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Comment by silversmith | Hacker News Reader

There are times I do envy people living in stick houses with hollow walls.

I live in a brick house where only half of the walls are hollow. Bringing Ethernet wires to a few critical areas and putting small surface-mount RJ-45 sockets was not that hard.

Of course, some thin raceways can be seen somewhere along the baseboard. It does not look terrible, and is barely noticeable.

Fibre is good for getting to hard-to-reach places.

But the slope is slippery. If you’re doing fibre, you might as well do 10gbe.

there are baseboards with build in raceways. installing some right now

Stick houses with hollow walls are cheaper to build (assuming cheap wood) and cheaper to work on. Probably cheaper to maintain too, but not as durable, so it might work out... Otoh, durable isn't great when housing trends have moved on.

> not as durable

Your clearly don’t live in an earthquake prone area.

I do. But given how cheapskate New Zealand is, I’m 100% sure that we would build in stone and brick if it was cheaper.

I do live on the west coast of the US. Unreinforced masonry doesn't do well in earthquakes, but reinforced masonry or concrete is probably more durable. I've got 25 year old wood siding, and it might make it to 30, but there's no way it'll be in reasonable shape at 40. It probably won't be too expensive to replace though.

Probably another great example of chasing pennies with pounds. {re,green,pink}bar is really cheap. Yes, it's more expensive but only 10-20% more. It's an upfront cost that that saves you tons of damage, which costs money too! Even more when you put off repair.

It's incredible how people do not understand boot theory... which seems to be something most people know but don't employ in practice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

My wood siding is original cedar that has been painted several times since 1970s when house was built … I haven’t considered it not lasting indefinitely

Much more durable in an earthquake though, which is important in places like the US where half the country is a serious seismic hazard zone. In many locales only wood or steel framing is allowed because historically stone and concrete construction collapsed due to the strength of the earthquakes.

Until it gets cold outside and you need to heat them, or cool then obviously

Molding is your friend to create and hide channels, and it will make your place look more sophisticated than just the cube cave it is, my cave man friend.

Install a veneer

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