I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure.
Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?
The paper is a critical technological innovation. It shrinks upon drying, turning the sheet into a prestressed panel. Predecessor manufactured wall materials like Beaverboard are much flimsier because they lack a taught skin that enhances rigidity.
If we ever build another house, it's going to be attic-free with exposed conduits + hvac ducts / pipes on the ceiling. Every electrical box is going to have a 2" conduit (embedded in the wall) running up to a conduit that runs on the ceiling (if there's a basement, then down to the basement ceiling).
This would let us avoid stapling electrical lines + network cables to studs inside walls. Fixing shorts, adding circuits and upgrading network lines would be trivial.
We'd have to buy what, 1000' of conduit? There's no way that's a sufficient fraction of the cost of a house.
Picture rails are a kitschy and twee feature that few people today even know their purpose, but anyone who tells you that they’re just as good for hanging things on are committing perjury
In my humble opinion, they are significantly better than pounding a nail into drywall. Of course, I also have an absurdly large collection of framed photographs and other art, all of varying sizes, and I love swapping frames around throughout my home. Having picture rails throughout my house means I don't have to keep pounding holes in the wall every time I replace that 20x20" photograph of my toddler shot in a square aspect ratio with a 16x20 shot on my 4x5, or whatever.
Many people only think of picture rail as what you find in old Victorian homes, but modern picture rail can be much less obtrusive and lightweight. I have a lot of framed art as well. When I finally bought a house I installed STAS minirail throughout. The "wires" are transparent Perlon filament, and anything you hang can instantly be adjusted vertically and horizontally.
This is way better than arguing with partner about the proper height, making a destructive hole, then having to cover/patch when opinions or artwork change. My walls are not drywall, so that was a big factor, but the freedom to arrange/rearrange is a major benefit.
We've had great luck with the removable 3M velcro picture hangers. (Each corner is held with two pieces of velcro that face each other. The velcro has double back tape on the back, which affixes to the wall and the picture. The double back tape is stretchy, and can be removed by pulling a tab. The tape is single use.
No damage to paint so far, though we've only had them on the walls for about a year.
pretty sure it's an established rule now that drywall cannot be discussed w/o linking to vancouver carpenter.
but, yeah, his videos are great. i've done more than my share of everything from sound abatement channels/glues/etc, hanging rock on vaulted ceilings, to level 5 finishes, but I still like to flip though his videos every now and then and pick up logistical / speed tips.
Interesting to me that no mention of the use of drywall (in various forms) to act as a substrate for actual plaster. This seems common in the UK from what I understand from my family back there, and it is also common in the USA in high end residential construction. It is particular common in Santa Fe where I live now (for high end anyway) because the so-called "diamond plaster" look & feel is very popular. So, you still build with stick frames (or in a few cases, cinder block), cover that with drywall/sheetrock, then plaster it.
I think this misses the beauty of a plaster wall. Level 5 drywall has nothing on a skilled artisan with plaster, and yeah you can’t hang things through it but it also lasts hundreds of years. My walls are 120 years old and robust, the kids haven’t damaged them and they’ve more than held up.
> Some buildings standing today still have wattle-and-daub panels from 700 years ago.
Will any drywalled building survive even a tenth of this time?
> The plaster mixture used then was a homegrown concoction, with recipes matching the climate needs and vernacular material availability.
The wonder of wattle-and-daub (clay) and plaster-and-lath (lime) is that the materials are breathable, move with the structure, and can even self-repair small cracks. I don't know of any old house that suffers from black mold...
My last big gripe with gypsum drywall is disposal. Demolish a property with clay or lime walls, and they'll naturally degrade into the environment. Drywall needs proper disposal: "Do not burn: Drywall releases toxic fumes. Do not bury: It can create dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas in landfill."
> It’s impossible to mount even lightweight items such as picture frames onto the wall, because even the tiniest hole from nails or the like would crumble and erode into dust.
The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just move the nail up a half inch.
You really need to predrill through the lath. Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood. If you hit anywhere off the stud it can cause the lath to flex and break the backside keying off. This leads to delamination with enough accumulated damage.
A huge share of the gypsum used in drywall is *synthetic gypsum* — a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) at coal-fired power plants. When SO₂ is scrubbed from exhaust using limestone, the reaction produces calcium sulfate dihydrate, chemically identical to mined gypsum. In the US, FGD gypsum has accounted for roughly half of all gypsum consumed by the wallboard industry at its peak.
The "cheap, uniform, and free of defects" story is partly a story about coal. The drywall industry scaled on the back of an abundant, nearly free waste stream from the energy sector. It's a classic example of industrial symbiosis — one industry's pollution abatement becomes another's feedstock.
