One does not simply walk brick into mortar
January 5, 2022 3:02 PM Subscribe
Where Are The Robotic Bricklayers? and more generally, why did agriculture mechanize and not construction? (tl;dr? how about some mechanical harvester videos: grape, citrus, carrot, potato, olive, onion)
this comment at the end sums up nicely "Different fruits & vegetables get mechanized by breeding a specific variant or planting the rows in a specific way that is friendlier to an automated process. Often, this comes at a compromise to flavor or texture (eg: fruits are bred to be hardier and picked more unripe off the tree so they survive sorting) which is why there's high end produce made the old way.
One problem with construction is that we're unwilling to approach the problem this way (probably mostly rightfully). We keep on trying to work on how can we use tools to build the houses were used to rather than what house compromises we're willing to make to crash the cost. "
having worked in farming, construction, and robotics, i can say that bricklaying is a real tough one...
posted by danjo at 3:18 PM on January 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
One problem with construction is that we're unwilling to approach the problem this way (probably mostly rightfully). We keep on trying to work on how can we use tools to build the houses were used to rather than what house compromises we're willing to make to crash the cost. "
having worked in farming, construction, and robotics, i can say that bricklaying is a real tough one...
posted by danjo at 3:18 PM on January 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
We did end up with robotic brick. It’s called brick panel, or metal panel, or unitized glazing, or EIFS - there is a virtually unlimited supply of unitized, panelized facade systems out there that are currently in their 3rd or 4th generation of development. The idea of mechanizing the work of a mason is ‘faster horse’ technology and I’m not surprised the construction industry didn’t really try to get there. When brick does get used it’s usually for the subtle imperfections, intricate detailing, and texture that you don’t get with mechanized solutions. It’s now a prestige material. The systems I referenced above are mostly considered ‘basic’ envelope solutions that we associate with chain stores and basic housing, because as mechanized solutions they’ve been optimized to easy production and installation, and are associated with bottom-dollar projects in the mind of the public, in the way that vinyl siding was a few decades earlier.
The way that most successful construction automation has worked up until now has been the factory production of large but conveyable components that are assembled quickly onsite. There are a lot of great ideas being thrown out right now about different approaches to construction automation, either with bigger components (more sophisticated modular solutions) or onsite production (concrete printing, brick robots, etc). I would be overjoyed to see these solutions succeed if only to break up the current standards and sponsor more innovation. But I’m not holding my breath, and this article lays out why.
posted by q*ben at 3:20 PM on January 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
The way that most successful construction automation has worked up until now has been the factory production of large but conveyable components that are assembled quickly onsite. There are a lot of great ideas being thrown out right now about different approaches to construction automation, either with bigger components (more sophisticated modular solutions) or onsite production (concrete printing, brick robots, etc). I would be overjoyed to see these solutions succeed if only to break up the current standards and sponsor more innovation. But I’m not holding my breath, and this article lays out why.
posted by q*ben at 3:20 PM on January 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
He does make the distinction (in a footnote ;) ) between traditional brick masonry (mostly decorative in modern building) and the more common load bearing concrete masonry unit (CMU) construction (what I think of as "concrete blocks"), which is still quite common.
posted by gwint at 3:58 PM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by gwint at 3:58 PM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you want pure human bricklayer action, here are some Mexican masons constructing a vault roof with no supports or reinforcement.
posted by clawsoon at 4:00 PM on January 5, 2022 [27 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:00 PM on January 5, 2022 [27 favorites]
Nice clawsoon! Reminds me of the criminally underappreciated work of Eladio Dieste
posted by q*ben at 4:03 PM on January 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 4:03 PM on January 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
We sure automated the manufacture of bricks, though. And contrariwise the "manufacture" of seeds is sometimes the most skilled farming - I’ve listened to grain breeders boast gently to each other about roguing their fields.
