This was posted on r/chapotraphouse2 before the ban, and I saved it the day before the subreddit was nuked. I’m not the OP, and because of how reddit saves posts I can’t find their username on the page.
I build Houses for the Ultra Wealthy. It’s worse than you think.
I live near Park City, UT. It’s known for having “the best snow on earth” for winter sports, rivaled only by the French and Swiss Alps, it’s also home to the Sundance film festival. The cost of property here is the highest in the State and one of the highest in the country, especially considering the insanely high availability of land. I build houses (I’m a plumber’s apprentice) that cost between 10-40 million dollars for many of the richest people in the country in Park City, and it’s so fucking bad. I would imagine it’s worse even than most of the people in this sub would think it is.
The first thing you need to realize is that these houses are hardly ever lived in, maybe stayed in a few weeks a year. They serve primarily to shelter money from taxes. These houses are so seldom used that they require entire crews of people, a dozen or so dedicated employees for each house, in charge of upkeeping them. Without the upkeep, they would have breakdowns costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain, they would become infested with rodents, AND gasp the yards would die and they’d get fined by their HOAs.
As a result of how little the owners use these houses, they have very little actual input into how these houses are made. Instead, they are designed by engineers, architects, and interior designers. Since the interior designers never have to live in these houses, they usually become so caught up in making it look cool so they can take pictures for their catalogs for advertising, they don’t even think about the practicality of what they are building. This leads to crazy things that are wasteful and useless. For instance, recently I had to scrap a 5,000 dollar part for an in wall “smart” toilet (aka a toilet that has a remote, plays music, has a built-in, temperature controlled bidet, heated seat, and remembers individual setting for 2-4 people depending on the brand) because they wanted to switch brands so that the toilet could be black. If you think about it for 2 fucking seconds, you can’t even tell whether a black toilet is clean before you sit on it.
Also the designers don’t care about how much the houses they build waste. They’ll install things that are so wasteful they’re illegal. In one house that I’m plumbing the master shower (which has other shower heads on top of this, such as body sprayers and a handshower) has a 12,000 dollar smart rainhead (that comes complete with dozens of settings, LED lights, speakers, and can sync the pulsation of the water to your music) that can dump 40 gallons a minute. To put that in perspective, the legal limit is 2.5 gallons per minute. The heating systems are massive and wasteful, heating the floors walls, and driveways (to melt sbow so they don’t have to be shoveled). The hot water and heating systems also need to be run at least once every two weeks (but preferably more) to keep them from breaking. The lighting will often be designed for antique style incandescent bulbs that are dim, but waste as much or more electricity than regular bulbs. They’ll install dozens of tablets, TVs, and other low voltage appliances that just sit their wasting electricity.
Regarding wastefulness, the designers will often make changes that cost thousands of dollars, like the 5000 dollar toilet part I was talking about above. They’ll also make us waste hundreds of pounds of pipe, wood, metal, wire, or anything other material because they decide the sink will look better in another part of the room. Sometimes they’ll add or remove entire rooms on a whim. One time I saw all of the walls of a house get changed from tile to rock, costing over a hundred thousand dollars. Why? Because the house was so big that it took years to build and when they got most of the way done with tiling it, tiling was out of style and rock walls were in.
The labor that goes into a few of these houses could fix flint. Their are several engineering and architectural firms as well as dozens of contracting and sub-conteacting companies dedicated specifically to building these mansions. Instead we have to spend our time slaving away to build houses that not only won’t be lived in, but are unpleasant to live in as well.
I know that this sub is mostly for shitposting, but I need somewhere to vent. There is so much more I want to say and I have dozens of stories like this, I’d be willing to post more if anyone is interested. I also know that I’m a scumbag for participating in this and I think about it every day. I’m only in it until I get through trade school and become certified, then I’m going to learn how to plumb hospitals, and once I’m confident in my ability to do that, I’m high tailing the fuck out of this shithole country and going somewhere that I can actually do something useful.
TL; but please read: Building houses for the ultra wealthy is surreal and depressing. I am reminded every day of Versailles
Oh yeah I remember this post. It kind of helped me feel better about leaving construction, as it made me remember just how much work I did was fairly needless. I helped remodel some 90’s office bathrooms that were holding up really well (and have already had fairly new fixtures put in some time before I was involved). The bathrooms were functionally great. The only glaring annoyance was the tacky yellow and black tile work.
Ann Romney trying to convince everyone she shops at Costco like a normal person. Some adviser clearly told her that she should try to tell people she has a strategy, so she claims she goes to all the outside aisles first before going to the center. The thing is, in a normal store like a grocery store, that makes sense because that’s where you’re likely to hit the bakery, fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, seafood, and frozen food.
At Costco, that’s tires, office furniture, and bulk packs of water. Amazing.
A friend has a friend who’s rich. They recently got a sliding door installed in the master bedroom of their ‘retreat’ home. That sliding door installation cost more than the average income in my country, and they’ll never use it.
My friend doesn’t understand why that ‘retreat’ home should be expropriated and opened for housing insecure people to live in. That wouldn’t be fair.
A person thinking there was no shortage of jobs and you could just get one if you applied, and that anyone that didn’t have a job was lazy, had something wrong with them or had a mental disorder.
