loves that stuff.
Also known as the "Jevons Paradox"
I feel like all the people moving to trailers and small studios because it is cheaper is making it become more expensive and houses even more expensive, so it's essentially a race to the bottom.
@@eng-xv8bc the governments have a plan to make themselves more comfortable. Basically 1) sow chaos such as by encouraging violent crime, mass migration of incompatible people 2) use chaos to justify totalitarian measures 3) cull. Note that cull has started. See excess death rate.
not so much a rebound effect as elastic demand. "increased use"
maybe because the fkfing demand was there, and it was price limited? stop being antihumanist.
Banks had a big effect on house size, my mother was a very successful Realtor and one of her gripes eas banks discouraging loans for smaller affordable homes and pushing people to buy bigger more expensive homes by convincing tgem they could afford it... Afford it by living paycheck to paycheck with no cushion though. Yes, she made more commission wirh a more expensive home but since aftee school id go to stay in her office break room i heard with my own ears her tell clients that it was better to buy smaller than they could, so they had that cushion and could always sell and uograde later. She prided herself on doing right for her client's vs maximizing profits.... And later her partner pushed her out because she wasnt maxing profit at the expense of buyers. Interesting life lessons for a kid.
Yes, we were approved for twice as much house as we felt comfortable taking on.
Thank you for shereing
We bought at the previous boom and the bank had approved double what we wanted to take on. Buying smaller meant our mortgage was shorter and our credit was higher. It has been easier to obtain car loans, etc. I'm very glad we didn't get a huge house.
The auto industry did the same thing. Now we're all driving Crossovers/SUVs
Oh... if people REALLY looked at bank lending practices they wouldn't be so nice about bankers and loans.
Also, economic prosperity and the resulting economic mobility (being able to become rich by hard work/sound investing) is what's most important... and it's what's been absolutely murdered by Obama and Biden and the DNC over the past 20 years.
See also: Government making lending worse after CAUSING the 2007 sub prime mortgage crisis.
The one positive of truss plates is that it enabled me (a roofing contractor by trade) to build my own house and do the framing (with my roofing crew) ourselves. It is not impossible to learn roof framing, but it is SO much easier with trusses. But Mcmansions as a whole are the bane of my existence as a contractor trying to waterproof impossible angles with valleys terminating in walls and the such. I can waterproof them with the help of water & ice membrane because the siding is not yet installed enabling me to run the membrane up the walls. But...when these houses get re-roofed due to age or a hail storm, the next contractor will not be able to waterproof them near as easily. Long-term maintenance is rarely considered. I built a two-story colonial - simple yet elegant roof lines that never goes out of style!
Do you have a site / portfolio of pictures? Would love to see said colonial! :D
And if you want solar, a simple roof is a much easier install.
that's the "perk" of housing as an investment, you never have to think long term because in 10 years you'll be on to your next one! Honestly, I feel sorry for ourselves in 30 years when all these houses are crumbling and look more like shanty towns than houses.
I'm a home inspector, those multi valley and stepped roof styles are hard to inspect....flashing nightmare...leaks are almost impossible to locate...advice is to re roof ra ther than try to fix one of these mult angled monstrosities. Over head trees.....gutters, don't get me started
As a contractor who's had to deal with the latter situation, you're spot on. Frustrating at a minimum
Several years ago, the Delaware Association of Professional Engineers ( their license board) had an article in their newsletter reminding engineers to be very cautious about signing and sealing structural plans for McMansions. In really simple terms the Residential wood framing requirements offer two compliance paths. You can do either a complete engineering analysis and specify each connection. Or you can rely on the prescriptive requirements, which typically say something like use three X sized nails on Y centers for this application. The problem was that the prescriptive requirements are still assuming a fairly modest size building with modestly sized rooms. While many interior partitions in a conventionally sized house are not officially load bearing, they act as internal stiffeners (sort of an egg crate effect). With these enormous McMansions with their two and a half story great rooms and 20 x 30 master bedrooms, you don’t have the internal stiffness. On top of that, a lot of builders are using much weaker sheathing materials. Anyway, there were some fairly spectacular residential structural failures that were attributed to using the prescriptive code sections outside of their range.
As a 60 year old builder I’m very familiar with these truss plates. I think they are fantastic, and this examination of the larger effects they had (or contributed to) is just fascinating. It’s both educational and entertaining. Well done. This is the kind of content we need more of.
If you are a 60-year-old builder, you should know how to spell truss.
@garyszewc3339 Spell check can change things, and you might not notice without your glasses on.
@ spelling police? Is that a serious crime…. But I went and fixed it so you can sleep at night.
I think they're awful. Every house I've been in that was built after the mid-80s has been built with them, and they've all rattled and rocked at me walking through, and trying to minimize that is part of why I got fat in the first place (can't exactly run around and be a kid when the entire house shakes at the antics of a single 50 lbs child, so I focused on things that entertained me without me needing to move around so much, like reading, or videogames)
They wouldn't be so bad if proper joinery was still used, but most of the time it's just a couple toe nails and a truss plate holding the house together, which might prevent it from actually falling apart, but it doesn't stop it from rattling and waving around dangerously when your grandkids run by your china cabinet, causing all your glasswear to bang against itself
Seen too many new constructions that have creaky floors on move-in to like the damn things
@@garyszewc3339 This is just disrespectful - grow up.
Thank you for providing non-clickbait content.
You actually delivered on your premise, which is a refreshing change in this day and age.
Fake news
@whisper555 has he made clickbait content before?
Yeah, he gets to it pretty quick!
This actually IS click bait content, because the gang nail plate has nothing to do with making trusses possible, it just reduces the cost slightly compared to other options, but at the cost of being much weaker.
@@vaseplate1049 i think they were comparing it to youtube videos as a whole
My parents house is an 1890s dairy farm house. Very tight rooms, solid oak floors and log joists. Very sturdy old house but also compact. Some time in the 70s the previous owner sold their farm land to developers. Every house surrounding my parents’ house is a mcmansion style home. Its insane
And guess which house will last another 50-100 years or more?
I watched a TH-camr modernize one of those houses he had to reinforce a bunch of stuff. In particular the floor. Just because it's older doesn't make it stronger. We can model and design for the forces much better now.
@@veganguy74his will I live in a 114 year old house in southeast Texas 😊
@@sulljasonAgreed. Husband has been helping remodel an old (1910) farmhouse. The thing was built by the farmer and added onto by family over generations. It’s a nightmare. Crooked stairs, electric panel IN THE SHOWER, floors that sag and bounce in certain areas, interior wall that literally swings back and forth with just pressure from pushing on it with your finger, insane upstairs rooms just slapped together with such unsafe “construction” methods. Some older homes are well-made. Some are hot messes. And the hot mess homes are really unsafe and expensive to remodel. Hubby says “they should’ve just torn that thing down and started new” every day he comes home from working on it.