Another semi-counter-example, panelized houses with most of the systems installed in the factory. I watched a townhouse complex go up that way 15? years ago - maybe 20 - I was impressed by the speed at the time, and the buildings still look great and haven’t needed exterior renovations. Which some of their stick-built neighbors have. I gather they’re more expensive and slightly harder to modify? And get even more expensive the farther from the factory?
posted by clew at 4:14 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Another semi-counter-example, panelized houses with most of the systems installed in the factory. I watched a townhouse complex go up that way 15? years ago - maybe 20 - I was impressed by the speed at the time, and the buildings still look great and haven’t needed exterior renovations. Which some of their stick-built neighbors have. I gather they’re more expensive and slightly harder to modify? And get even more expensive the farther from the factory?
posted by clew at 4:14 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
The statistical argument from the second article is interesting. If you successfully pick 99% of the corn, you're fine. If you successfully lay 99% of the bricks, you're going to have a bunch of holes in your wall.
posted by clawsoon at 4:20 PM on January 5, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:20 PM on January 5, 2022 [10 favorites]
That and the actual physical difficulty of the work, which is full of weird physics (mortar is a non-Newtonian fluid) and tolerance issues from site and weather. Very similar to some of the reasons all of your clothes are still sewn by hand.
posted by q*ben at 4:23 PM on January 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 4:23 PM on January 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
q*ben: In America, brick is a facade, a decorative element, or whatever, and the structure it's attached to is often stick built. In other countries, it is the basic structure of the building. Take any housing estate in the UK (Google Streetview will provide) and the reason all the houses have brick outsides is not because they have been dressed up with panels but because they are actually made of brick. I don't think there's a panelised solution to save construction there.
I wonder whether a brick wall is less carbon intensive than a 3D printed concrete wall. Cement is a terrible emissions source.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 4:26 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
I wonder whether a brick wall is less carbon intensive than a 3D printed concrete wall. Cement is a terrible emissions source.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 4:26 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
On the one hand, I'm all for mechanised farming because it means fewer opportunities for farm workers to be horrifically exploited (though no doubt those who are responsible will always manage to find other opportunities for humans to exploit other humans).
On the other hand, relying more on mechanised farming might mean an even bigger blow to biodiversity when farms require crops to be planted in specific ways to enable the machines to pick them.
(I'm also reminded of the brief period of time I spent happily watching videos of bricklayers and crop pickers doing cool "hacks" and other visually "satisfying" things en masse on /r/oddlysatisfying, only to see a comment underneath to the effect of, "hey why are so many videos here of migrant workers breaking their backs just trying to earn a living?")
posted by fight or flight at 4:31 PM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, relying more on mechanised farming might mean an even bigger blow to biodiversity when farms require crops to be planted in specific ways to enable the machines to pick them.
(I'm also reminded of the brief period of time I spent happily watching videos of bricklayers and crop pickers doing cool "hacks" and other visually "satisfying" things en masse on /r/oddlysatisfying, only to see a comment underneath to the effect of, "hey why are so many videos here of migrant workers breaking their backs just trying to earn a living?")
posted by fight or flight at 4:31 PM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Fun post. Thanks!
The 19780s earthquake-land child in me wants to claim that autonomous robot shotcrete guns are the obvious path forward. Nobody has used bricks for anything important in a century! (To be clear, I'm kidding.) Deciding when robots are cheaper than humans is hard and ugly. I doubt any of us have ever worn a T-shirt made by a robot, aside from initially cutting shapes in fabric. I doubt any of us have used a pencil that didn't get handled several times by a robot.
posted by eotvos at 4:32 PM on January 5, 2022
The 19780s earthquake-land child in me wants to claim that autonomous robot shotcrete guns are the obvious path forward. Nobody has used bricks for anything important in a century! (To be clear, I'm kidding.) Deciding when robots are cheaper than humans is hard and ugly. I doubt any of us have ever worn a T-shirt made by a robot, aside from initially cutting shapes in fabric. I doubt any of us have used a pencil that didn't get handled several times by a robot.
posted by eotvos at 4:32 PM on January 5, 2022
Froggie, it’s actually less different then you’re making it out to be. The actual standard in most countries that use a lot of brick is to use blockwork for the structural element and keep the brick as a screen wall at the exterior; similar to using CMU in the US. There are some load bearing double wythe brick projects in Europe and the UK, but the costs of labor make them less common.
posted by q*ben at 4:33 PM on January 5, 2022
posted by q*ben at 4:33 PM on January 5, 2022
Very similar to some of the reasons all of your clothes are still sewn by hand.