And it cuts the other way now: as coal plants shut down across Europe and North America, synthetic gypsum supply is shrinking. The drywall industry is facing a real raw material squeeze, with manufacturers having to shift back toward mined gypsum or find alternative sources. There's ongoing work on using phosphogypsum (from fertilizer production) but that comes with its own radioactivity concerns.
For someone in your position this is particularly relevant — the "wonder" of drywall is entangled with the fossil fuel economy in a way that makes earth-based construction methods look increasingly attractive as that supply chain unwinds.
I used to work for a drywall manufacturer who still owned their own mines despite efforts to divest from them by some. They always viewed it as a structural advantage to still own them and not be wholly dependent on the coal plants (which effectively have conveyor belts going from the coal plants to the wallboard plants). I imagine as time goes on it'll become even more of an advantage for them to still own those mines as their competitors are forced to buy at highly inflated prices (or even from them) as coal shuts down.
> the "wonder" of drywall is entangled with the fossil fuel economy in a way that makes earth-based construction methods look increasingly attractive as that supply chain unwinds.
I keep thinking of that scene in Brazil where the hero, Harry Tuttle, opens a modular wall panel in Sam's apartment.
We standardized on 16 inch stud spacing here in the US a long time ago when we likely still used cement with a plaster skim coat on wood lath. Cutting up a board of nearly the same stuff feels primitive. You have to break open the wall to fix things.
To me the next logical step is a standard for modular walls that are laid out on a grid structure. I get that no one wants exposed screw holes but I can think of ways to hide them or make them part of a decorative pattern to blend them in. The coverings would be made to be cut to size as well. Wall panels would have to be environmentally friendly so wood is a first choice in natural and/or composite forms.
If you think this will look boxy then look up the passive house and notes on home building. Homes with a winding structure are difficult to seal reliably and roof so a boxy home is actually more economically friendly in terms of insulation to reduce HVAC energy consumption.
We have exactly what you want - it's called shiplap or car siding.
It's wood that is nailed up in such a way that you can pretty easily remove and repair something and replace it.
However, inside wall things get done so rarely that the cost savings by using drywall more than covers paying someone to patch the drywall after a repair.
A middle ground is to run all utilities at the bottom or top of the wall, and use large baseboards/crown molding to cover it up.
This reminds me a bit of Hank Green's recent video on why we don't recycle plastic. The answer is we frack a lot of methane for electricity and ethane is a byporoduct of that. You can flare it off or use it as a negative cost ingredient for polyethane / many other plastics. As long as we're using lots of fossil fuels the byproducts will be cheap. Anyone who has played gregtech or factorio or similar already has an intuition for this. The answer then becomes simple: if you want less plastic you must use less fossil fuel. They are one and the same.
Interesting comment with worthwhile content, but the writing style strongly smells of ChatGPT, and the phrase "For someone in your position" is incongruous (who is being addressed?). Did you use it, and if so, would you mind sharing the prompt?
1. Is plaster and lath gypsum based? In my experience plaster is basically identical to stucco, which is basically just mortar with increasingly fine sand. It is very hard and completely unlike drywall.
2) Why emphasize asbestos when talking about plaster? My understanding is you likely have more to worry about if you have a house from say the 40s-70s, which almost universally have some sort of drywall product.
> Because drywall is a dense and uniform mixture, hanging anything off the wall (from pictures to heavier items like shelves, TVs, or even cabinetry) is a trivial exercise, either a simple nail for a small frame, plaster anchors for medium loads, or toggle bolts for the real heavy hitters.
> By eschewing the lath lattices, buildings now have way more room in wall cavities for improved insulation and conduits
The cavities are exactly the same size, plaster+lath, or drywall.
Most residential construction won't use conduit anywhere, and commercial construction would never bury a conduit inside a wall, regardless of wall covering.
As a German I always found North American houses and their drywall and wood constructions incredibly odd. It always felt flimsy to me. From my experience we just started using drywall for some interior walls on some newly built homes. But throughout my life I was used to very massive walls.
I recently saw some house building videos and it is somehow fascinating how different the building materials and methodologies are. North America obviously made it work, but still very odd to me.
I have heard (from a German co-worker) that you tend to double-up the drywall. Sheets go on vertically, then a second layer horizontally to double the thickness—improve soundproofing.
I left the building trade in the UK about 20 years ago.
The UK is a damp place! We built one-off- houses. We built exclusively with 'brick and block'. Brick outside (to take the weather), cavity and block inside. Downstairs walls were block. Upstairs walls were studding, unless blocks were required to go up to support roof purlins.
The blocks inside were normally 'dry lined', sheets of 'plasterboard' (what we call drywall) 'dabbed' to the blocks with a plaster-like adhesive. Often these were 'Thermal boards', plasterboard laminated to urethane insulation foam. Plasterboard was always 'skimmed', plastered over with a plaster designed for this. The drying time is much lower than 'wet plastering' on the blocks.