That’s just sad. Recently I was back in my hometown. Took a ride around my neighborhood that had custom built homes 70-73. Just 25 homes surrounding the old Gimbel Estate. Mostly 4-5 bedrooms & 3 baths with large dens. All different styles too. Tudor, Center Hall Colonial, French Provencial Ranches, Plantation style with columns out front. All that character is gone now. No color & they all look the same. Big additions on all. Sad
My house is from the '70s (1875!) It's a modest middle class rowhouse in the city with 3 occupied floors, and It's the opposite of "open floor plan". It has many small rooms and dozens of doors, For this I'm THANKFUL. Victorian architecture has been criticized for excess, but that's in mansions, not normal middle class homes, The architects then were not idiots, The high ceilings, tall windows and rooms that ALL have doors in my house are pre- A/C climate control! I can control the temp in every room, (entirely "ignoring" any room being unused at the moment..) and the floor plan allows more privacy than modern homes (important when my kids still lived at home) and all available space is used, Being a "Mansard" roof design, the otherwise wasted "attic" has two full bedrooms,. I live in Pittsburgh, So hurricane winds are not a "thing", But I'm gonna say that the 1870's design WAS "sustainable" as 150 years is a good "ROI".
That's a good point about the doors = temperature adjustment. I notice a huge difference in my bedroom's temperature (warm or cool) when I close my BR door vs leaving open a crack.
@@VAwitch Yes, additionally i can open or close heating/cooling vents (forced air system) in each room and having doors closed to them isolates them instead of affecting the whole house.
yes me and my friend are restoring a brick hotel from 1924. very promising and mansard roofs are the way to go!
@@kromsukit Cool! I know that mansard roofs were considered "obsolete" by the dawn of the 20th century, But for the life of me, I don't know WHY? (fickle tastes, I guess). Good luck on your project. I'm all in on restoring/renovating historic buildings. Ultimate "recycling" (And let's face it MOST new buildings are ugly), LOL
Interesting story. Being from Europe, I’ll have to search what Mansard is.
In the late 1960s my father was working in Illinois for a company that built simple buildings for farmers that were primarily wooden posts covered with aluminum siding; incredibly simple construction. But I remember him bringing home a few of these gang nail plates (I guess when his company had just started using them) and wanting me to marvel with him at their incredible elegance and strength. He told me that these were a bit part of the future in building construction, but I don't think he was envisioning McMansions.
Sure Jan
Did he work for Morton Metalcraft? My uncle worked there for 30 years.
@@llamasugar5478 No, his employer was a (much) smaller competitor. But I actually remember him showing me that (at least at that time, perhaps around 1967) the plate that Morton was using was actually inferior. He had a sample of the plate that (supposedly) Morton used and, instead of these straight cuts that dug deep into the metal, the other plate was designed with _circular_ holes (instead of straight one). They still had the metal bent inwards to be pounded into the wood, but instead of a spike, it was a circle of (shorter) daggers. Kind of hard to explain. I'm sure they weren't used for long.
@ I remember those. Uncle showed us one; I don’t recall if it was when they were using them, or if he picked it up when they stopped using them. He worked in metal fabrication.
@@llamasugar5478 Wow. Very cool to share that memory with someone who already shares it.
My grandfather took a sketch of trusses at a factory thinking it was a good design and then when he built his own 1,600 sq foot house in 2 years after work (no big deal 🤯- and he didn’t work in construction either), he used homemade trusses, monster overbuilt things.
I had an engineer friend look at it and he said it was just like homes are made today only way stronger.
Brilliant guy with an 8th grade education. When he was 80, he climbed the utility poll at my first home (foreclosure) and turned the power on even when I protested. Tough as nails. RIP grandpa.
Your Grandpa sounds like a BAMF.
👍
Sounds the same as my house. My grandpa dropped out in 7th grade, built his own house, and the homes of others.
Some things leave you scratching your head. But then you have to stop and think that there was no internet, this was built by a guy just figuring it out. He dug the freaking basement by hand... Unreal. We had a tree (massive one) drop on our house last year, and it has old the old designed roof. And 0 damage was done to it. It has a ton of angles to the roof and is just massively over built. We don't have hurricanes here, so lifting forces probably would be harder for it to tolerate, but it can take a ton of extra weight being dropped onto it, even if that weight is focused.
@@1Kurgan1That’s wild
For every brilliant guy who dropped out of middle school, there are 100 dropouts who are complete idiots. @1Kurgan1
As a journeyman carpenter I have set thousands of trusses, I have built Mc Mansions and mansions, the last one I worked on sold for 23 million dollars, I think any large house with stick frame and stucco is a Mc mansion. The real mansion here are built with masonry construction. Fortunately I’m a finish carpenter now lots of woodwork in those big houses. Great video.
I'm a builder and concur. Trusses are more often used on smaller track homes with larger homes using stick framing as the roof lines are usually more complicated.
In the UK our houses are concrete block and brick, some are now steel framed and block / brick outers with slate, stone or artificial slate - they dont blow down but alas are probably 25 - 40% the size of yours!
@@stephenisdaleYes! I almost exclusively see trusses on production builds and the custom homes with complicated lines are stick built.
@@paulwatts1704That sounds lovely to this millennial American
I've worked on both as well. People with McMansions got to home depot and pick out the most expensive countertop. People with mansions go to Italy, where the marble is quarried and have 8 countertops cut so they can pick out their favorite one and have that one installed.
A gang nail plate cut a gash into my leg when I was using an unused wooden truss as a ladder for a treehouse I built during the construction of my parents' house as an 8-year-old kid, when I slipped and tried to catch myself. I still have the scar.
21 years later, I am now in graduate school for architecture at IIT in Chicago.
Thanks to this video, I finally have a name for the piece of metal that left that scar, and another explanation for why I don't like McMansions.
the real money is in treehouses bro. better clients too.
I'm from Naperville so sometimes I have a little soft spot for certain McMansions but you're so lucky you get to hang out at that gorgeous mies van der rohe campus
Congrats on getting into grad school. It sounds like the real life version of a radioactive spider biting you.
My high school drafting teacher at Bishop Noll Institute, Caesar Qeyqep, was simultaneously a professor at IIT. Thought I’d become an architect. Not to be. Instead, I became a carpenter builder/renovator. I had NOOOO idea at the time just how much this fellow’s instruction would have on my life. My renovation “see through vision” is directly down stream of those four years of drafting studies. College level in high school!
you hit the graduate level without ever encountering something used in most buildings? i really need to rethink my degree
We build with concrete in the Caribbean. Pretty much the same thing happens here. Less people buy large family homes since they’re expensive and people don’t reproduce as much as before. Still, most builders construct 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes or larger because it can be sold for much more. There is a need for 2 bedroom homes for smaller families or a single person, but the profits won’t be as great since it takes roughly the same amount of time to build. Similar to trusses, we can use concrete beams to create large open floor concepts instead of needing load bearing walls or columns.
The next invention that changed building was the joist hanger. Roofs with trusses could only go in one direction and basically have a single roof line. Hangers paved the way for hipped roofs and multiple roof lines. It probably did more for the McMansion than the gusset plate.
But then they took short cuts with the number of nails in the joist hangers! But they can be handy. I built a 49ft geodesic dome where a lot of the floor joists required custom angle joist hangers. Made things simpler and stronger.
@@JP-rf7pxBUILDERS take short cuts, not Simpson . Simpson requires ALL holes filled with appropriate nails
@@johnwhite2576 Simpson has minimal nailing but some applicants require more nailing in their hardware the circular holes are common nailing and the triangle holes are for more depending on the application. Every hole doesn’t always require nailing like you stated
I would add TGI beams as well
Thinking about all of the of hipped buildings in the UK that predate joist hangers and trusses,was proper carpentry not a thing in the US?
