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As an European I'm always amazed at how much lumber North Americans use in their houses, with their timber frames. I didn't know that was a thing until I stared

• thecopy 6y ago
  Europe is bigger than where you live. Scandinavia builds a lot with wood.
  • makomk 6y ago
    Even UK housebuilders seem to be putting up a lot more timber framed houses than they traditionally used to, just often with an imitation brick facade.
  • unglaublich 6y ago
    > Europe is bigger than where you live. Scandinavia builds a lot with wood. OP is likely aware of such anecdotes. Masonry is popular in (central and southern) Europe because forests were already cut down centuries ago so lumber prices are generally high. The abundance of lumber in Scandinavia and previously in N.A. thus explains why wooden structures are/were popular there. So, the hypothesis that N.A. will build more with masonry and less with lumber is an interesting one. http://masonrydesign.blogspot.com/2014/01/european-construction-versus-north.html http://masonrydesign.blogspot.com/2014/01/european-construct...
    • CapitalistCartr 6y ago
      Wood is still extremely common here in North America. Much of our construction lumber comes from "tree farms", intentionally planted forests growing trees as a crop.
      • swiley 6y ago
        Where I grew up there were more "tree farms" than housing. Anyone who says housing is expensive because land is finite hasn't driven more than an hour out of the city.
        • dimitrios1 6y ago
          Housing is expensive because land where people want to live and where jobs are is finite.
          • zip1234 6y ago
            That combined with zoning and other land use restrictions preventing larger buildings that can have more housing.
            • swiley 6y ago
              I don't know why this was downvoted. I live in a fairly developed suburb outside DC and when I get on top of my building all I see for miles outside of the tiny mall I live in are trees, parking lots, and max 2 story (usually 1) buildings. Most of the US is even less dense than this and it's largely due to ridiculous zoning.
              • dimitrios1 6y ago
                The zoning didn't come from nowhere. It's no secret the Federal, State, and Local governments encourage home ownership through policies, programs, and specific tax benefits. It then logically follows that single family homes are the golden standard in America. Which then logically follows that single family homes are built a lot (which do require much space). It then logically follows that the people who move into single family homes want single family home neighbors, not dense apartment or housing structures, as evidenced by the zoning laws which are typically passed at city councils with vocal citizen participation. Read into other reasons or causes that surround those facts (NIMBYism, racism, whatever-ism), but these are the basics. I also would expect any group of people to act similar fashion, regardless of demographics or other superficial characteristics. People are protective of their neighborhoods. So that is to say, the situation we have arrived at, however unfortunate, is entirely unsurprising, and not that hard to figure out why it is so.
    • thechao 6y ago
      Where I live (Texas), the alternative to wood is steel. Finding crews & builders to do custom steel framed houses is harder. Although, the price difference is such that it might make sense, now.
    • kaybe 6y ago
      I suppose the way old European cities are constructed, with a lot of smaller houses right next to each other and narrow roads, also makes them a much larger fire hazard when made of wood compared to the spaced-out suburban way of building.
  • hnbad 6y ago
    A lot of newer homes are also built with plenty of wood an drywall in Germany. But if you live in a city or don't live near an area that has seen a lot of single family housing construction over the past decade you probably wouldn't know that because most houses you've seen yourself are made of brick or rebar.
• lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I do not see why I would want to use brick rather than lumber. Wood plus proper insulation plus drywall is quicker, easily modifiable, and lets wireless signals through. It makes almost everything a much simpler do it yourself project.
  • smcl 6y ago
    I'm not a builder but what you say makes sense particularly if you're building your own house. I've only ever lived in stone or brick houses so I don't really know what timber-framed houses are like in person, and my gut tells me I’d still prefer the former I feel like it's a good time to introduce HN to "groverhaus" - a DIY extension performed by a mod on the SomethingAwful forums to a property in the Great Dismal Swamp. It's really amazing: https://twitter.com/boldlybuilding2/status/1197999531671130112 https://twitter.com/boldlybuilding2/status/11979995316711301...
    • feb 6y ago
      For those, like me, who didn't know, Groverhaus is a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groverhaus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groverhaus
      • smcl 6y ago
        Ah sorry, folks like you who aren't familiar with Groverhaus were exactly who I was posting that for - I guess the twitter thread doesn't really give enough background. The best intro IMO to the 'haus is unfortunately a paywalled episode of the podcast "Well There's Your Problem". It's a good podcast though so worth a few bucks a month
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • wongarsu 6y ago
    In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations. That durability is hard to achieve with wood frames and drywall. But the major driving force is probably wood prices. We have less forest, and those forests have been farmed for wood for centuries. Long straight hard timber takes way to long to grow to be used for anything but accent pieces. (Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification, countries with more forest like e.g. Sweden tend to build wooden houses in the countryside). In industrial buildings you sometimes see something akin to American construction methods, but they usually use aluminum instead of wood
• dkdbejwi383 6y ago
  North Americans even use wooden shingles for their roof instead of ceramic or slate tiles, metal panelling (zinc etc), which are more common in my experience in Europe.
  • CapitalistCartr 6y ago
    Wood shingles (shakes) are used, but extremely rarely. The most common roofing type is asphalt shingles. Tile and metal roofs are far more common than wood.
