[lazide]

Eh, people have a terrible time renovating or adding anything in housing in Europe. A lot of construction doesn’t have those tubes.

It’s hard to articulate how wildly different habits are in Europe vs US around things like ‘what electrical appliances I have’ partially because of this.

Housing tends to be a lot smaller too, largely due to population density differences, but also overall differences in economic earning power and ease of buying things.

[ragall]

It's not any different from having to renovate a 40's house in the US. You'll have to redo all the plumbing and electrical system to current code. Corrugated tubes have been common since the 90s and mandatory shortly thereafter.

[lazide]

Most European housing is made of concrete, stone, or brick.

It absolutely is different from typical US housing, because unless you want to run surface mount everything (which most people don’t in residential), it’s an insane amount of work to run new anything.

‘40’s homes in the US, you typically just tear down to the studs, re-run new stuff, and throw up new drywall. Boom, done.

Unless you’re in a place that did block/brick etc like some of the big cities, then yeah it’s a nightmare there too.

[ragall]

To properly redo an old house, you'll have to redo the siding and probably the roof too.

[lazide]

Yes, if they weren’t redone separately. Each of them has their own lifecycles, so it’s rare they all get done at once.

At that point, most people will just do a full teardown.

[ragall]

A properly built house doesn't need a teardown for centuries.

[lazide]

‘Need’ vs ‘if you’re going to redo literally everything, why not make it more modern’.