Boiler plate pre/post ww2 building would be a 4 hip block.
My parents have a 20 year old McMansion that has rotting siding because it’s a glorified cardboard material. While I have 1900 farmhouse with original siding. The lumber from back then was virgin lumber. The grain was tighter and encouraged durability. Even with softer woods like pine. Now lumber is farmed. Irrigated and the grain is less durable. More likely to warp. Newer homes have particleboard sheets. They literally are barely a step above paper.
Georgia Pacific had a siding that had numberous lawsuits as it was defective pressboard like system. Not reliable. Failed within 10 years or less. It might have been something like that. Ick!
@agentp6622 actually it’s figuratively, houses are much stronger than paper 😂
I live in a double wide. it is a brand new double wide but naturally it is a small, simple floor plan that lends itself to incredible efficiency. It also helps my wife and I pay attention more to needs and wants in regards to "stuff". It is easy to heat and cool, has a beautiful front porch built right into it with a bigger master suite I'd ever thought I'd have. I love my little, simple house and could never imagine having a biger house much less one that costs more and causes more issues
That's another issue altogether. Politicians crow on about "affordable housing" then put roadblocks in the way of wide utilization of Mobile/Modular/whatever homes. Although I'm in a conventional house now, I grew up in, and spent most of my adult life in Mobile Homes of one sort or another. I actually prefer them, they're generally better built as they have to withstand the equivalent of a force 8 earthquake when they roll down the road, more thought is put into them with regards to storage, and the traditional "tin can" style needs MUCH less maintenance.
I used to have a double wide on an acre north of phoenix. It had better insulation and craftsmanship than any of the stick built houses I have owned. Cost way less to air condition because they actually put in decent insulation at the factory.
Amen. When I lived in hippy land there were many many double-wides that had expanded as needed over the years. Need an extra bedroom? cut half the wall of the trailer out and frame a box on stilts. Often the original trailer was erased after 30 years :)
This is a great video. As someone that grew up in the USA in that exact time period, new homes on offer changed dramatically from 1985 to 1995. Even as a teenager, it left an impression on me, just the difference in scale of ceilings, interior dimensions, all that, when I would visit other schoolmates houses who had the newest units.
I watched the changes too. Been a crane operator since the 90s and trust me, the roofs have gotten even more insane over the past 30 years.
The complex roof designs of McMansions serve to dramatically increase the likelihood of water intrusion.
I started doing roof repairs in 1976. I soon realized that I could find a neighborhood full of those houses and simply put flyers on the mailboxes when the houses were about 3 or 4 years old. If there was one leak in the neighborhood there would be many more. I made a good living working alone for about 20 years.
Squirrel intrusion too.
@@larrywelch9738 ok boomer... thats how yall " work smarter not harder". lol no wonder this country is fucked. did you pay tax on those advertising costs? openly admitting to commuting multiple serial felonies in a crime spree in a neighborhood to exploit homeowners sounds like a great business model
Just put a truss plate over the squirrel hole, hehe.
I see terrible designs here in Wisconsin where snow will get trapped in small valleys, often turn to ice and cause all sorts of issues.
If you want an attic in a modern house, you can opt for "attic trusses", which are trusses with a central section that is open. A cross tie at the top becomes a way to easily install a roof. A beefy chord at the bottom gives you the floor joists. The sides can be drywalled. Instant finished attic.
This.
Although walk-up attics aren't feasible in certain areas like Florida.
@@jackesioto Why not? We have kazillions of McMansions here with enormous "snow roofs" already - what a waste of cubic volume!
I'm a crane operator and I set wood trusses every day. The level of engineering for the load points on floor and roof systems in a modern mcmansion is insane. A week ago I did a house where a set of mono trusses hangered off a girder, which hangered off a beam, which hangered off a girder. I'm glad im not the cut man putting the sheathing up on the roof.
my house may be older but screw all that nonsense lol. Mine has 4x4 every 1/8 the distance of the long side of the house and 4x6 on the outer corners and middle and in the middle of the house the other direction where the joists meet. Sorry not a framer so have no idea what all it’s called, I’m a nerd so I go by diagrams. But yeah and anytime I want a larger span like I did for my kitchen area… LVL. I do agree it’s not and will never be as cheap but ehh I’ll live. I can afford it and I don’t want a balancing act house LOL
Nor do I want a fire to swallow it in 10 minutes. These comments about fire and trusses and nail plates scare me.
Operator here too. Another thing that amazes me is the number of LONG clear span trusses I see every day now vs 20 years ago.
I live in a mid-century modern neighborhood, all houses built in the 1950s. One of my neighbors builds McMansions (although he prefers modern architecture). I asked him about this just a couple days ago, and he also said the banks play a role. The borrowers are very timid about lending to build anything "out of the ordinary", although he could build small, modern homes, the bank often won't lend to build houses like that.
I had exactly this wonder: why Americans never build European style minimalist houses with single slope roofs and big double or triple glazed windows
@@imakro69 Double glazed is pretty much standard these days. The complicated roofs are a fashion trend.
Typical. Same nonsense as zoning laws prohibiting mixed use, sellouts the lot of them
That's interesting.
It’s the same concept of a bank not giving out car loans for a $6,000 car you can afford - but they will gladly hand you a loan for a $60,000 car you can’t afford. The whole banking system is a scam to keep you enslaved with debt, and the proof is in their actions.
I was working on a 3 story house in Florida, and saw the dudes putting up the trusses, and that thing started SPINNING and the one guy just held on and spun like a disco ball 🪩 …. Legend
Structural Engineer here. Love this video. Great job Stewart.
In what world does the truss plate connect trusses to top plates on walls.
@@HondoTrailside Hurricane clips connect trusses to wall top plates
Great, I just built a ranch open floor plan and my floor is a little bouncy. Best way to reduce? Installed fancy steel x braces and didn't do much. Thinking about 2x4 perp to the TJIs. I within the TJI span chart so WTF :)
@@greenmoxy Go back to your designer and tell them they f'd up, and ask them how they're going to fix it.
@@SoidHoid LOL I'm the designer / builder and I agree I f'd up a little. It's not horrible, I've seen horrible. Looking back I would up my TJI to 14" instead of 12". The span chart said I was good, my gut said get 14" then I figured I could save $300 on $500K home :) We live, we sometimes learn. Thanks!
With the new truss systems, you can have an attic space again. You have to order it, spec houses are done as cheap as possible so, many don't have an attic.
The sad thing is that this should have allowed cheaper houses, but it didn't work out that way
My suburban ranch style home was built in 1978 with stick framing. Last year during a snow storm/load on our roof our walls moved out about 1/2". After ripping things apart we discovered that they were only toe nailed using 1-2 nails. Fun time correcting that issue.
You mean not all hand-built homes were high quality? Color me shocked...
As a contractor I spend so much time inspecting and repairing trusses because of these plates. It's crazy how easily these trusses can be damaged so it's important to make proper repairs!
How do they get damaged?
