Solid rendered masonry walls as opposed to cavity, especially when combined with deep soffits.

Factory built timber frame.
Educated workforce.

Not putting 50% of the people in the building trade out of work for a long term every few years when there is a down turn in the housing market.

The same issue stops more efforts towards using “factory built” homes, as the risk of a factory with no work is too great.

Cob/adobe/mud - more buildings (up to 14 stroeys!) made of this than all others put together. Lots of fun. Excavate your own building materials on your own site (make a semi-basement). When eventually abandoned, it just falls back into the hole.

Don't laugh - it's called resilience, preparedness, for when the industrial system collapses (or transforms, localises).

No reason why we shouldn't re-think the practice to make it a lot easier and higher-performing, while waiting for that life-reaffirming day

Insulated foundations are hard to do on some of our clay soils, as you have to go so deep.

Viking homes gave up on solid masonry due to the problems on getting it air tight. I think the UK trades people just are not up to it.

With respect to one and all, I would not necessarily get excited about the factor of "abroad" offering any better practice than "at home", frankly. The grass (? building ?) is always greener on the other bloake's side of the hill... (OR NOT...)

I bought several times off-plan in Paris (three, to be exact), and *NEVER* had a snag-free delivery.

Each time the product contained errors that would make anybody's hair stand on end... notably but not exhaustively, air and water leaks through external joinery; flooded balcony that overflowed back into lounge; acoustical floating slab that did not work (because stupid workmen punctured membrane with shovels, so the poured screed contacted the slab...).(could not be repaired, so actually got a rebate for that one...).

Principal problem: lack of site coordination: the various trades work like *PIGS*, basically.

I know it's wrong to generalize, and I generally DON'T, but for some reason, the building trades seem to have a culture of innefectiveness or downright ignorance of the task.
My own father was a sometime builder's labourer, and he brought me up to respect other peoples' work, and he was right. But it is SO DIFFICULT to when:
-- plumbers STACK four bathtubs one inside the other, thus all (except the top one...) are irremediably *gouged* by next bath's feet;
-- or tiler grouts and blocks up the shower trap; then PUNCTURES the trap with his screwdriver, while "unblocking" the sludge-pond...
ad nauseam...

Seemingly, no trade has any consideration whatsoever for previous trade's works, or of facilitating things for follow-on trades...

Masons leave wall conduits unplugged so latter fill with water: electricians then connect the circuit; several months later, the insulation has degraded and you get mico-cuts that take out your freezer the first weekend you've had off in months...

Electricians connect the day/night tariff-changeover relay *back to front* and nobody notices for months; then the electric board offer you a 17 quid rebate "out of the goodness of their hearts"...

Or the flat next to mine: solid oak wood floor, laid with no edge-gap: so when the estate agent comes to show the flat, cannot open the door (because the wood floor has flexed "somewhat", so rings my bell, asking if they can hop over my balcony, to see the "show flat", that was a good one !

list goes on, but I don't want to compromise my good night's sleep

Suffice it to say, no trade, in my experience, does the job right, the *worst offenders* being the clerks of works, who are basically site-and-job *illiterate*, so the blame rests soundly with them IMO.

sorry for the rant...

gg

CORRECTED: I bought FOUR times off-plan, actually.

One one studio flat, I ordered window-film, cost a fortune.
Or would have, if I'd paid for it.

The guy who came to install it nonchalantly DUMPED his metal toolbox without any protecion on my brand-new wood floor, then gouged it by dragging the toolbox while searching for a screwdriver.

I dismissed him on the spot, and never got any window film thereafter.

(I actually thought I was off to stab him with the screwdriver)...

I know we're moving away a bit from Tony's question but I agree with gyrogear and Gotanewwife (sorry that's how I read your username everytime I see it!) Interestingly I have had several very good tradesmen whose workmanship I cannot fault. The one thing I found that they all had in common was they'd all "been in engineering" before becoming the tradesmen they are now. Maybe the housing industry needs to be taken over by the car industry?

Mass production is for universal products that disregard their environment because they're portable. Mass production is quite unsuitable for buildings, every one of which is (or should be) unique because the environment to which it's tied is unique.

