Texas houses

[cjunrau]

I don't know how , or should I say WHY do Texans put there pluming in the attic of a house above the insulation. Now I'm not saying all houses are this way but I know of some. Here in the far north LOL we insulate to keep heat in in winter and to keep heat out in the summer. Now Texas would insulate and Build to keep heat out and cold in all year round. or almost. Now I understand that they use a spray foam insulation for most house. I may be wrong. around here it costs alot more to use spray foam but it is 10X better than fiberglass. If a house in Texas was insulated to use as little electricity as possible to cool it would they not be better off using the same amount of insulation we do. or is electricity that cheap there that they don't care how much it costs to cool there houses.
A house that is built to keep cool should not be that hard to keep warm. I have a 1800 SQFT 2 story house and use no heat in winter if the temp outside is 0 Degrees F and the sun is shining. If it's cloudy The wood stove goes. I have no electric heat. I built the house myself and am a poor carpenter, there are places the wind blows through. If I use no heat at all my pipes would not freeze for a few days even without the wood stove. So that leaves me wondering do they actually not build a house well and insulated in Texas and why would they not to keep the cold in in summer???

 

[wjytexas]

my house was built in 1969 and the plumbing is under the slab, the central AC/ heat and air handler is in a closet on the hall and near the outside AC compressor/heat pump. I'm not sure when they started putting water plumbing in attics, a stupid idea. new homes going in behind my place and across the county road too the east are all being plumbed under the slab. And now most AC/heat pump systems and air handlers are in the attic to save floor space. I have heard from friends of numerous problems. I guess from the builders point of view it's $$$$$$$$$ like so many decisions. sort of like not having winterized wind turbines and natural gas well heads. $$$$$$$$ And then in the '70's aluminum wiring was popular until the fires started.

 

[ss55]

This is a once in 25, 50 or 100 year occurrence. In normal times they really can't justify spending a lot for extra insulation. The temperature difference (delta T) between 80F and 105F is only 25 degreesF. Likewise, the delta T between 70F and 45F is only 25 degreesF. We have three or four times as much delta T between 70F and either minus 5F or minus 30F.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

Only recently have houses been built to the standards that you're describing here. There are a lot of houses out there that were built a long time ago that have only a minimal amount of fiberglass insulation, if they have any insulation at all.

Most likely the modern houses built in the last 20-odd years are having no problems during this, but again, there are a LOT of older houses and buildings that were not built with energy efficiency in mind, because they never considered ever having to do much heating.

I can't stress this enough: They did not build for cold weather because they rarely experience cold weather. It has been decades if not centuries since the last time Texas was this cold for this long.

 

[ptfarmer]

My house (built in 1963) has them in the attic, but covered with insulation, and had no problems. Back then they didn't have all the building codes like they do now!

 

[ptfarmer]

(quoted from post at 13:30:39 02/18/21) Only recently have houses been built to the standards that you're describing here. There are a lot of houses out there that were built a long time ago that have only a minimal amount of fiberglass insulation, if they have any insulation at all.

Most likely the modern houses built in the last 20-odd years are having no problems during this, but again, there are a LOT of older houses and buildings that were not built with energy efficiency in mind, because they never considered ever having to do much heating.

I can't stress this enough: They did not build for cold weather because they rarely experience cold weather. It has been decades if not centuries since the last time Texas was this cold for this long.

Sums it up nicely ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Many people have said they hate building codes.

 

[Greg1959]

YuGeo-TH,Inp, I hate how they have to install fire escape ladders on sides of apartments or wheelchair access ramps to buildings, among a list of other nuisances.

 

[DoubleO7]

(quoted from post at 17:37:45 02/18/21) Many people have said they hate building codes.

I don't hate building codes most of the time.
What I hate is a building inspector that tells me to do something a different way and can't or refuses to show me where in the code it says to do it the way he wants it.
Then he gets pissy on other things till you say yes sir, I will fix it your way.

And I hate stupid codes.....use a new 2x4 as a temporary brace to hold a wall up until you get the other wall up.
Then that brace 2x4 can't be used again unless there are no empty nail holes in it anywhere.