Snow loads, branches falling, earthquakes or tremors
@@kld70 That doesn't seem to be an issue restricted to this construction.
@@0MoTheG Primarily mishandling through transportation or installation. They're usually long spans of 2x4's so very easy to bend/break.
How do you repair a damaged one?
Asking for a friend who wants indestructible trusses.
Another factor in the rise of the McMansions is banks over-lending. One company said we were eligible for a house that would cost 70% of our monthly income, and we said "Nope!". Interesting perspective on the drawbacks of an open floorplan, but I have to agree on the noise and lack of solitude. We lived in a newer home for many years, recently moved into a house built in 1941, and the differences are shocking. Granted, structural brick, wet plaster walls, and very nice craftsmanship make a huge difference, but the house is wonderfully quiet and we've never slept so well. Our youngest son is autistic, and he used to go around holding his ears at our former house, almost crying in his room because he could not escape the noise when family with younger kids visited. Now his room is on the 2nd floor where the walls are 3/4 inch thick knotty pine, his windows overlook the woods behind us, and he just loves the quiet and solitude.
Wow that sounds wonderful!! I would love to live in a room like that!
@@xXevilsmilesXx piss your pants
My response when told I could have a $500,000 loan was "Are you out of your mind?!"
@@brokenrecord3523 Banks: well if we ever get in trouble uncle sucker will bail us out. I mean you’ll be royally screwed but we’ll be fine!
I'm jealous....
Randomly found this channel and subscribed. I love seeing how engineering silently changes the world
I know this isn’t the point of this video, but as someone who stresses a lot about lighting in my own videos, I’m really impressed you were able to film this video quickly enough enough that the sun didn’t set. It looks like you filmed it during the golden hour.
JJ! Love your videos! Happy to share the secret anytime.
I think he's using a green screen, buddy. I was just looking at "light" coming from the left of the picture and it didn't move once throughout the whole video (or shift in any direction).
@@solitivityI'm pretty sure he just put a little whatever it's called thing that makes a shadow in front of a studio light
@@moth.monstergobo! it took me a while to remember the name.
JJ your the man, love the videos
My house was built in the early 1900's and the roof rafters are step lapped on a seat, pretty neat stuff...
That's awesome! Yeah build quality should definitely be the biggest determining factor in a house's resale value, just like how certain cars have a much higher resale value than others. I kind of wish every house sold must come with the architectural drawings or in depth inspection for a "build rating" that comes with the title.
In fact I'm surprised insurance companies don't demand such a thing! 😅
Land and the location of the land@@anydaynow01
@@anydaynow01 I wonder if they do that in any country.
your house probably doesn't see hurricanes?
@@anydaynow01i guess house diaries are not a thing in US ?
As a civil engineer / project manager for a State transportation agency from the early 80's up to the pandemic, I witnessed many an advancement in tech for all aspects of my job. For actual Civil work, we went in reverse - from capturing all flows into concrete pipes & culverts to allowing rainfall to penetrate the earth via porous pavement or "rain gardens" in between parking lot aisles or large retention basins at the bottom of large parking lots. We went from More Pipes to Less Pipes. We did large wooden structures for salt storage sheds. We used the gang nailed trusses from the early 80's but they were problematic - they left too much "give" so the shingles fell off, they provided too convenient a nesting roost for pigeons & crows, they were obstacles to the trucks delivering the salt, getting hit & broken all the time. We went to glue laminated arches - yes the fancy type used for churches & such - for a mundane salt shed - but they solved all those problems stunningly well & ended up being cheaper in the long run.
I've seen these metal plates in the roof triangles, when they were stacked at a new building site or on the back of some trucks delivering them to new construction sites. I always wondered what the story behind them was. This was very interesting. I took wood working in High school back in the 90's. But we never leaned about these. Thank you.
Gang Nail plates, (also on as gusset plates too) has had an extremely adverse overall affect fire has on a home. It went from 20+/- minutes of fire exposure before roof failure with more traditional construction to as little as 5 minutes with modern truss sustems. Would love to see an in depth video catering to both people in the know and the layperson explaining the adverse affects of modern, lightweight construction on fire loads.
*If you do ever make this video, i’m sure me and many others would love to use it for training purposes for others
are you telling me american homes have a worse fire rating than a garden shed? This is wild.
Why is that?
@@BS-vx8dg The gang nail plates start to let go when they get hot. Steel loses strength as it get hotter. A 16d nail fully buried in a 2x6 is insulated from the heat, while the relatively thin plate is fully exposed to the heat, and the short "nails" get hot quickly, charing the wood and reducing their holding power. The smaller lumber used in a truss (relative to traditional framing) will also weaken faster as it burns.
Same as those OSB floor joists. The glue will melt from the heat causing an early collapse.
Good thing house fires are much less common compared to when I was young.
As a retired volunteer firefighter home built with gusset plates in their roof structure is something you definitely have to be aware of and be cautious of. When he gets up into the attic and fire these plates get weak and tend to fail so the quicker you can get the fire out in the attic the safer everybody is.
amazing. i have seen these at home depot and had no idea. fantastic one.
I’ve wanted to be a construction worker sense I was 4 years old and now I’m here working plumbing and learning more and more every day and I love it.
I wish my kids would get into the trades. They have college educations, like that's going to do them much good...
The post and frame houses in Europe will be still standing centuries after Juriet’s buildings are in landfills, as they stood for centuries before.
I grew up watching James Burke's "Connections" series. This is great work in that tradition. Thanks!
_Connections_ should be a must-watch for high schoolers and college freshmen
@@chrislindsay3104That show is mind blowing.
YT algorithm did not disappoint. Excellent video 👏
10:30 it is not invention for the roof led to these consequences, it is for the profit economy system led to that.
Hey Stewart! Miami-Dade county wind load requirements these days start at 165mph and reach up to 195mph in a higher risk category!
There, you have additional nail plates and steel straps designed to hold the floors and roof down, to tie the lifting load down to the foundation.
Yeah, 100 mph winds is a minor hurricane (IIRC category 2) that happens every other year in much of the Caribbean and in the southern USA, but now we're at the stage in which category 5s (157 mph and above) happen every other year, or at worst we get multiple in a year.
Open floorplans were my dream, until I realized that noise and solitude become rather difficult problems for me what with having small children. It'll work out how I'd like in the long run though, they grow up. Side note I did not use trusses in my build.
this is "if we add 6 lanes to this freeway, it will solve the traffic problem" but for houses
Just one more truss, bro!
@jimc9516 You are so right!
Nothing exceeds like excess!
Real-estate industry also started to push for legislation to enlarge the minimum size of bungalows. That caused the smaller sizes to go out of code requirements about the time the gang nail plates became the norm. Tax base increased with the property needed for McMansions making suburbs more profitable by the larger minimum standards. By the early 2000's building codes in CA made making granny flats even difficult to permit and build. Fortunately that seems to be trending the other way.
Leave it to America to make small, affordable houses illegal because they aren't profitable enough.
The IRC building code sets certain minimums such as minimum headroom in a stair (6'-8") and minimum room size, 70 sf for a habitable room and minimum dimension of 7-ft but nothing on the order of magnitude that would result in a McMasion.
