A House Is Like a Human Body

Originally published at Substack:

What if we started thinking about a house more like a human body?

At first glance that probably sounds a little ridiculous. I get that. I’m not suggesting houses have feelings or need annual physicals. (or do they?) But after almost four decades of building homes, remodeling homes, and performing what feels more like an autopsy than a renovation… I’m not so sure the comparison is all that far off.

Lately there’s been a lot of discussion around health span versus life span. The notion of… it’s not just about how long we live. It’s about how well we live while we’re here.

You can technically live a long life while your body slowly struggles for decades. Poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, inflammation, environmental factors… etc, can quietly compound over time until eventually the body keeps score.

Homes aren’t all that different.

A house may technically stand for 100 years, but how well does it perform during those years? Is it comfortable? Healthy? Efficient? Durable? Or is it drafty, damp, mold-prone, expensive to maintain, and slowly deteriorating behind the walls while nobody notices?

Just like people, some homes start life with better genes than others.

And I don’t necessarily mean more expensive homes.

I’ve seen modest homes built decades ago that still perform remarkably well because somebody cared about the fundamentals. And I’ve seen expensive homes with serious hidden issues long before they should have had them.

A thoughtfully designed and carefully constructed home… regardless of size or price point… begins life with certain advantages:

✓proper water management

✓good structure

✓solid HVAC systems

✓attention to air sealing

✓quality materials

✓thoughtful detailing

Then comes maintenance. Or lifestyle, so to speak. The parallels start becoming hard to ignore.

 

Poor flashing details that allow water intrusion? Maybe that’s chronic inflammation.

Poor HVAC design and inadequate ventilation? Respiratory issues.

Electrical problems hidden inside walls? Nervous system disorders.

Mold and bad indoor air quality? Environmental health concerns we may not even fully understand yet.

And just like the human body, many problems stay hidden until symptoms become impossible to ignore.

We remodeled a home that was less than ten years old. From the outside it was pretty cool. A real showpiece with beautiful finishes and dramatic spaces. The kind of home most people would assume was extremely well built because … it looked the part.

But once demolition started, the story changed.

Standing inside a beautiful finished kitchen while looking at structural damage and water intrusion hidden behind the walls is a strange experience. Leaks. Improper detailing. Framing issues. Areas where water had clearly been finding pathways for years.

The homeowner loved the location but wanted to change the design. What none of us expected was how many hidden issues would reveal themselves once the walls and ceilings were opened up.

The house looked healthy until the autopsy began.

And honestly, there’s something frustrating about that as a builder. Not because houses are perfect… they never will be… but because many of these issues were preventable with a little more care, discipline, and understanding of how buildings actually work over time.

That project stayed with me because it reinforced something I’ve been learning in this industry:

We’ve become good at making compliant homes that photograph well on move-in day. I’m not convinced we’ve become equally good at helping them age gracefully.

In total fairness, the entire industry is under pressure right now.

Housing stock is behind, affordability is real, skilled labor is increasingly difficult to find, materials are expensive, schedules are compressed, and buyers are stretched thin. Builders are balancing budgets, labor shortages, regulations, and client expectations all at once. Most people in this industry are genuinely trying to do good work within difficult constraints.

What concerns me though, is that many homes today are being engineered not necessarily for long-term durability and performance, but to hit a certain price point.

Because unlike cosmetic issues, building science failures are slowly uncovered or can remain invisible for years. Water intrusion. Condensation. Poor ventilation. Thermal bridging. Improperly integrated systems. These aren’t always things you notice during a final walkthrough.

Building inspectors, rightfully, focus primarily on life safety and code compliance. Code is often the minimum acceptable standard … not necessarily the optimal long-term health plan for a home… because there is less of a performance component. There’s a difference between a house that passes inspection and a house that performs beautifully for generations.

Where does all this lead as housing becomes increasingly expensive and our housing stock continues to age?

I hope we don’t eventually find ourselves in a place where thoughtfully built, durable, healthy homes become increasingly difficult for average families to afford consistently. Maybe I’m overthinking that… I hope I am… But it’s hard not to notice some parallels to other parts of society where long-term preventative thinking often loses out to short-term cost pressures.

At the same time, I also think there’s some encouraging news in all of this.

Many of the most important building science decisions are not necessarily the most expensive ones.

✓Proper flashing details.
✓Thoughtful HVAC and ventilation.
✓Good drainage planning.
✓Air sealing.
✓Moisture management.
✓Leak detection.
✓Structural details.

These aren’t glamorous line items, and most homeowners will never see them once the drywall goes up, but they can dramatically affect how a home performs and ages over time.

In many ways, it’s similar to preventative healthcare.

Exercise, sleep, nutrition, and routine checkups are often far less expensive than dealing with a major illness later.

Maybe part of the solution is cultural.

Maybe we as homeowners, builders, architects, engineers, and tradespeople need to place greater value on the long-term wellbeing of our housing stock — not just how homes photograph on completion day.

Because when homes fail prematurely, the consequences ripple outward to costly repairs, wasted natural resources, higher energy consumption, avoidable health concerns, insurance losses, financial stress, and ultimately the loss of structures that could have served families well for generations.

Again, I don’t pretend to have all the answers here. These are simply observations from someone who has spent most of his adult life building and dissecting homes.

But I’ve come to believe building science isn’t just some niche technical conversation reserved for architects, engineers, and building nerds like me.

At the end of the day, people are living inside these homes every single day.

They breathe the air.
They feel the drafts.
They pay the utility bills.
They deal with the maintenance.
They live with the consequences… good or bad… often long after the builder has left the jobsite.

Maybe houses and human bodies aren’t so different after all.

Both require thoughtful design.
Both benefit from good habits.
Both hide problems beneath the surface.
And both tend to age better when small issues are addressed before they become catastrophic ones.

Some homes just seem to age gracefully. Others… not so much. The longer I do this work, the harder it becomes not to see the parallels. The best homes aren’t necessarily the ones that impress us the most on day one… they’re the ones still performing, functioning, and looking beautiful decades later.

Don Farinelli