I remember surprising a younger relative with that fact.
(Tangentially, it seems like when we automate one part of a production process to produce an excessive amount of product, we have to recruit or create an army of labour to fill in the rest of the production pipeline. As with polyester fiber and fast fashion, it sometimes seems like we're doing it just to serve the most highly productive machines.)
posted by clawsoon at 4:33 PM on January 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I remember surprising a younger relative with that fact.
(Tangentially, it seems like when we automate one part of a production process to produce an excessive amount of product, we have to recruit or create an army of labour to fill in the rest of the production pipeline. As with polyester fiber and fast fashion, it sometimes seems like we're doing it just to serve the most highly productive machines.)
posted by clawsoon at 4:33 PM on January 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
(Or the giant armies of assembly workers screwing together the output of injection molding machines...)
posted by clawsoon at 4:37 PM on January 5, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 4:37 PM on January 5, 2022
I doubt any of us have ever worn a T-shirt made by a robot, aside from initially cutting shapes in fabric.
Or bounced a basketball that hasn't been hand painted.
posted by fight or flight at 4:39 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Or bounced a basketball that hasn't been hand painted.
posted by fight or flight at 4:39 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Do I remember correctly that bricklaying was part of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?
posted by clawsoon at 4:40 PM on January 5, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 4:40 PM on January 5, 2022
why did agriculture mechanize and not construction?
Aren't Unions part of the answer to this question? But I see nothing about them in the article.
posted by Rash at 5:22 PM on January 5, 2022
Aren't Unions part of the answer to this question? But I see nothing about them in the article.
posted by Rash at 5:22 PM on January 5, 2022
You remember correctly. Ivan Denisovich had a favorite trowel.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 5:23 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 5:23 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
I love answers to "Why is X so hard?" that take the question seriously. So often the question is asked to imply that an entire profession is just not very smart or something; that is seldom the reason.
I have to assume the high cost of prototyping very large machinery also has something to do with it. A working model must be enormously expensive so you can't just keep rapidly iterating in the manner so beloved of many R&D types.
Aren't Unions part of the answer to this question? But I see nothing about them in the article.
Are they part of the answer?
For unions to have slowed down mechanization there'd need to mechanical options that were otherwise feasible, which this article argues didn't really exist. Certainly mechanical aid that was feasible (nail guns and other mechanical tools, construction vehicles, etc.) are ubiquitous.
I'm not saying this is the final word but I'd like to see an affirmative case for other explanations.
posted by mark k at 5:35 PM on January 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have to assume the high cost of prototyping very large machinery also has something to do with it. A working model must be enormously expensive so you can't just keep rapidly iterating in the manner so beloved of many R&D types.
Aren't Unions part of the answer to this question? But I see nothing about them in the article.
Are they part of the answer?
For unions to have slowed down mechanization there'd need to mechanical options that were otherwise feasible, which this article argues didn't really exist. Certainly mechanical aid that was feasible (nail guns and other mechanical tools, construction vehicles, etc.) are ubiquitous.
I'm not saying this is the final word but I'd like to see an affirmative case for other explanations.
posted by mark k at 5:35 PM on January 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
Interesting post thanks gwint, a good roundup of the state of much work.
A leading reason for agricultural automation (at least here) is that many don't want to work in the country, average farmer age is steadily approaching sixty, real returns are low, risk is extreme, many farmers re millions in debt, and effectively trapped - the suicide rate is horrifying Increasingly farms are an owner/manager, and foreign staff - Covid has seriously disrupted this.