@@chrisscharff6518 Our county demands homes of a minimum size. They no longer allow smaller homes, even in so called senior developments where people would like to downsize due to age. It's crazy but the bankers rule the county.
@@blammers my sister and her husband found a work-around. They sold their big old house in upper NY State, and bought 2 used camping trailers about 26 feet long. One at a campground along Lake Ontario in NY State they live in May to October. Another at a campground in the Florida interior (Ocala) they live in November to April. He does construction work both places, she is a part time hairdresser both places. They have no insurance for their trailers, if one is destroyed they have the savings to immediately buy another used trailer. They built huge outdoor decks for both to make up for the small indoor square feet.
Tiny home ADUs in backyards.
People want stuff cheap, functional and pretty. This invention just enables us.
Its 3am, I'm not a civil engineer, or even a carpenter, so why am I watching this???
It's pretty common that someone invents something with a certain viewpoint of how to make use of it, and later is shocked that someone else is "using it wrong", unintended consequences arise quite often. You can't always imagine every unintended consequence, but you can bank on human nature being what it is, someone will come up with a reason, usually economics-related, to pervert an invention.
I interviewed the guy that created the modern confinement system for hog production. (Trust me, this is related) He regrets it and feels like Doctor Frankenstein. He envisioned a very small operation to supplement an individual family farm for home production and some diversification of output, to keep small family farms strong. Instead, factory farming of hogs using his slatted-floor setups have driven small family operations out of business. The meat companies have turned the pork producing families into high-tech sharecroppers on their own land, with highly restrictive contracts, that split the farrowing and finishing stages of the pig life cycle, making the farmers bear the costs of production while the company pockets all the profit, and the effluent coming out of these contained animal feeding operations (CAFO's) makes the equivalent of a small town's sewage output, every day, untreated and sitting in open ponds that can leak into streams and groundwater.
I’m from a family that had to sell all of our hogs. We couldn’t afford to raise them anymore. I like to think they were pretty happy, while we had them.
That's for sure. I call it The inventor's paradox. People use an invention for their goals, not the inventor's. For instance, the Wright Brothers thought that the airplane would end war.
That's why government is supposed to stay small...
Read Frankenstein. The original novel, not the crappy Hollywood movies. This is an eternal human failing.
@@hariman7727 What?
10:21 This brings to mind The Law of Unintended Consequences:
"Whether or not what you do has the effect you want, it will have three at least you never expected, and one of those usually unpleasant."
Sounds like a key ingredient in "analysis paralysis". As someone who suffers from that occasionally, I've learned to "not let perfection get in the way of good enough".
@@coolraul07No it’s just a matter of balancing the desirable and undesirable effects. Having worked in actual old mansions without gang nail plates or joist hangars, it can still be done. It’s just done differently.
It's also an example of Jevon's paradox: when you make something straight-up more efficient, more of that thing usually happens.
More efficient cars? More miles driven.
More efficient house construction? Bigger homes.
LEDs made lighting cheaper? So we made cities brighter.
Shipping container made for more efficient shipping? More shipping happened.
ATMs led to more efficient use of banks? More bank locations opened.
@@24HoLTeam93 On the LED comment, I really enjoy the dimmable LEDs with color adjustment. It makes winding down at night much easier with dim warm lighting.
We built our own house, using truss plates for the roof...but also guided by Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" concept. We have both an open downstairs plan AND "away spaces" for privacy and solitude!
That's a good book. I wish I had the money to build like that though.
9:50 this is the same irony with productivity gains. They matched wages and would either continue to go up together, or people were going to be able to work less for the same pay. Obviously that didn't happen, we just try to extract as much value as possible both out of our labor, and also our homes
I prefer more traditional plans myself instead of one big open area. It's not like I need to host a cooking show with a live audience in my home.
Yup. Not too closed off, but I’d like to be able to take a phone call without whoever’s watching tv having to pause it because they’re in the living room and I’m in the kitchen past the dining table, but it’s just one giant space
An open floor plan is great when the kids are small and you want to keep an eye on them, but not so great when they get a little older and they start playing vidio games with their friends.
Truss plates did not cause the mcmansions. It was to build track homes cheaper and faster. As an architect vary rarely do I see prebuilt trusses used in the DFW area.
A couple things on trusses, that weren't quite mentioned that (I believe) make them more beneficial, especially here in the northeast are 1) Energy Heels. Trusses made energy heels possible by moving the slope of the roof above the bearing point of the truss itself. This creates more room over the exterior walls for insulation, where in the northeast, using standard insulation methods, needs a more space for the amount of insulation needed for meeting the R-value required. A common issue here on older homes is ice damming, where heat loss through the insulation melts snow and ice on the roof which sheds down over non insulated spaces, like porches and other overhangs, and refreezes, creating a dam where the water above will gather and work under shingles, making leaks in the interior of houses. Having more space for insulation alleviates this, somewhat. Along with other methods such as ice and water shield, since you can't stop ice damming completely, but it prevents leaks in the house.
And 2) Floor trusses. People's need for deeper garages and floor space with open space below needs a member than can span further without support. TJIs can do this, but the real max span for a TJI (even the biggest ones) is in the realm of 32'-8" (this being a 560 series 16" TJI, 12" O.C. [which is nuts, expensive, and hard to find]). Plus, with open webbing, it allows for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC to be run without cutting or modifying the member, plus larger tops for sheathing ease. Only down side is it creates a large open cavity for fires, which is accounted for in the code with maximum cavity size.
All of that being said, there are still many houses and needs where a raftered roof is preferred. Great video!
+1 for the open webbing of trusses which facilitates a much-easier installation of mechanical systems. As for the void space and fires, the code allows for blocking or draftstopping to compartmentalize and manage the fire risk.
One more thing to add: girder trusses. Big trusses that are meant to support other trusses. You can support more with a 4' deep girder truss than you can with a lot of steel beams...
This video captures a microcosm of the problems / unnecessary excesses in America.
I've been in, and lived around McMansions in multiple US cities, and what I can definitively say, is that families that live in these enormous houses, stay almost exclusively in 2 rooms during the day--the kitchen and the "TV room"..(About 800 square feet of space).. ALL the other square footage of these monstrosities is wasted space, excepting a few bedrooms where people only sleep, or your teenager hides out. But otherwise, there are areas in these homes that no one ever steps foot in..
And most of the house isn’t even furnished !! They can’t afford it
That was true of my family of four (grandparents, uncle and myself) growing up in a 1600 square foot 3/2 mobile home 😂
The bedrooms, kitchen and 'family room' were used, the 'living room' was basically just an oversized and furnished hallway people had to pass through when they weren't using the actual hallway on the other side of the equally unused dining room.
In our case we weren't sofa diners, but our kitchen had a nice bar extension of the counter where we all ate together.
800 square feet is probably in the ballpark of the space we actually used as well.
My rich friends growing up always had a "family room" they never used and were forbidden to step foot in and a formal dining room they only ever had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner in; otherwise, these rooms were never touched. I know a guy who grew up and lives in one of these houses so I have since learned, some of them also have 2 - 3 bedrooms that are either storage, guest rooms, or a room that solely houses a doll collection. That house also has an In-Laws quarters.
Rich people are insane.