On big spec built sites they were using prefab timber frames instead of blocks for the inner wall. Then they would plasterboard, and just fill the joints (no skimming). This is always considered a lower spec than skimmed walls.
But the noise.. this has been a huge factor in my quality of life, having lived in both buildings. That issue trumps any advantage drywall has, and I spent about 10 years working with it as well.
I think the market forces have simply dominated our natural, economically inefficient, home-dwelling instincts. I think this article means well, but it is written from the perspective of a landlord basically.
Possibly the solution would be to have some kind of soundproofing backing material on the converse side of the drywall panels. Including this could be required by regulation which would be easier to enforce than some kind of abstract acoustic property. One of the interesting arguments that Brian Potter made is that you're usually better off trying to move the issue from construction to manufacturing.
This is basically similar to how leaded drywall is used to shield X-rays. Of course, there are additional costs associated with the hazards of lead.
If I ever get to build a house I’m using that high density drywall they have in hospitals everywhere but the ceiling. It doesn’t cost that much more compared to the labor and it would be enormously satisfying to know your walls can’t be easily dented or damaged.
Modern plaster has backing boards that are similar to drywall, so you get most of the construction advantages (except for the labor intensive step of plastering), and can hand pictures / toggle bolts in the same way.
Unlike plaster, drywall gets moldy + needs to be replaced after water damage. I think this is why films with old buildings set in Europe often show peeling paint / water damaged plaster, but people are still living in them, and it seems fine. In the US, buildings with that level of wear would be so moldy they'd need to be gutted to studs, at minimum.
The article touches on mold resistant drywall, but I'll believe it when I see it. Also, apparently, it is much easier to create long-lasting patches for plaster than drywall.
I am also a fortunate owner of a 100+ year old home. Why is the lath and plaster so susceptible to cracking?! That is my nemesis. I haven’t tried to hang a TV though yet.
I stayed with a guy in France who had an old house with these picture rail things, and it was the first time I had come across something like that. I thought it was a very interesting solution for quickly rearranging artwork in your home if you love art but don't have enough wall space to display all your pieces so you might occasionally swap them.
Drywall is pretty amazing, but I don't agree with all the points in the article.
It cheap to buy and cheap to install, easy to cut and installs fast. It's tolerant with imperfect walls and is surprisingly flexible. It can also be seamlessly repaired.
It can also act as a primary air barrier.
I do not like moisture resistant drywall, moisture control is more important as well as using proper materials in high humidity areas.
Works In Progress have an odd antipathy to picture rails. Actually, picture rails are good. You don't have to fill any holes if you wish to move or remove a picture. To put up a picture rail, you can drill multiple holes laterally until you find a stud. The unused holes will be covered by the rail.
49 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 71.1 ms ] threadPipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?
This would let us avoid stapling electrical lines + network cables to studs inside walls. Fixing shorts, adding circuits and upgrading network lines would be trivial.
We'd have to buy what, 1000' of conduit? There's no way that's a sufficient fraction of the cost of a house.
In my humble opinion, they are significantly better than pounding a nail into drywall. Of course, I also have an absurdly large collection of framed photographs and other art, all of varying sizes, and I love swapping frames around throughout my home. Having picture rails throughout my house means I don't have to keep pounding holes in the wall every time I replace that 20x20" photograph of my toddler shot in a square aspect ratio with a 16x20 shot on my 4x5, or whatever.
This is way better than arguing with partner about the proper height, making a destructive hole, then having to cover/patch when opinions or artwork change. My walls are not drywall, so that was a big factor, but the freedom to arrange/rearrange is a major benefit.
No damage to paint so far, though we've only had them on the walls for about a year.
but, yeah, his videos are great. i've done more than my share of everything from sound abatement channels/glues/etc, hanging rock on vaulted ceilings, to level 5 finishes, but I still like to flip though his videos every now and then and pick up logistical / speed tips.
> Some buildings standing today still have wattle-and-daub panels from 700 years ago.
Will any drywalled building survive even a tenth of this time?
> The plaster mixture used then was a homegrown concoction, with recipes matching the climate needs and vernacular material availability.
The wonder of wattle-and-daub (clay) and plaster-and-lath (lime) is that the materials are breathable, move with the structure, and can even self-repair small cracks. I don't know of any old house that suffers from black mold...
My last big gripe with gypsum drywall is disposal. Demolish a property with clay or lime walls, and they'll naturally degrade into the environment. Drywall needs proper disposal: "Do not burn: Drywall releases toxic fumes. Do not bury: It can create dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas in landfill."
Does anyone want to live with that?
Wonder if in the future there will be incentives for proper disposal since you can extract hydrogen from it, other than that I agree with you.
For much the same reason they don't suffer from low heating bills, either.
The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just move the nail up a half inch.
