Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Update: new photos from EM:HE Kirkland

[Todd Walke (racertod]

Charles wrote:
> I wonder what kind of long-term reliability the house will have being
> thrown up on this schedule. Knowing all the shortcuts and half-assed
> things they did to my current house on just a normal "neighborhood"
> build, I can't imagine that 10 years from now that house won't have some
> significant issues related to speed over quality...

Mark wrote:
> I don't get it - they can build a house like that in 3 days, and our framers
> have taken 9mo to simply frame our house???

        I thought about the quality issue.  You would think that with 
simply no time to redo something three times to get it right, limited time 
to solve any problems, etc that there would be problems down the 
road.  However, I've been to new houses in large subdivisions where the 
house was clearly thrown up with little regard to quality.  Can't be much 
worse than that.

        Some of the speed of the build comes from the fact they're working 
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, instead of the usual 8-10 hours days a crew 
would put in.

        Most of the speed come from the sheer number of workers 
employed.  Instead of a 4-man drywalling crew do your house in 2 weeks, 
they had 8-man crews working simultaneously in each room of the 
house.  Same for roofing, framing, painting, landscaping, etc.  This must 
have been what building the Pyramids was like - just a teeming mass of 
humanity doing thousands of little things at once in pursuit of a larger goal.

        Also, everything needed to build the house was on site at the 
instant it was needed.  No losing a half day of work because one of your 
suppliers failed to deliver the correct lumber or nails or paint.  Up at 
the Totem Lake Mall, they have a huge staging area fenced off to hold 
material before it ends up sitting up staged on my street.  A team of 
production assistants was doing nothing but standing by to make runs to 
Home Depot for any supplies needed at the last minute.

        One thing neat thing, if you were in the house across the street, 
would have been the opportunity to setup a camera to take a shot every 
minute or so to make a time-lapse video of the whole process.  This would 
have really shown the insane level of activity at the set.


Todd
Seattle,WA
'86 GTI, Red of course. (exciting racey car)  265,000 miles
'87 Golf, Polar Silver. (boring work car)     629,000 miles <- Yeah, baby!
http://www.pureluckdesign.com <-Ferrari & VW stuff