I calculated how much power you used to distribute your opinion to a world that does not care and have deemed it unnecessary excess. Now get back to your abbot and resume self flagellation. :)
Then there are people with nowhere to stay at all, and families spending their lives renting trailers and small apartments that sap equity and doom them and their descendents to poverty. What a dystopia...
gang-nail plates hold so well that you pretty much need to tear the wood apart to separate the connection. The connections made with these plates seem to be stronger than the wood itself.
I've used a hydraulic press to attach one of those plates before and it's really really impressive
There are videos online of people making their own presses out of scrap. Though it is actually really easy to make a traditional roof.
I worked at a truss plant, I used the hydraulic press in one shop, and a giant roller in a different shop.
Interesting theory.. as a designer working in this space and scale frequently I can admit that pre fab trusses do allow for a decoupling from rational plan layouts and thinking - and therefore proportions and scale. For whatever deeper reason, a roof line and facade proportioned off more traditional roof framing limitations is more pleasing to the senses - and results in interior plans that are more orderly, human scaled and comfortable..
Just looks more right. Right?
For one thing the old designs are more tested... there are proven ways to use them efficiently.
@@entertainme121 You didn't watch the video... It is a cheap joint hundreds of times stronger than a handmade nailed truss. Strong enough you can make long trusses out of short wood. Strong enough that modern houses have all the strength in the roof and basically nowhere else.
@@entertainme121are you able to think critically? If you have extensive brain damage, then I can let this slide. Otherwise, how do you not understand that a truss system that is lighter, uses less material, and faster to construct that allows the roof span to widen would contribute to the proliferation of McMansions? It's simple arithmetic bud
@@entertainme121 If you're older than 15 you should feel embarrassed for being so dramatic about unsubscribing from a youtube channel.
You seem like a pretty unpleasant, unreasonable person.
that was thoughtful! and super well paced with good details, thanks. our 1997 house has 1800 sq. feet, but we have 5 bedrooms, and doors everywhere. it is nice when living with family to have some solitude sometimes!
This might be my favorite video you’ve created!
At 9:15 I look at that roof and think that when the house is 20-25 years old there will be a HUGE bill for new shingles.
You Sir... are creating some of the finest content I've encountered on TH-cam. Interesting subjects, depth of understanding, nicely paced, accurately researched and extremely well presented motivated my comment. I truly enjoyed this video and have become a subscriber... looking forward to viewing past and future content. Thankyou
I now think there would be no Tony Soprano without the 'Gang-Nail' plate!
Woke up this moorning
I'm just a focus group of one, but in my life I have had three houses, all older (the newest built by the owner in 1948) and had very few problems with any of those, yet both my mom and sister bought fancier new build houses (the 1980's through early 2000's) and I they both have had constant issues. Admittedly (and thankfully) none with framing which is the topic of this as usual great Stewart video. But at least with my experience I will never consider a new build houses no matter how much showy lipstick decorations they put on it.
Fascinating video. For those who are curious about the term McMansion, as I was: "McMansion" associates the generic quality of these luxury houses with that of mass-produced fast food by evoking McDonald's, an American restaurant chain.
1:02 Hi-ah-lee-a
Yup, grew up there.
I was about to correct him as well.. thank u.
Thank you
I’m from NY and I’ve never been to Hialeah, Florida but it’s honestly pretty self explanatory. Idk how he botched it like he did.
@@franko8572It is super-tilting hearing him mispronouncing it, having had a good childhood friend from there back in the 70s.
It's a fun theory but I don't agree with it. Traditional rafter construction is still common here in California in home construction. Code requires hurricane/earthquake ties to greatly strengthen the roof structure. The modern truss system is cheaper to build and faster to install but is associated with lower quality construction. McMansions are a developer's attempt at maximizing profit and thus it makes sense that they'll employ the cheapest roofing system. If factory-made truss systems didn't exist, developers would still build McMansions with traditional rafter construction since that would be the only method allowed them.
I totally agree with you. We (california framers) were cutting and stacking complex roofs for decades. McMansions existed in the 19-teens. In track homes where piecemeal production framing was born, framers like Larry Haun could cut and stack a roof in a day. The only change these plates had was lowering the cost of complex roofs, maximizing profits for developers.
@@bjrnmagnusson5351 that's the real reason for the plates.
You think they'd exist at the scale they do now? I think the point he touches on that you're not giving sufficient weight to is how the offsite preconstruction allowed the proliferation.
@@ekjswim As I mentioned, truss systems are cheaper to design, build, and install versus traditional rafter construction. It saves money regardless of the home type whether it's 600 square feet or 6000 square feet. Developer's have it easier with truss systems but it's not a make-or-break situation in my opinion.
Californias weather is mostly the opposite of extreme.
What we now have here in Florida are houses with steep "snow roofs" as shown in the video. Completely stupid, and they just project further into the wind stream increasing the total wind load on the house significantly. And as noted, you can't even use the attic space, at least not very well. Open floorplans - oh, excuse me, I mean "Open Concept" floorplans as HGTV crows on about - suck. They always have sucked - might as well live in a barn.
First time I visited the US I was shocked at the size of homes in general. Yes, we have big homes in Australia, but you guys really take the cake. I’m still wondering how you afford the electricity to heat the rooms (and the garages! That never happens here).
The utility bills for HVAC depend quite a bit on insulation the contractor puts in, along with what type of HVAC system(s) are incorporated into the design. Heat pumps are really being pushed by all the "climate change" scolds, and work well in many areas and can be very cost efficient. However, in places that get cold you HAVE to have an alternate heating source as they don't work well below about 15°F. Where I live in ND we regularly get at least one consecutive week each year with the high temps never getting above 0°F (-18°C), let alone the nightly low temps.
Big homes also mean going outside less. Good and bad for health purposes. A lot of the younger generation look far younger in their face, than they are. They look like very tall children...😮
Energy is 1/3 of our economy
A McMansion isn't a home. It's a glorified box. A barn with a garage, essentially. America may look big and splendid on the outside, but on the inside it's flimsy and cheap. Maybe when Americans and Brits start getting chalk dust in their bread again, they'll realize Reagan and Thatcher sold them back into 19th century Gilded Age penury.
Most houses here in cold climates use gas or oil heating, pretty much the only places using electric heating are in hot climates where it gets cold for very little of the year.
I am a Architect in Los Angeles. The change in FAR is what enabled the existence of McMansions not the gusset plate. The FAR change allowed the total square footage on the site to fill up a site all the way to front, side yard and rear yard setbacks for two stories, and developers took advantage of this, because of a housing storage and the cost of real estate in Los Angeles. There are a number of other ways to get greater spans, one is manufactured beams and rafters. The gusset plates were invented to reduce the cost of construction and highly skilled labor was not required to set the trusses. You have to be a pretty go framer to frame a hip roof with all the compound angle cuts, the gusset eliminated a lot of skilled jobs.
That's great. Thank you for explaining the acronym FAR for all of us non-architects. Your comment made a lot of sense to me.
Floor Area Ratio
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio
@@jayadinash9102 Thank you. I was trying to figure out what the Federal Acquisition Regulations had to do with the size of a house in Los Angeles.