Otherwise, just think caravans/mobile homes - inherently trash because have to be built down to a price because directly in competition with umpteen near-identicals.

I'm with Steamy on this one - mass production doesn't necessarily mean all the same. Back in Henry Ford's day it more-or-less did but now it's easy to mass produce bespoke products. Computers help. If you have a “system” then it's easy to adapt the shape, cladding, whatever to the site and initial user's requirements to make houses which are unique yet share enough commonality that they can be factory built by specialists and robot tooling quickly.

Ringi's comment above about boom and bust seems to me the best explanation of why it's not happening except in rather niche (expensive, like Huf Haus) markets which are less sensitive to the cycles.

Its called the race to the bottom, almost every modern technique which results in saving money has a long term degradation issue. But the customer has to buy the cheapest, while it looks nice and shiny. Some one built a timber framed block of flats near to me. The panels were so badly constructed, I would not have used them for my shed.
Frank

I think you have confirmed what I said. In my cottage which I wired up myself. There are 4+4+4+4 +4+3 +1 +1 = 27 double sockets, 4 single sockets, cooker outlet, hob outlet. And even that is not enough! Some rooms have a mutiplicity of chargers , telephones. . plugged into them with adapters. A couple of sparkies would have be pushed to connect these up in a day, yet alone the fans and lights. So if you want two power points a room. . . This also stuffs the argument for radial circuits, unless you have the room to run 31 cables and a box for 31 MCBs.
I have seen an UK house withe radials. It was a housing association build, about 1980. In the hall there was a panel with about 18 MCBs on it. Very tidy!
Frank

If you made a scale of 'engineering difficulty', with submarines at 10, and a bicycle at 1, where would we place housing, cars, trains, ships and aeroplanes?

My feeling is that housing very low, maybe a 2, cars at about 4, trains a 5, ships a 6 or 7, planes an 8 and spaceships a 9 and submarines a 10.
A lot of my decision is based on the number of people that are in/on each and the difficulty of the environment they are in.
So a spaceship has to handle a negative pressure (kind of) a submarine has to handle several atmosphere of pressure and has a hundred people in it, works autonomously once away from base, can hide and stay submerged for many months.

Posted By: chuckeyThis also stuffs the argument for radial circuits, unless you have the room to run 31 cables and a box for 31 MCBs.

You don't need a separate radial for each socket pair.

I have about 10 (plus the lighting) in mind for my house and that's splitting things up fairly finely. E.g., the study will have two 6A radials, one for each bench plus a third “high power” one to allow a fan heater or something to be plugged in for occasional use.

Posted By: SteamyTeaIf you made a scale of 'engineering difficulty', with submarines at 10, and a bicycle at 1, where would we place housing, cars, trains, ships and aeroplanes?

My feeling is that housing very low, maybe a 2, cars at about 4, trains a 5, ships a 6 or 7, planes an 8 and spaceships a 9 and submarines a 10.
A lot of my decision is based on the number of people that are in/on each and the difficulty of the environment they are in.
So a spaceship has to handle a negative pressure (kind of) a submarine has to handle several atmosphere of pressure and has a hundred people in it, works autonomously once away from base, can hide and stay submerged for many months.

There isn't a single level for each type of object! For example, you say a submarine is more difficult than a spaceship. Well apart from just counting the number of parts there are many other points - you don't mention the demands of re-entry - thermal and mechanical stresses. You assume spaceships are small, but building the ISS is quite difficult and spaceships are at a much earlier state of development. Ditto cars - people used to make their own, but it's not so easy now.

It's all dwarfed by the LHC or the world communications network though.

Not that spacecraft are particularly small, or larger, than a submarine. Just that they have fewer people on them, so some of the challenges are smaller.

Main thing is, from an engineering point of view, housing is pretty simple, possibly why it does not attract decent engineers.

Imagine the after 'engineering awards' party.
Three engineers, the one that designed the life support on the ISS, the one that deigned that fantastic bridge in France and the one that deigned the sewage system on a block of flats in Bangladesh.
Which one is going to attract the press.