  • nemo44x 6y ago
    Depends where you live. There are towns in California where it’s all ceramic. Skate is popular in some older homes but it’s quite expensive. Most homes have asphalt tiles as they are reliable, easy to install, and inexpensive vs the other options. Siding however has a lot of variety. In the northeast you see a lot of wood siding (cedar shingle) where as in many other parts it’s aluminum or vinyl (made to look like wood) or stucco.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Nobody in the northeast or anywhere is using shakes for siding except where required for regulatory compliance (bylaws that mandate historic looking materials and other crap like that).
      • nemo44x 6y ago
        Where I live it’s pretty much all you see. The homes are old but hardly any of them have regulatory requirements. I recently did a renovation which required 2 outside walls to be modified and they put cedar shingle up to match the existing siding.
  • dylan604 6y ago
    I would have thought that the extremely high cost of insurance premiums for wood shingles had pretty much eliminated them from use, especially for new consttruction or roof replacements.
• orthoxerox 6y ago
  > Perhaps North Americans will start building more brick homes. Why build anything out of brick when you have concrete? Aerated concrete blocks are almost perfect for low and even some medium density housing. Additional insulation is a bit annoying, but for many states it won't even be needed if the wall is one full block thick.
  • gmueckl 6y ago
    Concrete production has a terrible CO2 footprint. This is is a pretty big source of industrial CO2 emissions (some sources say 8% of worldwide CO2 emissions). Burned bricks seems to be a bit better in this regard, but I don't have an good source.
  • wongarsu 6y ago
    I think GP meant "brick" as "rectangular block used in building". Most buildings in most of Europe are made from these. Bricks made from clay are indeed not common in new constructions today. Clay bricks might look nice, but in buildings we rarely expose the brick so that doesn't matter
• aivisol 6y ago
  YMMV: As an European I have my house almost completely built from wood: structure frame, roof beams, floors, exterior siding, interior floor, doors, window frames, furniture etc. I would not call it a forest cabin, it is very real house, with 2 floors.
• jollybean 6y ago
  In Europe you have 'post and beam' - the beams are often made of wood. The brick is just the wall, not necessary load-bearing. North America has many brick homes as well, but it's outside the framing. Brick is a terrible insulator, most of us would freeze, we need insulation.
  • CapitalistCartr 6y ago
    In that type of usage, the brick is decorative; it doesn't act as insulation, which is behind the brick.
  • ReptileMan 6y ago
    Strongly disagree. Slit and other types of brick with cavities air inside are very good insulators.
• altano 6y ago
  In California, where earthquakes are a concern, wood frames are highly preferable. I think it’s illegal to even build a house with unreinforced masonry (eg plain brick) since it’s a death trap.
  • dimitrios1 6y ago
    Do you have any sources to share about masonry buildings being death traps? In the highlands of Greece (where my grandparents are from), earthquakes are frequent, and almost every house is built out of stone. I am not sure if they are unreinforced or not these days or have been retrofitted, but many are 300-400 years old and still standing. I did find this https://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/WCEE2012_2227.pdf https://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/WCEE2012_2227.pdf which is a fascinating analysis of the damage to the unreinforced masonry buildings during the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes (which poor quality materials was found to be one of the largest factors of resulting damage)
    • Enginerrrd 6y ago
      This is a universally acknowledged truth in civil engineering in the context of seismic design and international building codes. For sources... I'd say check out ASCE 7-16 Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Building and Other Structures, table 12.2-1. For seismic design categories D, E, and F, even Ordinary Reinforced Masonry Buildings (Bearing wall systems) are simply "NP" or not permitted. There simply isn't a category for "unreinforced masonry" because it will not hold the shear. The problem is it has no ductility. That is essentially the measure of a material to resist force even after deformation. Masonry is very stiff, but it is brittle and fractures as it deforms at which point it loses ALL of it's ability to hold shear in the direction which it is being applied. Reinforced masonry will retain some capacity to resist shear after deformation because the steel inside will continue to resist shear. In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias. It may be luck, it may be the effect of soil and rock characteristics acting to dampen seismic ground accelerations at the right frequency of seismic waves, it almost certainly is exceptional construction technique, methodology and design, and it likely combines with several other factors I haven't listed here. Personally, I suspect the load-bearing components of the buildings you're talking about are actually wood.
• stefs 6y ago
  this comment on reddit explains it quite well: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l1gal0/why_are_homes_and_buildings_in_the_us_made_with/gk0imdq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l1gal0/why_a... > Architecture and construction practices are regional and cultural. What works gets repeated and over time it becomes so common that people forget why things are done a certain way. generally, you use what's available.
• voldacar 6y ago
  NA has more forests than europe, so local lumber supply is generally higher. Also, lumber is way more earthquake-resistant than plain brick or stone, which can be very important depending on where you live
• vlucas 6y ago
  Yes, almost all US housing is timber frames (either 2x4 or 2x6 studs), but the exterior veneer depends greatly on where you live in the US. Where I live in Oklahoma City, almost all of our houses are brick or stone on the outside. It's a veneer so it's not structural, but it provides a great thermal layer beyond just insulation between the timber studs. Brick is made locally in Oklahoma because the "red dirt" soil has a lot of clay in it, so bricks are actually the same price or cheaper than many siding products. Siding is really only widely used on second floors and "bonus rooms", etc. since brick is too heavy for the second floor and would require a lot more structural support. Most of the HOAs in newer neighborhoods around OKC will even require 70-80% brick or stone exteriors because it's lower maintenance and less likely to become an eyesore with fading/chipping paint, etc. So the requirements are pretty regional.
• mikewarot 6y ago
  There has to be some sort of framing inside of the brickwork holding up the roof and upper floors.