There are some old ideas about water management that are A LOT different than the modern techniques. I live in a 120 year old house framed with old growth redwood. As wood goes, it's rock solid, but also everything in it breathes. It's painted with linseed oil paints, the lathe and plaster walls breathe moisture, and frankly it's not sealed well anywhere, including my original double hung windows.
If this was a modern house, it would be covered in 5 different layers of plastic with the intent on keeping any moisture out, then sheathed in OSB that basically sees water and just melts away. Like you said, there is no way to keep it all the way dry, but energy efficiency (and cheap materials and quick building techniques) have also driven a housing design that is so tight that if there is moisture intrusion, it's got no good way to vent out.
Well the fundamental difference is that homes today are expected to be climate controlled year round. That negates pretty much any issues with normal moisture control. That being the case efficiency is a much larger concern.
It matters where the cold condensing surface is in your wall, and what you do with that moisture.
If you took a cross section of wall, and you have interior temp (20c) on the inside face of the wall and exterior temp on the outside face section of wall, somewhere inside that section you’re hitting the dew point and condensation will form.
Modern techniques include rainscreens behind cladding, so air can flow behind siding and/or roofing as well as dimple mats to allow drainage for your foundation.
Yeah, and those rain screens have a million staple holes in them right? Unless you seal every fastener hole with some sealant that will last 100 years, which I'm pretty sure would be a magical product, I sincerely doubt a modern house will be standing as long as mine is.
Modern plastic paint, modern plastic building wrap, all these ideas of basically living inside a plastic hamster cage, they suffocate the living material (wood) that needs to breathe, and that allows rot and mold. The water eventually finds its way in because rain screen tape can't hold up for 50 years, the water gets in and has no good way to get out.
Lots of houses were built using poor techniques you reference. Nowadays, we're back to emphasizing breathable homes. Vapor barriers are out, vapor retarders are in. You use an air barrier because air movement is far more effective at moving moisture into a wall than vapor drive. We actually engineer the amount of drying to be optimal in your climate and reduce the amount of energy the home uses.
> those rain screens have a million staple holes in them right?
Rain screens are mostly holes (empty space). That's how they allow drying of the exterior wall assembly.
> Unless you seal every fastener hole with some sealant that will last 100 years, which I'm pretty sure would be a magical product, I sincerely doubt a modern house will be standing as long as mine is.
Standing for 100 years isn't the sole metric of success of a house's envelope. There are many others: how much did it leak? how much energy did it consume to stay comfortable? how good was the air quality? what was the cost to maintain it? All of these have to be balanced and building science provides frameworks to achieve that.
Using modern materials while adhering to building science results in very long lasting buildings, far longer than most homes built in the last 50 years.
You can use traditional materials with a modern understanding and make a much better house, it just takes longer to build so this cheap, throwaway culture we’re in looks down on it.
Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing the house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still have an R60 wall.
> You can use traditional materials with a modern understanding and make a much better house, it just takes longer to build
Agreed that you can, but as you imply, at a very high cost, especially when you don't use modern sheet goods like plywood that not only impede air movement, but provide sheer/racking resistance unmatched by traditional nailed solid board walls.
> so this cheap, throwaway culture we’re in looks down on it.
Few can afford a custom built home, much less one with artisanal walls. If anything we have a culture that looks up to such artisanal buildings precisely because they are not accessible. Scalability is essential to any impactful building technology. The fact that plywood and OSB can be made at scale from low quality laminates and scraps was game changing.
> Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing the house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still have an R60 wall.
An R60 wall perhaps, but one that leaks like a sieve. The leaking air will bring a lot of moisture and unconditioned air with it, which will in turn require a lot of energy to condition.
Sure, solid wood will be more resilient to that moisture than plywood/OSB, but the swelling and contraction will create more leaks.
There is a reason that for centuries people filled cracks in walls with any goopy substance they can find (mud, sap, tar, stucco). It's to stop those leaks. Modern vapor permeable but airtight house wraps (not latex) are just a continuation of that.
Do you have any good sources of info for your any my type of home; old and wood? I’m worried that some of the upgrades and paint done to this house is preventing as much “breathing” as it was designed for, and I don’t want my house to rot away. It’s really wet here!
https://linseedpaint.com - This is where I get my paint, lots of information about why latex paint (and generally wrapping in plastic) ruins the wood of a house.
Past there, I really like a timber framer who does YouTube called Mr. Chickadee, guy was a Marine who decided to live a simple life. He hand makes everything, but don't let the old timey hat and pants fool you, he's spent a ton of time thinking about how the old methods work and why, and picking through multiple cultures that have had old wooden structures that last hundreds or even thousands of years for the techniques he's using.
Misconception - you don't want your house to breath (ie outdoor <-> indoor air mixing). You want it to be as airtight as possible, while allowing the exterior surfaces to dry if they get wet.
However, leaky houses probably contribute to their longevity as those areas are able to dry from the outdoor air flowing indoors instead of rotting.
There ain’t no way my house is getting airtight, I open the windows every day, and in the summer most of the night. I am very careful about leaks and such so the wet tends to stay outside except for some condensation occasionally which I can’t avoid.
> I open the windows every day, and in the summer most of the night.
Then you shouldn't have an issue since you are basically living outdoors most of the time.
As long as there is enough air movement, it should dry things out.
The problem is condensation inside the walls. To deal with that, your wall has to be vapor-open to either the inside or outside, so it can dry. Standard interior paint is usually breathable.
Also, if you are leaving your windows open that much in winter you probably consume a lot of heating fuel and therefore generate a lot of heat, which also dries things out. That's how it worked with old wood houses - you generated a ton of heat to dry them out.
Thanks for that info! We don’t have any air conditioning, I live in a place where it ranges from 50-85 F throughout the year, rarely below 60 though. I’m trying not to install HVAC or heat until we have solar and storage installed that can support it, and it’s important to me that the house lasts and doesn’t contribute to ecological disasters such as climate change, micro plastic pollution, etc. I’m still learning a lot as most of my expertise is in software and not construction. I need to eventually strip off years of bad paint jobs with crappy paint, and I intend to use something breathable that lasts inside and out at that time.
> I live in a place where it ranges from 50-85 F throughout the year, rarely below 60 though.
Combined with what you said about it being wet, I'm guessing you live in the subtropics.
Building in a climate/ecology conscious way in tropical/subtropical places is very different than in colder places, and most of the knowledge out there is for colder-than-tropical climates, and frankly I don't know much about it.
But one thing that translates well between the climates is shade - shade structures and roof overhangs - especially on the sides that take the most solar load.
If this was a modern house, it would be covered in 5 different layers of plastic with the intent on keeping any moisture out, then sheathed in OSB that basically sees water and just melts away. Like you said, there is no way to keep it all the way dry, but energy efficiency (and cheap materials and quick building techniques) have also driven a housing design that is so tight that if there is moisture intrusion, it's got no good way to vent out.