Good that article covers forestry, here it's the leading cause of industrial deaths and there's an ongoing move to robotize all logging operations.
Construction (at least here) is either very small companies, generally very conservative, or a single government-protected monopolies who is perfectly happy keeping the status quo. I doubt it's that different where you are.
Building sites (I worked as a construction laborer for ten years) are also VERY unfriendly to complex, moving parts, the ground/surface is changing constantly, but seldom clean, or even remotely tidy, with loose nails, bolts and bits of rebar, plus sticky debris, water, spilled oil and concrete chemicals... and if laying a brick skin, the face you're working to is often uneven, with ripples, depressions, penetrations (pipes, ducting, vents), plus the occasional live wire, while the bricks themselves vary dimensionally by brand, many have artistic bumpy variations, plus they all vary slightly individually, but enough that occasionally a correction is needed.
I grew up in a double skin brick wall house with a cavity, bricks were tied across the gap with wire ties - all to ensure moisture didn't penetrate, and it worked well. The idea of bricks as a skin is still offensive, it's the only way bricks are done in NZ (with stick built interior) and they just fall off when there's an earthquake, so the house is instantly uninhabitable having lost its weather skin.
posted by unearthed at 5:44 PM on January 5, 2022 [9 favorites]
A leading reason for agricultural automation (at least here) is that many don't want to work in the country, average farmer age is steadily approaching sixty, real returns are low, risk is extreme, many farmers re millions in debt, and effectively trapped - the suicide rate is horrifying Increasingly farms are an owner/manager, and foreign staff - Covid has seriously disrupted this.
Good that article covers forestry, here it's the leading cause of industrial deaths and there's an ongoing move to robotize all logging operations.
Construction (at least here) is either very small companies, generally very conservative, or a single government-protected monopolies who is perfectly happy keeping the status quo. I doubt it's that different where you are.
Building sites (I worked as a construction laborer for ten years) are also VERY unfriendly to complex, moving parts, the ground/surface is changing constantly, but seldom clean, or even remotely tidy, with loose nails, bolts and bits of rebar, plus sticky debris, water, spilled oil and concrete chemicals... and if laying a brick skin, the face you're working to is often uneven, with ripples, depressions, penetrations (pipes, ducting, vents), plus the occasional live wire, while the bricks themselves vary dimensionally by brand, many have artistic bumpy variations, plus they all vary slightly individually, but enough that occasionally a correction is needed.
I grew up in a double skin brick wall house with a cavity, bricks were tied across the gap with wire ties - all to ensure moisture didn't penetrate, and it worked well. The idea of bricks as a skin is still offensive, it's the only way bricks are done in NZ (with stick built interior) and they just fall off when there's an earthquake, so the house is instantly uninhabitable having lost its weather skin.
posted by unearthed at 5:44 PM on January 5, 2022 [9 favorites]
Perhaps the way to automate bricklaying is by automating bricks: each brick is a drone that manoeuvres itself into position, attaches itself to its neighbours and then literally bricks itself,
posted by acb at 4:42 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by acb at 4:42 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
each brick is a drone that manoeuvres itself into position, attaches itself to its neighbours and then literally bricks itself
Put it on the brickchain.
posted by clawsoon at 4:58 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Put it on the brickchain.
posted by clawsoon at 4:58 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Clawsoon, that video was amazing! At 9:54, the videographer asks the bricklayer if a second story could be added after the fact, and the bricklayer explains exactly how it would be done, and mentioned he'd done it before, with a complete structural explanation!
Those arches are BEAUTIFUL.
posted by scolbath at 7:10 AM on January 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Those arches are BEAUTIFUL.
posted by scolbath at 7:10 AM on January 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
They have road-base brick laying machines road printer , so maybe bricks should mostly be repurposed from wall elements to street elements.
Also structural brick walls fell out of favor because they are terrible insulators, so if you are going to have to add insulation anyways, why even put the 2nd course of brick on?
