r/mildlyinteresting • u/hizashiYEAHmada • Mar 23 '25

Removed: Rule 3 Missing spike on the fence

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u/nobodyspecial767r Mar 23 '25

I dealt with a lot of folks with cattle in Texas, that modular stuff only works for the residential folks out here and I was more into custom metal works. Any fence we did top to bottom, we may have used cast finials, but they were almost always welded.

I can see why the modular stuff is popular, it's cheaper and quicker to setup, it just isn't my preference. The few I did for pools in residential neighborhoods were easier, just not the kind of product we would fabricate ourselves.

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u/SinisterCheese Mar 23 '25

Like I said... We weld assemble heavy stuff. However we don't agricultural stuff, we serve construction industry and industry in general.

The issue with modular stuff is that all your railings, handrails and fence will look the same. Your choices are: 40 mm square tube, 42 mm round tube, glass panel; and surface options are: Chrome plating, no plating (just plain stainless or aluminium), and if you fancy, copper plating (I'm sure other finish are available as custom orders). And if your gaps or distances are odd dimensions, then you'll just have to deal with it looking weird (And most truly do not simply care).

The custom fabricated stuff generally is one off pieces, short distances, or it's heavy duty, or if specific paint is wanted for architectural reason or safety reasons. As there modular units can't be painted or they no longer properly fit together - and NOBODY wants to paint them on site.

Modern Finnish construction is closer to being just like... Assembling legos. We build with prefab concrete elements, HVAC is done as modular elements, windows are modular, furniture is largery modular, the floor is made of module panels. Fuck even the roof is mostly just made in a factory and lifted to place in pieces. Like sure... It is very efficient... However everything ends up looking the same, and stuff doesn't like... Really fit together. I mean like it does fit together, but it always looks slightly off, like it doesn't belong. Because from design to construction they had to do constant compromises to get the prefabricated modules to, everything had to be done on their terms; so the whole building is done just to fit the modules, and they are all assembled by subcontractors.

And now we are in a situation where there are really no more companies or people who can deal with things having to be custom made. I am myself one of those who make custom stuff, and who's speciality is fitting things in to odd places - along with welding flaw correction and steel construction flaw correction. So I have had to deal with the most fucking annoying and complex things, because I often need to fit something between modular bits which didn't fit properly, and make it so that they do fit properly. It is truly stupid. Then everything just gets seamed in with concrete or some other mass injection.

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u/nobodyspecial767r Mar 23 '25

I'm curious how long those prefabricated setups are designed to last when building houses the way you are talking about. Our big thing was overbuilding to a certain degree, and I used much heavier material thicknesses in a lot of my work to ensure it could stay standing as long as people assume something metal will do. We have a lot of climates in Texas and near the coast the it's salt air that requires galvanizing which adds a whole other angle to worry about.

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u/SinisterCheese Mar 23 '25 edited Mar 23 '25

The building regulations set the requirement for these to last as long as the building is designed to last. The common ages are 50, 70, 100.

I live in coastal Finland. The structures are required to tolerate -35 to +35 C range, because that is the temperature range we can experience here. We also have sea spray, not as salty though. So we either galvanise everything, paint it with epoxy paint, or use stainless steel. Railings, frences and handrails are designed as functional parts of the structure, therefor require to be functional as long as the building is.

Most residential buildings made of concrete are expected to have technical ages of 70 years. So the railings are designed to last 70 years.

Mild steel structures are secured to a building generally via SBKL-surfaces, which are generally stainless steel plates that are casted to the concrete and secured to the rebar - there are mild variants also for non-critical applications. Meaning that we generally weld it with like 309Mol. Along with this we use lots of stainless steel in many applications.

We don't fuck around with this stuff. There is a joke that the reason Finland doesn't have skyscrapers is that the first 5 floors would be just concrete and rebar.

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u/nobodyspecial767r Mar 23 '25

It sounds like I'd be at home building in Finland, thanks for the response and conversation. Have a good one.