this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
514 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
85574 readers
4372 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wish I had foam. My house was built in the 1920s and as such has plaster walls over lath, with a layer of studs behind and asbestos siding over the exterior sheath. Did you notice what's missing from that list? That's right: Insulation!
I insulated the shit out of my roof when I had the ceiling out of the second story (there is no attic), but the walls basically may as well just not be there as far as the season's temperature is concerned, whatever it is. Somehow, some way, I'm going to have to stab holes through the plaster and blow in some insulation material. The bottoms of the exterior walls are literally open into the basement, though, so I have some work to do down there first.
On the bright side, this place was built back when they were still using real timber so it's probably not going to fall down until much later after all of the other new construction around here.
Yeah short of the insulation blowing between the studs like you said with stabbing holes ... The other option is just replacing the plaster and lath at some point and when you do blowing insulation then. That's a huge remodel though.
There's definitely pros and cons to older houses, I bet if it's made of those materials it has a cool layout and flavor.
I live in a place that was built up through the late 80s through mid 90s so the houses have a lot of variety. Feels like once the 00s hit and especially the 2010s single family home neighborhoods all became the same house copy + pasted.
using real timber so it’s probably not going to fall down
Nothing wrong with today's lumber, but there's a lot wrong with antique building standards of the 1920's + lack of code enforcement + old carpenters attitude of "that's the way it's always been done" if they even knew the current/correct rules in the first place.
A lot of near furniture grade lumber was used in old houses because it was common and cheaply available- unlike now. But there is no special advantage to using it in old houses for structural purposes. Today's houses are as engineered as automobiles are for cost and safety.
I’m there with you, only difference is my house has tongue in groove wooden interior walls.
tongue AND groove.
Thank you. Always get those wrong.
At least you can theoretically take those apart and put them back up, right?
There's old wiring behind my walls, too. I may ultimately just have to resort to sledgehammering them all and running Romex, then putting drywall back up to replace the plaster.
old wiring is sketchy. materials degrade over time. plastic polymer technology used in insulators before the late 70's was not what it is today. insulation on new wires will last 80++ years. The old stuff, not so much..
Aye. And there are still some runs of cloth insulated stuff in my basement. If I ever touch that (literally), those lengths will have to be replaced. Things to do, things to do.
not touching it (until you replace it) is a good game plan.
that eliminates breakage and just leaves rats as the unpredictable variable.
check out "knob and tube" wiring if you really don't want to sleep well at night.
that stuff's a horror show by today's standards.
I know all about knob and tube, yes. There are some thankfully already decommissioned stretches of that nailed to the joists in my basement which I've left there as a historical curio.