Brick – 0.2 per inch – R 0.72 for a common face brick wall
Wood – 1 per inch – R-3.5 for a 2 x 4 stud
Fiberglass or cellulose – 3 per inch – R-11 for 3.5 inches
Compressed fiberglass – 4 per inch – R-14 for 3.5 inches
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:31 AM on January 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also structural brick walls fell out of favor because they are terrible insulators, so if you are going to have to add insulation anyways, why even put the 2nd course of brick on?
Brick – 0.2 per inch – R 0.72 for a common face brick wall
Wood – 1 per inch – R-3.5 for a 2 x 4 stud
Fiberglass or cellulose – 3 per inch – R-11 for 3.5 inches
Compressed fiberglass – 4 per inch – R-14 for 3.5 inches
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:31 AM on January 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Ivan Denisovich had a favorite trowel.
Reminds me to read it again. The film version with Tom Courtenay was really good.
posted by ovvl at 9:28 AM on January 6, 2022
Reminds me to read it again. The film version with Tom Courtenay was really good.
posted by ovvl at 9:28 AM on January 6, 2022
Those things that insulate well are worse to terrible at being regularly wet.
posted by clew at 9:34 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 9:34 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
In much of the world, a standard construction technique is to pour columns and floors in concrete then brick in the squares between the exterior columns on the sides and the floor and ceiling slabs above and below. The brickwork is pretty regular but there isn't much of a "run" of bricks for a machine to operate on and there is lots of "end work" where the bricks meet the columns, and of course where windows are located. The technique is used on everything from individual homes to fairly large buildings and apartment blocks. The bricks are neither exactly structural (the concrete does all the load bearing) nor decorative (it's generally plastered-over). But they do form the shell of the building.
A colleague from India was visiting our offices in San Francisco and I showed him around the city one weekend. He was flabbergasted that so many homes were built out of wood. He must, rightly, have been thinking of termites, rot and fire. There's a lot of old-growth redwood here in the older homes and it's remarkably resilient to the first two, famously not so for the last. I fear that modern wood-frame construction with largely green wood will prove to be essentially disposable. I cringe every time I see a new 4-5 story wood frame apartment block go up. One washer hose bursts, dishwasher malfunction, etc. and black mold will be everywhere.
As for decorative brickwork over wood-frame construction or, really, any masonry over wood frame.... It's all fine until water gets behind the masonry. And very bad news once it does. I saw a building that needed the entire exterior stripped and replaced in well under ten years for this very reason. I can't understand why it's allowed at all.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:09 AM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
A colleague from India was visiting our offices in San Francisco and I showed him around the city one weekend. He was flabbergasted that so many homes were built out of wood. He must, rightly, have been thinking of termites, rot and fire. There's a lot of old-growth redwood here in the older homes and it's remarkably resilient to the first two, famously not so for the last. I fear that modern wood-frame construction with largely green wood will prove to be essentially disposable. I cringe every time I see a new 4-5 story wood frame apartment block go up. One washer hose bursts, dishwasher malfunction, etc. and black mold will be everywhere.
As for decorative brickwork over wood-frame construction or, really, any masonry over wood frame.... It's all fine until water gets behind the masonry. And very bad news once it does. I saw a building that needed the entire exterior stripped and replaced in well under ten years for this very reason. I can't understand why it's allowed at all.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:09 AM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I’ve been holding my tongue but as a person who regularly designs and details cladding and waterproofing systems i need to point out a bunch of stuff:
1. Construction methods are extremely diverse - they vary by climate, code base, construction market, etc. Often a system that is normal in one part of the world would be hard to achieve or even harmful in another part of the world, due to code, or soils, or seismic conditions, or weather.
2. Waterproofing systems are incredibly complex and there is always more than one way to solve a problem. Factors like climate, height of building, thermal strategy, and construction schedule and type all help choose the system. There are objectively “better” systems out there that have a longer life, better thermal performance, or are more airtight, but most of the systems allowed by code, if detailed and installed properly, work.