 

[Pete in Holland MI]

Kinda like us northern folks (SW Michigan) putting a 2 ton AC unit on a 1200 sq ft house. There was cost to put a 4 ton unit in for those once in a life time 105 degree days. Southern houses are not built for snow loads like we have to up here.

Everything comes down to cost and risk.

 

[CenTex Farmall]

There's a lot of new construction that is being built as rapidly as possible. Much of it looks impressive once the decorating and finish work is done. Unfortunately, on the inside, what I have seen is quite shoddy!

BIL has a giant house in a gated neighborhood. There's an upstairs room with a door where you can walk onto a landing, an unfinished closet basically, and see the inside of the roof: 2x4 rafters on 24" centers on long spans with little tie in, 7/16 roof decking, wires vomited all over the place, A/C ducting is glorified dryer vent hanging all over the place.

My own house, built in 1962 and 1/4 the square footage: 2X6 joists and rafters on 16" centers, every other joist and rafter set is diagonal braced into a truss using drop from the lap siding, 3/4" 1X8 roof decking, rigid steel A/C ducts wrapped in insulation. There so much structure up there that you can hardly crawl around. Biggest improvement I made was replacing the single pane aluminum windows. Huge difference.

I've looked at other houses being built, not just that one and haven't been impressed with what I've seen.
Some builders take pride in their work, others just want a fast buck and then gone.

I believe a lot of the pipes above the insulation are PEX which my understanding can freeze without damage, although frozen pipes of any kind don't do you much good.

I see spray insulation being used mainly on the barndominiums but there may be some now in stick built that I haven't seen. The good of the spray insulation is that is seals air leaks as well. However, if one is running a wood stove then you need exchange air coming in somewhere to replace what's used by the stove. My house leaks plenty of air so not an issue.

I believe our electricity cost is average. I'm afraid people just run the air as much as they please and pay the bill. My highest bill in the last 20 years was $150 dollars during August heat. Hard to compare with others due to different thermostat settings and square footage variables.

 

[john in la]

Us backwoods hicks from the south walk to a different beat than you guys up north.
Its no wonder we have so many problems you could never understand.

 

[2 colorgreen]

You'all smart enough to live where it is warm. Well, most of the time.

 

[CurtisH]

Residential houses in Texas are built for the typical weather conditions for that area. I live south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico where we usually see one or two light freezes a year that barely last beyond the mid morning hours, but where you are guaranteed to have long hot, humid summers. So the focus from a design standpoint where I live is on the hot weather side where cooling is used during most months of the year.

The house I have now was built in 2016 and is insulated quite well, driven mostly by the desire to cut cooling costs during the warm months of the year. Freeze protection is mostly an afterthought, but they did insulate any water lines running in external walls or in the attic outside of the core attic space. The plumbing is PEX run up in the attic which appears to be the prevalent practice now, at least around here.

The house I grew up in, and the houses of my grandparents, in that same geographical area had zero insulation of any kind. In hot weather you opened the windows or sat outside. In cold weather there was a space heater or two, but for the most part you just wore more clothes, put more quilts on the beds and waited for it to warm up.

 

[Greg1959]

Cockroaches.

 

[Vito]

We call a ton of trim work in a house lipstick on a pig. What it does basically is give a the buyer a feeling of opulence.

Im a finish carpenter in the high end section.


Vito

 

[cjunrau]

So, can you tell me why the water is run up in the attic? Seems to me water is piped under the ground to the house and it takes more pipe to go up into attic then down to floor where the water taps would be instead of running it in the floor then up to where you need it.

Maybe you have slab concrete floors and no crawl space to run pipe.

Here I am one of the few that did a crawl space and no basement. I wish I did basement and one story above instead of 2 story.

 

[MarkB_MI]

It's not just in the Republic, they do it that way all over the south. Why? Because it's cheap. Pour a slab, frame the house, then plumb. It's more aggravation and money to build a crawl space or to run plumbing in the slab before it's poured.