The "cheap, uniform, and free of defects" story is partly a story about coal. The drywall industry scaled on the back of an abundant, nearly free waste stream from the energy sector. It's a classic example of industrial symbiosis — one industry's pollution abatement becomes another's feedstock.
And it cuts the other way now: as coal plants shut down across Europe and North America, synthetic gypsum supply is shrinking. The drywall industry is facing a real raw material squeeze, with manufacturers having to shift back toward mined gypsum or find alternative sources. There's ongoing work on using phosphogypsum (from fertilizer production) but that comes with its own radioactivity concerns.
For someone in your position this is particularly relevant — the "wonder" of drywall is entangled with the fossil fuel economy in a way that makes earth-based construction methods look increasingly attractive as that supply chain unwinds.
I keep thinking of that scene in Brazil where the hero, Harry Tuttle, opens a modular wall panel in Sam's apartment.
We standardized on 16 inch stud spacing here in the US a long time ago when we likely still used cement with a plaster skim coat on wood lath. Cutting up a board of nearly the same stuff feels primitive. You have to break open the wall to fix things.
To me the next logical step is a standard for modular walls that are laid out on a grid structure. I get that no one wants exposed screw holes but I can think of ways to hide them or make them part of a decorative pattern to blend them in. The coverings would be made to be cut to size as well. Wall panels would have to be environmentally friendly so wood is a first choice in natural and/or composite forms.
If you think this will look boxy then look up the passive house and notes on home building. Homes with a winding structure are difficult to seal reliably and roof so a boxy home is actually more economically friendly in terms of insulation to reduce HVAC energy consumption.
It's wood that is nailed up in such a way that you can pretty easily remove and repair something and replace it.
However, inside wall things get done so rarely that the cost savings by using drywall more than covers paying someone to patch the drywall after a repair.
A middle ground is to run all utilities at the bottom or top of the wall, and use large baseboards/crown molding to cover it up.
https://youtu.be/325HdQe4WM4
2) Why emphasize asbestos when talking about plaster? My understanding is you likely have more to worry about if you have a house from say the 40s-70s, which almost universally have some sort of drywall product.
yikes
Also wrong:
> By eschewing the lath lattices, buildings now have way more room in wall cavities for improved insulation and conduits
The cavities are exactly the same size, plaster+lath, or drywall.
Most residential construction won't use conduit anywhere, and commercial construction would never bury a conduit inside a wall, regardless of wall covering.
These are weird things to get wrong.
I recently saw some house building videos and it is somehow fascinating how different the building materials and methodologies are. North America obviously made it work, but still very odd to me.
Here's a timelapse of a Swedish house being built: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbSm0Zw00Cs
The UK is a damp place! We built one-off- houses. We built exclusively with 'brick and block'. Brick outside (to take the weather), cavity and block inside. Downstairs walls were block. Upstairs walls were studding, unless blocks were required to go up to support roof purlins.
The blocks inside were normally 'dry lined', sheets of 'plasterboard' (what we call drywall) 'dabbed' to the blocks with a plaster-like adhesive. Often these were 'Thermal boards', plasterboard laminated to urethane insulation foam. Plasterboard was always 'skimmed', plastered over with a plaster designed for this. The drying time is much lower than 'wet plastering' on the blocks.
On big spec built sites they were using prefab timber frames instead of blocks for the inner wall. Then they would plasterboard, and just fill the joints (no skimming). This is always considered a lower spec than skimmed walls.
I think the market forces have simply dominated our natural, economically inefficient, home-dwelling instincts. I think this article means well, but it is written from the perspective of a landlord basically.
This is basically similar to how leaded drywall is used to shield X-rays. Of course, there are additional costs associated with the hazards of lead.
Modern plaster has backing boards that are similar to drywall, so you get most of the construction advantages (except for the labor intensive step of plastering), and can hand pictures / toggle bolts in the same way. Unlike plaster, drywall gets moldy + needs to be replaced after water damage. I think this is why films with old buildings set in Europe often show peeling paint / water damaged plaster, but people are still living in them, and it seems fine. In the US, buildings with that level of wear would be so moldy they'd need to be gutted to studs, at minimum.
The article touches on mold resistant drywall, but I'll believe it when I see it. Also, apparently, it is much easier to create long-lasting patches for plaster than drywall.
It cheap to buy and cheap to install, easy to cut and installs fast. It's tolerant with imperfect walls and is surprisingly flexible. It can also be seamlessly repaired.
It can also act as a primary air barrier.
I do not like moisture resistant drywall, moisture control is more important as well as using proper materials in high humidity areas.
I am sure plastering was common in 80s too but maybe misremembering.
edit: seen other comments and that was/is "modern plastering" i.e. with backing boards.
Asbestos is not toxic. The mechanism by which it fucks up your lungs is completely different.
https://www.construction-physics.com