And setbacks also enforce what I call the "English Manor House" model - which is OK if you want/like that. I'd prefer a middle eastern style where the house is built right up to the property line and faces inward to a central atrium. This style has been around since at least Roman times, probably far earlier. But good luck building such a home in the US.
@12:11 that's my house Lol
The actual house or the design? If it's the actual house, don't tell strangers on the internet where you live. Seems very obvious to me.
You hit on the main reason I don't like truss construction, unusable attic space. I feel as though if I am paying to enclose that space, I should be able to use it. With the size of the McMansions, there is a fair amount of floor space that could be finished into living area. It could provide that private space for when one wants to get away from it all, or a nice little hobby niche. That is also a reason why I want a basement, preferably with 8 or 9 foot ceilings.
Put the 25% savings into making my the house larger or adding a basement.
It's cost that you don't understand.
You can pour foundation and frame space under trusses cheaper than you can frame an attic.
Also understand if youre doing a basement that it isn't valued the same as above grade. It's about 1/10th the value.
If your house is a thousand square feet at $100sf with a full finished basement valued at $10sf.
$110,000 at appraisal.
If it's two stories on slab at $100sf.
At appraisal $200,000.
If your basement walls are 51% above grade It's valued at $100sf.
So if you have flat land leave the basement exposed and put retaining walls out around 10 feet from the wall
Only bury up to the bottom of the standard windows and you should be good.
Lift a drink to me when you're done with you above grade basement that was cheaper than a second floor. Pocket the extra 90k when you sell or use it as the equity on a 60% loan to value and get better rates. If you're paying cash you now have a nice flower bed or pet area outside the basement windows instead of .etal window wells.
Maybe walk-up convertible attics should make a comeback.
You definitely can get trusses to make an attic space or vaulted ceilings! There are also other fire block techniques not discussed in the video
@@sparksmcgee6641 Your point in hte first paragraph makes some sense. In the area where I live, most homes have basements and many people, myself and my wife included, would not even consider buying a house without one.
As for your second idea, most urban and suburban areas are not going to let a person build such an odd house and few lots have the room for it. If you look at the video you see these McMansions being built up five feet from the lot line. Personally, I think it looks ridiculous to build such a large house on what is proportionally such a small lot, but that is a trend.
I'm in upstate NY and a building inspector in a small rich town. People still do this with homes here but there's almost no truss homes. Lots of stick frame roof with purlins to cut the spans of lumber. It's effectively a site built truss system. We don't have a problem with hurricane or wind forces though, we have snow load problems. That being said, if I build, even though I've been in more $1 million dollar plus homes than anyone I know, I would build a simple ranch with trusses than any of these crazy homes I go into with 2 story greatrooms heating the ceilings that you can't reach with a 10ft step ladder, rear walls with nothing but glass (because glass is a great insulator at 1/8" thick), immaculate spiral staircases to the second story, elevators, heated driveways so you don't have to shovel snow it have a plow contract, etc. I just don't see the point. It's dumb to me. You have a less structurally sound house that uses more energy than ever necessary with nothing but flash to show for it. I'm not some crazy eco nut or socialist crazy person, I just don't know why anyone wants these things. It's not important to me.
I agree. If put a basic rambler at the back, far from the road. Then I would put a big garage/shop/studio/lab? Out behind the house. That's what it's all about.
Same reason why people drive cars that are way too big for their purpose or buy things from popular designers...to show off their wealth.
I'm old enough to remember when a million dollars would get you a beautiful home. Now it will get you a 1200 square foot tear down or a condo in Ontario, Canada. Home ownership is a pipe dream for many now. What a sad state of affairs.
because behind every millionare is someone who was wronged or hurt by someone and they spend there whole life in a fear fueled panic to posture for the chance of that person catching wind or eye of them and " damn, there in ground swimming pool is on hydraulic stilts and lifts from the court yard to the 2nd story balcony when the courtyard gates close at sunset doubling as a security break from ground level. wow i guess i was wrong about them."
You are, like me, an upstate NYer. Appreciate quality, history, natural materials, see no reason to build or buy wasteful stuff. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They built the buildings, communities, and towns right two centuries ago and there's little point in messing with what was done right. Especially when EVERYTHING that used to last forever, with 100-year-old technology (e.g. washer-dryers) and metal parts, now lasts five years and is built elsewhere, poorly.
Im a housekeeper and was recently asked to clean a rental mcmansion between tenants. I always do a walk through first & this place is a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom train wreck. Its already falling apart and its only 12 years old. It has an amazing tile shower "room" though..
The ability to make trusses like this allowed some people with mobile homes to build additional roofs for them when the manufactured ones were inadequate. The irony is that the increased house prices caused by the McMansions made all of the mobile homes virtually unsellable.
No, that is Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. No loans for manufactured homes!
The pricing by square foot ratios used by lenders and appraisers when valuing homes are a big factor in the choice to build these homes with much higher square footages.
Lol second hand mobile homes were never in high demand, bud.
We decided to add a 30x26 addition to a small house built in the 1950's. My husband had done major renovations on our former home by himself so he decided to build it himself again. He submitted plans with a traditional roof frame (like we had done in our former home). The county said no- it had to be trusses.
I doubt it.
That's crazy, you should be able to go with whatever you choose.
I think you're missing parts of the story
"our"? You just found out who REALLY owns "your" house...
@@MrSteeDoo doubt what? You think I'm lying?
Very well done and narrated TH-cam video. One of the best explanations I have ever seen given on a subject like this.
Don't blame the tool, truss plate..... blame the people wielding them, developers, which are spured by supply and demand. Think levittown PA. in the 40's.
When pickup trucks sales slow down all it takes is to lower the gas price 50 cents to revamp the buying frenzy.
People are strange.
Developers capitalize on ignorance as what is genuinely a "quality construction".
I believe the original Levittown was on Long Island, NY.
@@miltonwelch4177 Not strange at all.
There are clearly many, many people who want pickup trucks, and high gas prices force some of them to revert to buying something else.
My house was built in 1977. It has cathedral ceilings, so up to the attic to see these truss plates and…not used to build this house! Guess they really don’t build them like they used to. Great video!
TY-THIS is the kind of thing we need more of. I had a "feeling" about gang nails, maybe subconscious , and this is what that was-TY
I find open floor plans to be awkward to deal with. Rooms are so swiss-cheesed with openings that they aren't really rooms but partially partitioned areas of a larger space. When open plans are used for small apartments, arrangement of an area is even harder! It's become hard to find a solid living room anymore. I also love attics and basements which are now thought of as an additional costs. Once upon a time, they were multi-purpose spaces that could be creatively repurposed. I've often dreamed of being able to design my own home so I can actually get the kind of floorplans that I want: discreet rooms, no can lighting or boob lights or track lighting, normal 8' or 9' ceilings, sash windows, all in a two story townhome of about 1,600 square feet in a walkable neighborhood with virtually no yard. I don't mind the first floor and basement levels being smaller homes. Not everyone wants as much space as I'm looking for. I can at least dream...
Europe: The invention of this early type of concrete allowed us to build massive castles 500 years ago.
USA: This metal plate allowed us to build larger wooden houses in the 1990s.
My German home has solid brick walls and steel-concrete floors of 10 inches. It will probably still be around in 200-300 years. My great-grandchildren may have to get the roof tiles changed around the year 2100, though (they are already 53 years old today).