When I lived in North Carolina, folks would have frozen pipes nearly every winter. And it seldom got below 20°F! Now if you want to learn how to repair broken pipes, buy a beach house on pilings. I did! Eventually I figured out how to keep them from freezing, but it involved lots of heat tape. Even so, I'd leave taps running if it got very cold.

 

[John T]

The vast majority of northern climate homes, mostly farm homes, Ive owned the past 50 years were built on either a crawl space or over a basement or cellar. The crawl space homes (plumbing there) in the winter I either used pipe insulation and/or heat tape if located where it was the coldest. If I did that PLUS left a trickle stream of water running on extreme cold nights I NEVER had a freeze up. Now if in Texas where it seldom gets that cold I see slab built homes and less prevention for pipes to freeze up BUT THIS WINTER THERE WASNT ENOUGH GLOBAL WARMING ya reckon lol

This may have been a 100 year occurrence, who but God knows, but the plumbers likely did pretty well lol

Take care and be warm my Texas neighbors, my daughter is in Lakeway and has survived it

God Bless America

John T

 

[cjunrau]

well that makes cense then. Easier to plumb from top if solid concrete no crawl space. Can build shell and decide where everything goes after.

 

[Stephen Newell]

For one thing much of Texas soil is unstable. If you run the plumbing up through a slab chances are you will have a big bill someday from someone having to dig a tunnel under the slab to repair pipes. The older houses which are done with pier and beam the plumbing is run through the crawl space. There is a trend now though to put a water heater in the attic as a space saving thing plus if there is a gas leak chances are there isn't anything in the attic to ignite it. To meat code I've been having to install a vent to the attic with water heaters in a living space that run on natural gas. Propane heaters are vented through the floor where possible.

 

[Greg1959]

If you pour the Slab, then plumb, how do you plumb for the toilet? Maybe a 'up-flush'?

Inquiring minds want to know

 

[da.bees]

Only last week a group of construction contracrors were discussing inferior plumbing in new Texas houses. The answer ly's in the large number of people imergrating to Texas from Northeastern United States and Central America. Neither are well versed on plumbing and like most places,plumbers are crooked as a barrel of snakes and twice as mean and vindictive. The result is shoddy and over priced plumbing go's into their houses. Plumbers don't do that to home grown Texans for fear of being beaten half to death or worse if caught. How you might ask do plumbers know where homeowner is from?
That's easy,by listening to the way they talk.

 

[Steve@Advance]

I had to run my hot water through the attic.

It was originally under the slab. Right after buying the place it started leaking somewhere. It was much easier and more economical to run it through the attic and abandon the leaking one under the slab.

It is well supported and insulated, but I still worry about it. I left the hot water dripping in the bath it supplies.

And as said,many houses are older, plumbed with galvanized pipe, very unforgiving of freezing. Most people don't build their own homes,they buy what is already there, usually track homes built as cheap as possible without looking cheap on the outside. But inside, too many shortcuts!

One thing I have seen too much of in Texas is building in flood planes.

Went to Houston a few years back helping clean out flooded houses after hurricane Harvey. Unbelievable where some of those houses are built! Down in lowlands, surrounded by raised roadways. How anyone could look at something like that and say "there's my dream home" and not realize why the roads are 6 ft higher than the house!

 

[Greg1959]

da.bees, So, are you saying that there should be some kind of overall rule to regulate these types of construction/installations?

 

[da.bees]

Greg,most jurisdictions adoupt national codes so there's no need for more regulation on books. The need is for inforcment and clamp down on payoffs to inforcers.

 

[teddy52food]

You may change your mind if you have to spend a month or 2 in a wheel chair.

 

[Greg1959]

teddy52food, my reply was meant as IRONY to geointerrahaute.

 

[CurtisH]

cjunrau,
You are correct that almost all housing where I am is built on slab foundations with no crawl space. Southeast Texas (Houston area) has a lot of expansive clay soils, and as I understand it a properly post-tensioned solid slab allows the slab to more or less float on these soils and resist cracking from soil movement.

I used to own a 1980's house in a different part of the state (Austin) where the potable water plumbing was buried in the slab, but I don't think that is commonly done anymore, at least not where I am, other than for short runs to something like an island in the middle of a kitchen.

