Comments on: Japanese House Gutted

By: Dávid

Dávid — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:53:12 +0000

Houses made of paper are like… houses made of paper! What do you expect? We must not even build houses made of paper, because thermal insulation’s values are so bad in these. On the one hand I can imagine that there are more earthquakes in your world’s region than in Germany, but on the other hand houses made of at least bricks can withstand even heavy weather conditions like tornadoes and so forth (not like those inferior plywood “houses” in the US). You simply have to pay for what you think is the most important to you: Price or Quality.

(Written in a house made of brick stones — where a flash hit into last week and no one even noticed)

By: Roy

Roy — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:03:56 +0000

Dylan, I’m worried about moisture build up in my walls too. Japan is a super humid country.

Shari, anything that’s an Apartment is kind of like this. Only mansions are made of concrete. At first I was bothered by spending so much money on a thinned walled house but they are all like this so much I could do about it besides buying a mansion instead.

By: Shari

Shari — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:34:09 +0000

The inside of this place (the wood trim and wall covering style) looks a lot like the inside of my apartment building! It makes me wonder if this place is actually older than we were originally told.

Does it bother you that your walls are so thin considering how much you paid for the place?

By: Dylan

Dylan — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:48:42 +0000

You’d be surprised at how flimsy new Western houses are these days, actually not much better than this! A lot of the newer rendered type places are really just polystyrene foam sheets under that thin layer of aesthetic cement.

Looks solid, but you can easily put your fist through it. If anything heavy were to fall over against it, or a ball was to hit it with a bit of force it would smash straight through. It’s not recommended for ground floors or where vehicles may pass close by, like a driveway, and protective barriers should be in place. But builders usually do not pay attention to these recommendations.

If not carefully constructed, these cladded walls also don’t ‘breath’ and cause problems with water getting in the walls and not drying out. Cheap and quick to put up, it’s caused problems in New Zealand with around 15,000 recently built homes may have problems and not last much longer than 15 years.