50 Things I've Learned Writing Construction Physics
a year ago
- #construction
- #technology
- #history
- Construction Physics newsletter has been running since September 2020, with 186 essays totaling 600,000 words.
- Originally focused on construction productivity, it now covers energy, transportation, and technological progress.
- 90% of US buildings are single-family homes, making up 60% of total building square footage.
- Prefab construction is not typically cheaper than on-site construction, except for manufactured homes.
- Manufactured homes became cheaper due to lending changes, not HUD code requirements.
- Levittown homes were not cheaper than conventional homes at the time.
- Wildfire damage is more about design and age than wood construction.
- Construction innovation attempts have a long history, with many past failures.
- US construction costs have rarely decreased historically.
- Individual construction tasks haven't gotten cheaper since the 1950s.
- Brick costs haven't decreased since the mid-19th century.
- Construction innovates at similar rates to other industries.
- Single-family homes use less energy per square foot than apartments.
- High historical US homebuilding rates were driven by falling household size.
- Repetitive designs are common in housing, contrary to the variety demand myth.
- Construction safety has improved significantly over time.
- Sears wasn't the first in mail-order homes; Aladdin Homes sold them earlier and longer.
- US skyscraper construction has slowed, with Chicago faster than New York.
- US skyscraper construction is comparable in speed to China for high-profile projects.
- Modern buildings can't easily be made cheaper by cutting materials.
- Glass box skyscrapers became popular because they were cheaper and tenants didn't care about exteriors.
- Homeowners insurance costs have risen due to factors beyond construction costs and weather.
- Early wind-generated electricity was common on US farms before rural electrification.
- Gas turbines became economical for power generation after the 1965 Northeast blackout.
- PURPA law, lobbied by a small company, helped wind and solar deployment.
- Oregon has the second-most planned electricity generation projects after Texas.
- US has vastly more hydrocarbon storage than grid-scale electricity storage.
- High-purity quartz from Spruce Pine, NC, is a bottleneck for semiconductor and solar PV manufacturing.
- Three Mile Island didn't kill US nuclear power; high costs had already stalled new orders.
- US Navy's nuclear reactor practices haven't made nuclear power cheaper than other ship propulsion.
- Urban areas have fewer power outages and fire incidents.
- US bridge and interstate quality is improving over time.
- San Francisco and Los Angeles have the worst roads among large US metros.
- Tunnel boring speed rose exponentially until the 1950s but has slowed since.
- Shenzhen grew faster than any 20th-century city.
- US shipbuilding has been uncompetitive since the late 19th century, unrelated to the Jones Act.
- AT&T spent more on telephone infrastructure in the 1960s than NASA on Apollo.
- Modern shipbuilding methods were invented in US WWII shipyards, later adopted and improved by Japan.
- Early technology improvements often exceed Moore's Law rates.
- Learning curve improvements drive cost reductions but have limits.
- Welding automation mostly replaced machine operators, not manual welders.
- Modern industrial robots are 50-100 times more accurate than 1970s robots.
- Cambridge has produced the most Nobel Prize-winning research.
- Bell Labs' Nobel-winning work surpasses the next six corporations combined.
- Bell Labs inspired other companies to fund basic research labs.
- Morris Chang's semiconductor career began out of spite after a salary dispute with Ford.
- Post-WWII, US and Russia acquired Germany's large forging presses.
- R&D costs have generally risen, but some areas have always been expensive.
- Most WWII US aircraft designs began before June 1940.
- Microchip production involves thousands of steps and months of processing.
- Key takeaway: Historical and technological developments are often more complex and contingent than they appear.