>I seriously don't understand this seeming cultural hate for wooden houses. Well, we do come from societies where having a house made of stone meant it wouldn'

>I seriously don't understand this seeming cultural hate for wooden houses. Well, we do come from societies where having a house made of stone meant it wouldn't entirely burn in the next war. >Look, you're emotionally attached to the kind of house construction you grew up in as a kid. I can get that. This isn't some misplaced nostalgia for archaic traditions. It's how everybody lives on my fucking continent. >But do you realize how freezing it gets in the northeast USA here? When it's -10°C or -20°C, I don't care how insulated your roof is, your walls matter a ton. Stone makes zero sense. I honestly couldn't tell how right or wrong you are. On one hand the countries I know that reach those temperatures do like wooden houses, on the other hand they have an overabundance of timber. In any case it's entirely irrelevant to the weather in most of the US, where they still build like that. >And even suppose you wanted a house made out of stone. It would just so much more expensive to build it's crazy. People don't have the money for it. Our cheap default building material is concrete blocks. But stone is still an option. >And that wooden houses aren't a "new cheap" thing -- I had friends in high school who lived in 150-year-old wooden houses. They're wonderful and charming, full of history. I have a 700 year old house round the corner. I don't know of any wooden building in the area older than the late 1600s. It's just not made to last. >Where does it come from? France. >Like, do you see news photos of destruction of trailer parks in hurricanes and blindly assume that's what happens to our houses (totally different thing) with a slight gust of wind? Because that's seriously the only thing I can guess here. Well, everybody's seen those images of houses torn by tornadoes, or rotting from flooding, or burned to a crisp, or just crumbling after a few decades of neglect. I'm looking into buying at the moment, and I've got my eyes on a few houses. All traditional houses made out of thick granite as we do here. The idea that someone would take on a debt that possibly spans decades over something that's not literally rock-solid is mind-boggling to me. So, yeah, it might be entirely cultural. But that's still one thing on which I'll never give an inch.