In my situation the incoming water is sent to a manifold in the attic as shown. The cold water runs are branched off of the manifold with a larger line coming out the top and going to the water heater. Hot water comes back to the manifold and then distributed through runs attached to the other side of the manifold. Each branch can be closed at the manifold if needed. I can see where this set-up could be a problem in a colder climate without an effort to properly insulate it, but it usually doesn't get very cold here for very long.

 

[Pete in Holland MI]

Most northern houses are built on either a crawl space or a full basement. We need to have a foundation go down below the frost level, else the frost will heave the foundation over the years, cracking foundations and causing the house to start to negatively move. Here in SW Michigan, the foundation needs to be 42" below the surface of the ground. Further north, it jumps to 48", then 54". Another 3 to 4 feet of foundation, and pour a floor, you effectively double the floor space for little cost. There are very few houses built around here on concrete slabs, but that trend is starting to change, now that advances in slab insulation and tiny furnaces are occurring.

Also, there's the situation of heat. YEARS ago, fireplaces, then wood stoves, kept houses warm. Coal fired furnaces were developed and placed in basements. Gravity circulated, they required a lot of room. There was also the need to store a few tons of coal. Basements, used to be very ulitarian. Now, with furnaces getting smaller, and fuel coming in from pipelines, storage of fuel and large furnaces are not needed, and many basements are becoming additional bed rooms & family rooms.

 

[Pete in MD]

Greg,

The drain lines are trenched in before the slab is poured.

 

[Greg1959]

sorry but I was Quoting Pete in MD "It's not just in the Republic, they do it that way all over the south. Why?
cause it's cheap. Pour a slab, frame the house, THEN PLUMB."

 

[MarkB_MI]

>If you pour the Slab, then plumb, how do you plumb for the toilet? Maybe a 'up-flush'?

True, the sewer and drains need to be set in the slab. But you don't usually find those in the attic, which is what the original question was about.

 

[Texasmark1]

Part of that is the sales hype. Folks, not knowing any better just "have to have" a house with a creek running through the back yard. Terrain is pretty flat down there so when the creek floods, and most springs (seasons) that happens, and water goes everywhere. Course with the creek comes Mosquitoes and Water Moccasins, and flood plain insurance costs.

 

[Texasmark1]

Say what? Most areas are either governed by city or county building codes and inspections. Here in my county, the county is is bed with the power company so that if you don't get a permit for your construction project, after all the necessary inspections, you don't get a green tag on your (empty) utility power box. And my experience with inspectors is that they are honest. A neighbor flunked his electrical and had to repair the screw-up before he got his green tag. No green tag no meter. No meter, no juice. I personally don't know of a "crooked plumber". I bought my farm from a plumbing business owner and have a plumber living next door who just helped me install a new water service and no way was he anything but competent and considerate.

 

[Roger in Wisconsin]

I once red an article about the cost of winter heating in all the different States. The folks in Texas spend almost the same amount as Wisconsin. They mostly use electric we use mostly natural gas. The northeast were stuck with fuel oil.

 

[V35B]

Here in NTX we have some terrible soil that is full of heavy clay and will cause problems with foundations, especially the "spec homes" and other short cut builders. That is why a lot of the plumbing is in the attic, and then there is the cutting of cost. What I have determined over the years is that there is two good ways to build, and I will use examples.

Old school pier and beam with crawl space. My parents house was built in 1948, and my grandparents last house was built in 1951. Both were sitting on piers drilled to the bedrock layer. Both have plumbing under the house, and my parents never froze up during this, and it got to -8 once, and down in the low teens a lot. Both houses have the old blow in grey looking insulation with 2x6 exterior walls. They never have had any shifting or foundation issues. My grandparents never had issues in their lifetime either. Both houses are around 3500 sqft, and have Natural Gas furnaces. Elec/Gas bills run them around 290.00 in the summer, and around 150 in the winter.