3. #2 is also true for structural systems, but with different factors.
Because of the above complexity, pretty much any blanket statement is going to be untrue. “They build things x way in y country” or “a product over b product never works” are almost never true. Buildings are giant, massively complex things that we expect to go up quickly and exist with minimal maintenance for decades. Construction problems are therefore really difficult, hairy problems that require expertise to solve. Multibillion dollar companies have recently failed because they tried to flatten and diminish the complexity of building construction into an easy, unified problem. The articles in the OP are great case studies that support why building automation is a complex problem. Believe what you read.
posted by q*ben at 11:14 AM on January 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
1. Construction methods are extremely diverse - they vary by climate, code base, construction market, etc. Often a system that is normal in one part of the world would be hard to achieve or even harmful in another part of the world, due to code, or soils, or seismic conditions, or weather.
2. Waterproofing systems are incredibly complex and there is always more than one way to solve a problem. Factors like climate, height of building, thermal strategy, and construction schedule and type all help choose the system. There are objectively “better” systems out there that have a longer life, better thermal performance, or are more airtight, but most of the systems allowed by code, if detailed and installed properly, work.
3. #2 is also true for structural systems, but with different factors.
Because of the above complexity, pretty much any blanket statement is going to be untrue. “They build things x way in y country” or “a product over b product never works” are almost never true. Buildings are giant, massively complex things that we expect to go up quickly and exist with minimal maintenance for decades. Construction problems are therefore really difficult, hairy problems that require expertise to solve. Multibillion dollar companies have recently failed because they tried to flatten and diminish the complexity of building construction into an easy, unified problem. The articles in the OP are great case studies that support why building automation is a complex problem. Believe what you read.
posted by q*ben at 11:14 AM on January 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
Thank you, q*ben!
I’ve been wondering a related historical thing; why did insulating buildings happen as late as it did? Always surprises me given fuel scarcity. My hypothesis is that we couldn’t manage humidity and insulation until modern materials and/or fossil fuels. Or is there insulation I don’t know about? Lots of straw in your cob? Piling the winter hay and firewood to windward of the house and barn was good enough?
posted by clew at 1:11 PM on January 6, 2022
I’ve been wondering a related historical thing; why did insulating buildings happen as late as it did? Always surprises me given fuel scarcity. My hypothesis is that we couldn’t manage humidity and insulation until modern materials and/or fossil fuels. Or is there insulation I don’t know about? Lots of straw in your cob? Piling the winter hay and firewood to windward of the house and barn was good enough?
posted by clew at 1:11 PM on January 6, 2022
That’s a great question, I’ve never seen an answer written out but I can intuit 3 factors:
1. Tightness of construction - a true air barrier has only been easy to achieve with modern construction, and the leakiness of door, window, and wall systems in the past made insulation largely irrelevant (especially in cold, wet climates) as so much thermal energy is transmitted through vapor intrusion. This is true of new buildings too - first get a tight envelope, then worry about insulation.
2. Thermal mass and ventilation: Particularly in mild and hot dry climates, thermal mass is often as effective as insulating - this strategy is used in a lot of passive desert houses and is present in a lot of historic structures as construction used to be heavier. Modern construction has trended towards more lightweight designs, which makes insulation more critical. In hot and humid climates, insulation is also ineffective due to #1 so other techniques ruled - primarily providing maximum shade and airflow.
3. Materials science - most of the materials we use to insulate are modern inventions - expanded foam, fiberglass, rock wool. Horsehair plaster and cob has provided insulation in the past but is not nearly as effective as modern materials (cob is actually pretty effective but uses mass as well as r value, super interesting deep dive if you want to study passive design). Tapestries and wall hangings were also used as interior treatments but were not super effective. In cold places it was more effective to get maximum efficiency out of your heating tech - eg the center hearth - and just stay close to the fire.