Larger cheaper faster baby, that's the American Way. Who cares about sustainability or utility
@@MarkBonneaux The worst is all the ultra crappy foundations that get poured where I live. There's no reason that foundation repair should be the thriving business it is.
Videos like this are exactly why I love learning new things on TH-cam of all sources. Thank you.
This guy tries to make it seem like a bad thing if you want to live in a larger home.
The grift of guilt has spread its tentacles to every fiber of our society.
Yeah, God forbid if I'd like a formal dining room to invite a dozen friends and family over for Thanksgiving, or high ceilings so I can fit my barbell rack inside.
@@dafunkmonster guys like the video maker don’t want you to have friends or family and don’t want you lifting weights for sure.
Oppa gang-nail style...
You, I like you.
...Unexpected, yet funny.
A daring synthesis.
{erratic, goofy dancing intensifies...}
lol. That's a good one. 😂😂😂
1:50 diagram is wrong.
High download pressure on wind side.
High uplift on the lee side.
I enjoyed your insights on the gang nails and Mcmansion homes. 😊
1:03 I was gonna smash that like button but ya lost me when you said Hialeah like that 💀
Frankly, cheap home loans is why we have McMansions. People didn’t get limits on what they could borrow, so developers only had an incentive to build big.
In decades past banks only cared about square footage so houses got big and cheaply made.
Also, there's a ton of fixed costs associated with building a new house. Land, permitting, design, regulatory review, utility hookups and more are fairly inelastic with respect to house size. If it's costing 250k before you even break ground, trying to build a starter home (think Chicago bungalows) is going to result in a house that's too expensive for consumers looking to buy a house of that size.
You're right. The only way to solve the housing crisis is to make it harder to buy homes on credit. Frankly, loans for homes shouldn't even be allowed. Only people with cash should be permitted to purchase a single-family home.
I was a building inspector (new construction) from 2004 to 2010. I could never wrap my mind around why the roofs were so enormous except to add that over the top architectural element. Some of them were definitely beautiful, but some just seemed completely out of place, especially on a 3 bedroom ranch when with a skyscraper roof on top. Those roofs were an absolute pain to inspect for bracing too. It wasn't at all uncommon to find trusses installed without the engineer required bracing. Overall the trend seems to have come back a bit on the grandeur of roofs and with the skyrocketing cost of real estate I imagine that kind of excess will soon be a relic of the past.
The use of joining plates and cleats allows a lot of workers with minimal skill to assemble lumber into poorly built homes. The roof may remain tied to the house in a strong wind thanks to Simpson Strong Tie, but the houses are wonky boxes that have structural issues forever. Skill enhanced with technology and quality materials results in long-lasting quality construction. No technology can save not having the skill to do a good job. This is my opinion (and I'm sticking to it) from personal involvement working on the home I grew up in (built with skilled workers), restoring older homes, and observing neighborhoods of homes sprout like mushrooms after a rain as Plano, Texas rapidly grew from a population of ~75,000 in 1980 to just under 300,000 in 2018. The million dollar McMansions were constructed by people who slapped crappy materials together, put a roof on it, and left town before things started coming apart.
We currently live in south east Texas in the 1927 small farmhouse with seven gables my husband grew up in. The house is quirky 1920's style construction but stable as a rock.
Another downside to these truss systems besides no attic is the much shallower pitch to the roof. This is a problem in the northern parts of the country that get snow. With the shallower pitch the roof doesn't shed the snow. The snow freeze/thaws sitting on the roof which leads to shingle damage, which in turn leads to underlayment damage, which means expensive roof replacement costs. My roofer loves my old house here in the northeast. He replaced the shingles and noted with satisfaction that the underlayment was in very good condition. He explained to me that this was a direct function of the steep pitch. And yeah, I have an attic, too. 🙂
Yes, I hate the look of low-pitch roofs. So much excess roofing material. No attic is a big problem for me. Such a waste of potential space. The snow problem is relevant too. Roof trusses seem like a good way to speed up construction or to make roofs for small structures like manufactured homes. I'd rather see good quality homes get built close to city centers.
I hate working on steep roofs, I like to be able to walk on it without safety equipment or feeling like I'm about to fall off
they make them steep, with or without attics, with or without bonus room, etc. Not sure what your talking about. We have an attic, a full room over the 12/12 pitch garage and a vault over a large section of family room. all on the same house
Architect sets the roof pitch and the trusses are designed to fit within. The truss passing or failing can certainly place restrictions on what slope is possible, but ultimately this is determined by the AOR/EOR/Bldg Designer & then the truss manufacturer designs to those specs.
And you can totally design attic rooms & areas within the trusses, it's a pretty common thing.
Trusses can make any roof pitch you want. The longer spans mean they will be taller, though.
During my college years in 1967-1968, I worked at a lumber yard assembling house trusses with plates similar to today’s gang nail plates. The key difference was that these plates didn’t have pre-punched teeth; instead, they had holes for nails, which we drove in by hand. Despite the occasional mishap-like smashing my left thumb more times than I’d like to admit-I really enjoyed that job.
This is fascinating, but it hurts. There's nothing worse than a giant, busy-roof house alongside 200 others built on what used to be farmland. Especially those with flat walls that have random windows scattered everywhere.
5:18 Nail guns, and other power tools, had a huge impact on home construction.
They have tremendously increased labor productivity which has the effect of ... nothing. Any such improvements just results in greater efforts to make it harder to develop and raise expectations with respect to required building standard and purchasers expectations.
@ From the video: “I personally cannot think of a single invention that is so simple that has created such a profound effect on the way that we build.”
I was pointing out the effect of power tools on home construction (although not as simple as truss plates). I get your point, but you are speaking about what is built, not how something is built.
I’m a contractor. Over the years I have thought of a lot of simple solutions and tools that I think are a really good idea…. This video made me realize I need to pursue these ideas. Who would have thought a pice of metal with some holes could have such a large impact
I hate Open Floor Plans. Everyone says it’s great for parties but I’ll venture 90% of the people who get an open floor plan thinking about having a bunch of parties doesn’t end up having hardly any. Rooms are separate because they each have their own function. Open floor plans basically say it’s all one room with many functions. If you wand to put like wooden sliding shutters on a bar on a kitchen wall shared with a living room so you could talk to people by opening them, and close them to have a conversation with people in the kitchen, fine. But come on the VAST MAJORITY of people are not going to be hosting such a large party that they need a wallless floor plan.
Plus, it's nice when parties are held in a series of rooms you can wander between. Tends to keep the noise levels down and you get more chance to talk to people.
But according to HGTV, what they call "Open Concept" is THE thing to have, along with butt-ugly STAINLESS STEEL APPLIANCES!!
This was an excellent narrative. Damn.
I used to build trusses, its incredible how many just us 4 guys could build in a single day. Depending on the size we would build 40-80 trusses or so, some 80ft long for massive warehouses and such. All of them we use the plates big and small. We would even use them for certain types of shear frame walls.
Regarding complicated rooflines, please see Victorian architecture. It's not that these plates made varied rooflines possible, it's that trusses made them less expensive to construct. (These kinds of videos just increase my love for my 1910 house with its giant joists.)