Newer construction-

My current house was built in 2019 is sitting on a post tension slab which is sitting on 49 piers drilled to the bedrock. The waste plumbing was roughed in before the slab pour, and entry sleeves were installed at a depth of 2' for water, electric, and one more for future use. They come up in the wall between the garage and laundry room, and plumbing and electric runs through the attic. The attic stays +/-7 degrees the same temp as the interior of the house. The idea is to minimize the amount of pressurized water line in or under the slab. The only other live water line I have besides the entry line is a line to the kitchen island sink, and it is pex inside of a 3" sleeve. The roof has 12" of spray foam on it, the walls have 2" of spray foam, and the rest of that gap is blown in poly. There is no insulation on the sheetrock that is the ceilings, except over the garage, which has bats laying on the sheetrock. From what I can gather, this is the best system around here right now. I made it through this cold spell and did nothing more than I do every day. My electric bills run me about $90-100 per month in the summer, and around %70.00-$80.00 in the winter, we have an A/C unit that is a heat pump system, the house is 2500 sqft. The heater was running a cycle of around 12 minutes on, and 23 minutes off during this cold spell, it kept us at 67 inside with no issues to date. I didn't plan this construction to specifically handle below zero cold weather, it was just the way my builder did it. Oddly, the cost per sqft on our house was a little lower than the houses that are built by cutting corners around here. There are plenty of builders here that are good at putting lipstick on a pig and turning a hefty profit.

We still have numerous people living in houses built in the late 1800's, I used to be one of them. You have to be on your game if you do. Between that, and the more modern construction that is done shoddy, that is what got a lot of people in trouble in the big cities. We live in rural areas where I am, and I just don't see many struggle to cope out here, even though their houses may not be built to handle it.

Take it for what it is worth, it just my two cents.

 

[DoubleO7]

Texasmark1,
"if you don't get a permit for your construction project, after all the necessary inspections, you don't get a green tag on your (empty) utility power box."

how do you get inspections done if you do not have a permit to start the project???

Here in , Florida every little thing you want to build on your property has to be permitted. Even a yard shed that gets delivered by a pickup from the big box store.

All new housing here for decades is built on slab or on pilings elevating first floor 10 to 12 feet or more depending on location relative to the coast.
Many but not all slab homes have overhead plumbing. With an effort to have all drain work on the perimeter of the slab.
That way you reduce the need of busting a trench thru the house in the future to make repairs to drain lines.
Supply piping over head thru the attic space under the insulation.
Insulation is on par with best practices used up north.
Does not matter if your battling against extreme or cold, stopping the passage of btu's thru the building envelope is the goal.

 

[buickanddeere]

The odd thing too is they dont seem to know what a basement is in Tornado county .
Basement is where the HVAC , plumbing , water heater ,
Laundry , electrical breaker panel and the barn clothes change room/shower belong .
Basements stay warm long after a crawl space is frozen .

 

[Pete in MD]

That's not a quote from me Greg.

 

[used red MN]

Centex Farmall,
I know this is an older post I just happen to be looking over that I passed on earlier. In your reply you said.. My own house, built in 1962 and 1/4 the square footage: 2X6 joists and rafters on 16" centers, every other joist and rafter set is diagonal braced into a truss using drop from the lap siding, 3/4" 1X8 roof decking... All good and fine, I am here to tell you 2x6 rafters on 16 in centers is overkill in Tx where snow loads are not an issue. A PROPERLY designed 2 x4 truss style rafter on 24 in. centers is plenty strong even in areas with snow loads. Is your house built better? Yes, but it was probably built more on a seat of the pants design as in this was strong enough on the last one we built, we will build this one the same. Not knowing whether you BIL had his house built or not let us assume he did. We will use $100 a square foot as the average cost to build a home. If your BIL said to his builder Tx Farmall said I should get 2x6 rafters on 16 in. centers the builder would have to charge an up fee to cover that cost. I am not really sure why I am defending truss engineers or house builders. I guess my point is applying a broad statement essentially saying another home is junk because the roof support structure is not built like your own is a little one sided. And as we all know not many things are built like they used to be. I guess in the end it is all about the state of mind you proceed through life in.