So TL;DR: insulation was difficult to do and other techniques worked better in many climates
posted by q*ben at 2:22 PM on January 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
1. Tightness of construction - a true air barrier has only been easy to achieve with modern construction, and the leakiness of door, window, and wall systems in the past made insulation largely irrelevant (especially in cold, wet climates) as so much thermal energy is transmitted through vapor intrusion. This is true of new buildings too - first get a tight envelope, then worry about insulation.
2. Thermal mass and ventilation: Particularly in mild and hot dry climates, thermal mass is often as effective as insulating - this strategy is used in a lot of passive desert houses and is present in a lot of historic structures as construction used to be heavier. Modern construction has trended towards more lightweight designs, which makes insulation more critical. In hot and humid climates, insulation is also ineffective due to #1 so other techniques ruled - primarily providing maximum shade and airflow.
3. Materials science - most of the materials we use to insulate are modern inventions - expanded foam, fiberglass, rock wool. Horsehair plaster and cob has provided insulation in the past but is not nearly as effective as modern materials (cob is actually pretty effective but uses mass as well as r value, super interesting deep dive if you want to study passive design). Tapestries and wall hangings were also used as interior treatments but were not super effective. In cold places it was more effective to get maximum efficiency out of your heating tech - eg the center hearth - and just stay close to the fire.
So TL;DR: insulation was difficult to do and other techniques worked better in many climates
posted by q*ben at 2:22 PM on January 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
it’s not certain that it would have been adopted where it was possible. AIUI people in England and France who could afford twisty-flue masonry stoves, which they recognized as thrifty and comfortable in Sweden and parts of the Germanies etc., thought they were peasanty and quaint and didn’t adopt them even for private spaces. Rumford and Franklin changed style less and technology more, iirc.
posted by clew at 4:26 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 4:26 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Our wood-framed house had sawdust as insulation, with what appear to be some kind of lime powder to keep it dry. It was only about a century old, though, so not really a good historical example.
We shoveled snow as far up the foundation as we could every winter to provide a bit of extra insulation. Which makes me wonder what the R value of dry powder snow is...
posted by clawsoon at 5:11 PM on January 7, 2022
We shoveled snow as far up the foundation as we could every winter to provide a bit of extra insulation. Which makes me wonder what the R value of dry powder snow is...
posted by clawsoon at 5:11 PM on January 7, 2022
Low-Tech Magazine always says something like "heat the person, not the room," which seems like it could also be applicable to insulation. Much cheaper to put as many layers on yourself as you can afford than to put the same number of layers on your house.
I was going to mention tapestries, but I see that's already been covered.
posted by clawsoon at 5:20 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was going to mention tapestries, but I see that's already been covered.
posted by clawsoon at 5:20 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
wonder what the R value of dry powder snow is
Snow is around R1 per inch. The problem is if the insulation in your wall isn't good enough to reduce the exterior cladding to 0C then the snow will melt away from the building leaving a cold gap and potentially leading to air infiltration. A big ol' pile of snow though is a wizard way of insulting something below it like a water pipe buried above the frost line. Right up until the year you get a period of deep freezing before the first snow fall.
posted by Mitheral at 6:58 PM on January 7, 2022
Snow is around R1 per inch. The problem is if the insulation in your wall isn't good enough to reduce the exterior cladding to 0C then the snow will melt away from the building leaving a cold gap and potentially leading to air infiltration. A big ol' pile of snow though is a wizard way of insulting something below it like a water pipe buried above the frost line. Right up until the year you get a period of deep freezing before the first snow fall.
posted by Mitheral at 6:58 PM on January 7, 2022
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Potter's whole series of Construction Physics writings looks really interesting - seems like he also explored attempts to mechanize construction in his piece on Japan’s Skyscraper Factories.
I love stuff like this, where people take interesting questions (and Potter even credits Belinda Carr for posing the question he ended up exploring!) and explain the answers, discussing what people have tried and what's worked and what hasn't.
This is a great find. Thanks so much for posting it, gwint!
posted by kristi at 3:17 PM on January 5, 2022 [8 favorites]