Can we Learn Good Building Techniques from a Norwegian Group Home Builder?

I thought it was interesting. On their sign, I translated with my little Google Translate app. They have this, it looks like a fingerprint and a wood print coming together, and it says ‘good craftsmanship and good wood’. It’s kind of their company motto. They’re taking their time in a production sense. When we say ‘production builders’ in the United States, we kind of use that as a derogatory term. We don’t talk about the big guys in the United States in a kind way, and these guys are awesome.

They’re finding a way to do things in a way that we look at longingly. We would like our job site to have nice metal sills. We would like things to be cut. There’s a stop miter in the corner of that window that I strive for. I like the craftsmanship. Let’s go inside and show you the framing.

Okay, so Matt, we are looking at things that actually look fairly close to the United States, right? Yeah, similar but different. First off, the wood. We’ve talked about this in other videos from Norway. It appears to be almost like a true two by. This is like an inch and 7/8^ths material, almost two inches. The exterior walls are basically 2×6 framing. It looks like to me, call it 2×6 to 2×8 range, and then 2×4 interior walls on 24in canters.

What’s interesting to me is that the drywall on the outside, that gypsum sheathing, is the only sheathing, the only shear value that I’m seeing. Interestingly enough, the builder specifically mentioned to me that on this production builder job for cost, they eliminated a traditional laminated header. I got the impression maybe they eliminated an LVL from that header. He thought this was really cool and specifically pointed out they’ve got a solid rim joist that looks like a true 2 by 12. Maybe it’s a glue lam of sorts, and then they put a 2×6, it looks like, on top of it that’s both nailed and it has some structural screws to attach it.

They’ve notched the eye joist so now that’s acting like the structural header which comes down and brings that load path down to these two king studs on the other side of these windows. Isn’t that interesting? So in essence, what they’ve done is they’ve just adopted advanced framing as we would call it in the United States. They’ve killed headers wherever they can. They’ve bumped their headers into the rim. In the center, they’ve either gone to a smaller header or they showed us upstairs a couple of places where they eliminated where they used to do steel on the same floor plan, and they went to a glue lam because it’s cheaper.

At the very end of his sentence where he said cheaper, he said more insulation. We’re all headed in the same direction. They’re being smart with all of this. I want to talk about this staircase. Please do. This is not the finished staircase, although this is a permanent job site ladder for the entire construction. If we look at the other side of this duplex, this ladder is still in place even though they’re hanging rock. This entire square here, you can see that these aren’t eye joists; these are 2x sixes. This is a temporary floor that’s not glued. This will come out and this space is the staircase in the end.

That’ll be all open in the future. This has a hatch on it. So, what’s the hatch do for you? The hatch stays closed when you’re upstairs working so you don’t fall down. So that no one falls through and so that you can set a ladder wherever you need up there. That is darn smart because this staircase that winds right here is a pain in the rear for painting on this clear story wall or hanging light fixtures or whatever. At the very end, they can pull this out and only have like two weeks’ worth of working in this clear story space. That could be a real pain in the butt, you know, if we had it open already where they’re… yeah, this hole is not as convenient as carrying things up the stairs but when we have a winding switchback staircase here already, that already stinks for carrying stuff up there, so what does it matter? Super smart. I love that detail.

On a side note, interesting to notice that they’re using I joist, which feels like a regular old American eye joist. When we go upstairs there’s a detail I want to show you so come on upstairs with us.

As I come up, we close that hatch on… yeah, there you go. Check that out. Nothing special, just a couple of hatch hinges, one cut board so it doesn’t flap all the way over, it stays, and that way you remember to close it. When I came up, I did… I couldn’t help but notice we saw this subfloor material. Looks like 2T by maybe 8OT or 6OT or something. It’s basically a higher particle board, like particle board in the center and then like almost MDF on the top and bottom face, which we saw a ton of at the hardware store. We didn’t see any sort of like OSB subfloor.

So they’ve glued it and nailed it and interesting up here, though, you can see some of the glue pieces but the netting. I was like, ‘What the heck is this netting for?’ It looks like fishnet, I couldn’t figure it out. The builder told me, ‘Oh, well we put the netting up when we’re framing so that no one falls through.’ The eye joist that are open but he specifically mentioned that just recently they switched to a foam glue, you know like an all pour, kind of like the Advan Tech glue we’ve been using for years.

This one’s not purple like the one we use, but you can see a bunch of foam sticking out. He said once they switched to foam glue they had no problem with adhesion now. It stayed really well, but before I got the sense that he was using some kind of gun foam there was more like a thick cocking, you know like the old PO400 we used to use back in the day, and that was a problem. That was a problem for the netting. It wouldn’t stick, the subfloor would have squeaks, that kind of thing.

It’s important to note, safety is taken much more seriously here. We couldn’t get on the site without this gear. We were with a builder yesterday and we were touring a hardware store, and the aisles and aisles of safety gear, and I said to him, ‘You know if we’re in the US, the safety section is like two bays wide.’

I said we just don’t take it seriously, and he said, ‘Sometimes we take it too seriously here.’ I was like, ‘Oh, builders are the same worldwide.’ We all have the complaint about one way or the other, having to wear our hard hats. I was like, ‘I wonder how often they’re complaining about having to put the netting up that saves them from falling through the…’

There’s a big section here, looks like someone maybe did fall, this looks like a body-sized little spot here. But anyway, next door, they’ve got insulation going on, looks like drywall, electrical. How about we cut here, let’s go next door, we’ll show them the next phase. Okay, let’s do it.

