Demography of Houses: US Slab-on-Grade Lifespan

[Stephen Tashi]

Are there any online statistics about the demography of houses? - e.g. how many existing homes are 45 years old, how many are 46 years old etc. ?

Property tax information includes the date of construction, so I'd think that the demography of houses would be a fertile field for academic research.

I'm (idley) curious about statistics concerning the lifespan of "slab on grade" houses in the USA. In that style of construction, all the plumbing is buried under concrete. I wonder how long it usually lasts before the economical solution is to tear the house down and start over.

 

[jedishrfu]

I found this reference article for starters:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-15160-8_5

You might contact a realtor and ask them what can be done. They may have an interest if your research helps them sell houses.

 

[BillTre]

There are other approaches to fixing plumbing.

I was working in an older campus building with pipes that were old and developing a lot of pinholes leaks (through corrosion, galvinized pipes I believe (and on a committee reviewing ways to fix it)).
One approach was to:
1) drain the water
2) blast off the corroded innerds with little beads
3) the blow in a resin to polymerized on the inside

Another approach was used on the old sewer line for our road. It was leaking in sediment whih the water company did not want to process and have clogging up their pipes. Rather than digging out the sewer line for the whole block, they did the following:
1) They ran a line through the sewer line from one end of the road to the other,
2) then pulled through a resin impregnated sock from one end to another
3) then they inflated the sock with pressure from one end and then blew steam through. The heat caused the resin to polymerize.
4) this made a sealed tube in the sewer (no one could use it for about a day)
5) they then went down the road with a hole saw cutting holes into the main pipe and glued in new connections for each house. The old connections were dug up the previous day or two.
This was a much cheaper, quicker, and less disruptive approach to fixing the sewer pipe than the old fashioned way.

 

[jedishrfu]

There was a documentary a while back about the houses made after WW2 (Levitt towns ??) and how their suburban infrastructure is falling apart. I remember the announcer saying that newer subdivisions thrive over the older ones and malls move to where the people are so the older communities lose businesses and money to repair the infrastructure.

Here's a BBC take on Levitt town:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15598511

I think its this documentary but I'm not sure: