I am thinking of ideas for building a house and more and more I am
wondering why we don't build houses more like office buildings.

I realize some of this is changing for example using concrete walls (I am
planning on that so far), using Steel(also planning on that), and having
no load bearing walls just having steel or concrete beams, columns.

One idea I have been considering as a design idea is to have all ceiling
tiles thorughout the house and not have any drywall ceilings at all.

There are a number of reasons I think this might be a good idea:

The main one is the ase of access to infrastructure/utilities.
This is one of the main reasons they do it in office buildings.

With a tile celing you have a small space above the ceiling to access and utilities, wiring, plumbing etc..

It makes it very easy to put in or move lighting outlets, run new cables for networking, telecom, or catv etc.

After having the experience of trying to wire a 50yr old house for new technolgies such as networking etc this is a huge plus in my department.

Imagine being able to redo the lighting in a room without having to
worry about any drywall work at all, simple easy and quick as can be.
Want to take out those old fixtures and put some recessed lights around
the room permiter? No problem...take out the old fixtures, replace the
old tiles with new ones. Cut out where you want the new lights to be
installed and put them in. Boom your done, no patching, not cutting,
sanding painting etc.

Imagine wanting to run some new home network, phone, satellite tv,
security alarm, security camera lines or whatever. With celing tiles,
you can have a raceway the whole length of the building to easily run
these lines without having to cut any holes in walls, or use fish tape
etc.. it could be very simple matter of just running the wires in the
ceiling and dropping down into the wall you wanted. Same thing if you
wanted to move a phone jack from one wall to another in the same
room...it would be much easier to do it from the ceiling space.


Am I wrong for questioning the way we have "always" built houses? Am I
overlooking anything seriously wrong with this idea?

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:57:07 GMT, Han Solo
wrote:

One idea I have been considering as a design idea is to have all ceiling
tiles thorughout the house and not have any drywall ceilings at all.

All your rationales are wise and logical, but I have not yet seen a
tiled ceiling that's attractive, plain and simple. The likelihood of
someone needing to alter their ceiling in any way is generally pretty
small, so why settle for an ugly material that probably costs more
than neat, clean drywall?

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:57:07 GMT, someone wrote:

..... having
no load bearing walls just having steel or concrete beams, columns.

For a residence, is that really the advantage that you think it is?
Most residences, the people that live in them want them divided into
rooms. (If you live alone which I expect you do, this may not have
occurred to you.)

Since they are going to have dividing walls anyway, it is killing to
birds with one stone to make some of them structural! In a
residence, it is usually not worth the extra cost to eliminate all
interior bearing walls, just for the speculation that there is a
chance one of them might "have to" be moved later.


Reply to NG only - this e.mail address goes to a kill file.

Han Solo wrote:
I am thinking of ideas for building a house and more and more I am
wondering why we don't build houses more like office buildings.

I realize some of this is changing for example using concrete walls
(I am
planning on that so far), using Steel(also planning on that), and
having
no load bearing walls just having steel or concrete beams, columns.

One idea I have been considering as a design idea is to have all
ceiling
tiles thorughout the house and not have any drywall ceilings at all.

There are a number of reasons I think this might be a good idea:

The main one is the ase of access to infrastructure/utilities.
This is one of the main reasons they do it in office buildings.

With a tile celing you have a small space above the ceiling to access
and utilities, wiring, plumbing etc..

It makes it very easy to put in or move lighting outlets, run new
cables for networking, telecom, or catv etc.

After having the experience of trying to wire a 50yr old house for
new technolgies such as networking etc this is a huge plus in my
department.

Imagine being able to redo the lighting in a room without having to
worry about any drywall work at all, simple easy and quick as can be.
Want to take out those old fixtures and put some recessed lights
around
the room permiter? No problem...take out the old fixtures, replace
the
old tiles with new ones. Cut out where you want the new lights to be
installed and put them in. Boom your done, no patching, not cutting,
sanding painting etc.

Imagine wanting to run some new home network, phone, satellite tv,
security alarm, security camera lines or whatever. With celing
tiles,
you can have a raceway the whole length of the building to easily run
these lines without having to cut any holes in walls, or use fish
tape
etc.. it could be very simple matter of just running the wires in the
ceiling and dropping down into the wall you wanted. Same thing if
you
wanted to move a phone jack from one wall to another in the same
room...it would be much easier to do it from the ceiling space.


Am I wrong for questioning the way we have "always" built houses? Am
I
overlooking anything seriously wrong with this idea?

There might be considerations for making the ceiling fire-resistant.
Drywall is good at that.

Having said that, I remodeled a kitchen once, and put in a black
drop-ceiling
grid with 2-ft (rather than 2 x 4 ft) tiles. If I recall correctly,
the
tiles were... beveled or something so that they were not flush with
the grid:

-\___/- (not to scale)

Sorry for the ASCII art; it'll probably look better with a monospace
font.

Anyway, the total effect was pretty nice. I would certainly consider
doing
it again.

Cindy Hamilton

I used to own an old house that had been 'retrofitted' with drop
ceiling in every room. 2' x 4' panels in a grid thingy. It got very
old, looking at that.