Now, the next phase of construction. The mechanicals are in, and they’re working on drywall on this job. What’s the first thing you notice?

It’s my favorite movie, ‘Tremors’, there are worms running all through the building! Not a single thing is not in conduit here. Electrical is all in conduit, and it looked to me like the plumbing, the PEX pipe, even comes with conduit. Everything here evolved from that concrete and block buildings where everything was fished, where it could be repaired or replaced. So everything is fished in conduit.

Most of the conduit now, it appears to be pulled with the wire, with the PEX in it. But it used to be hollow and empty, and now it’s pulled with it in it, and they just… it’s just the way they do it. But could you, in theory though, let’s say, snake a new wire through this conduit from one spot to another continuously?

It appears kind of smart. It’s all set up so that it’s replaceable at any point or serviceable. I like that. I wonder if we could get our RX in a similar, like light-duty conduit like this. It doesn’t need to be metal jacketed, but this is a lighter, probably lower-cost plastic.

We do it with low voltage stuff all the time, SMF tube. And then the plumbing also, Jake, metal or not metal, black plastic jacket. And if you look in the bathroom, which we’ll show you in a second, all of the outlets in the bathroom have an outlet box. Basically, this green box is for the plumbing. Outlets have you seen any of that in America before?

I have not. It’s like a universal fitting, and we saw those on other job sites the other day. Everything is a little more universal here. It’s not like, ‘Oh, that’s a Moen box’, and I couldn’t see any brand names on it either. It looks like PEX A, Upor PEX, but there’s no brand on it.

The other thing that really stands out for me when you come in here is both walls and ceiling get strapped horizontally on these walls so that they can add 2 inches more of insulation. This is kind of their less costly version of exterior insulation to break that stud thermal break. So we’re looking at just two here, but then we have a poly vapor barrier.

They run a 6 mil vapor barrier with their 6-7 inches of insulation on the outside of that. And then everything in here, on that poly vapor barrier, is taped with Siga tapes. That’s who brought us out on the trip, Siga. And then interesting enough, they showed us in the unit next door where you’ve got those eye joist cavities coming out to the band joist. That’s kind of a tricky detail to get your vapor barrier right, and if someone were to cut a hole in the ceiling and there was some flow in there, that’d be a problem.

So they’ve got a really wide piece of Siga Fum. I’m not sure what that was, 16 inches maybe? They make one that’s the height of the floor joist plus a couple inches that then has a tiny release liner on the top, tiny on the bottom, where they can tack it top and bottom, and then peel it and the thing just pushes into the joist bay. And now they’re able to connect the bottom of the subfloor to the top of that poly, and it resolves having to tape four sides of a piece of poly that’s cut to that size.

And now you’ve got both a vapor barrier and an air barrier on the inside, which in the past, I’ve only really accomplished with some type of spray foam. So that’s a really nice detail using inexpensive isolation they call it, rather than insulation. Then there’s a more expensive piece of Siga, but certainly less expensive than spray foam. They also strap all their ceilings, like they do in the Northeast, everywhere. You can see there’s conduit running underneath, rather than drilling through each one of those eye joists. Then they’re hanging drywall and they’re done.

I don’t get the need for this metal inside corner they’ve got everywhere. Is that a detail you’ve ever seen before?

I think that’s a result of coming from doing plaster at some point. You know, you used to have metal lath in the corners. Maybe that’s right. It’s also maybe just a result of being European and doing things with overkill, could be. I don’t know.

The young man that was in here hanging gypsum, this is maybe a 700 square foot space and there are six or seven rooms down here. I said, “How long is it going to take you to hang this space?” and he was like, “I’ll do it today, by myself.”

I thought, “Oh my goodness. I know it’s only 700 square feet and you have a lift, but with all the stuff that you have to cut around, I’m not sure I could hang it by myself.” He was like, “I’ll be done today, no problem.” I like that.

So, it’s interesting. It’s very cool to get to see this stuff and get to see that it’s similar, but it’s not the same. There are a lot of similarities here. The one takeaway I think, now that I’m totally done, is I’m going to look into running my electrical and plumbing in conduit so that there’s that remodelability, serviceability. I really like that aspect of what I’ve learned here today.

I don’t know about the exterior gypsum. I don’t love that. I think that could be a better detail. But again, I said at the top of the hour, nothing’s affordable here. This is a very expensive country. But this is a more affordable style of housing, production builder, but still really good quality.

I just had an epiphany of one thing that I just now noticed that I haven’t seen.

What is it?

There are no nail guards in this entire building.

That’s right. There’s nothing that’s protected from being accidentally nailed into. That’s interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. So, like where this conduit is close to the edge of the stud, we’d normally put a metal stud shoe there. They don’t have any of those here. I wonder why?

Maybe because they trust the drywall and tile installer to be smart. Maybe. Which we don’t always.

Guys, thanks for joining Jake and I. We’ve got a bunch more content from Norway, go check it out. And if you don’t know Jake Bruton, he’s shooting videos all the time at his job sites. You can check them out on Instagram and on the Build Show. His current series, which is going on right now, is ‘What Should I Use’ on the Build Show Network. We’re on episode four, five, six by the time this gets published. Jake’s doing a deep dive into all the specific parts of the house and what materials you should use. You got to go check it out, it’s an amazing series.

Jake’s a second-generation builder, building in both Kansas City, Kansas, and Columbia, Missouri. Did I get that right? Fantastic builder, super fun to tour this with you, Jake.