15 ms·

The concepts in the article sound foreign to me - they are, since I live in the EU. In Central European countries, most houses are built to last 80-150+ years.

• bumbada 5y ago
  Europe has much more density of people living in the same space. And Asia is even more dense. In the US there are things that do not make sense because people density is so low there, even in places like New York, most people live in individual homes, spread over a big area. When I was living in China I saw lost of things made sense that do not make sense in Europe just by the economic of scale of so much people living in such small areas.
  • marcinzm 5y ago
    >In the US there are things that do not make sense because people density is so low there, even in places like New York, most people live in individual homes, spread over a big area. That's patently false. In NYC only 9% of homes are single unit detached and in NY state it's only 41%.
  • 411111111111111 5y ago
    While it's true that Europe has a few cities that are significantly more dense then new York, your phrasing makes it sound like the average town is more dense then NY is... And that's not the case I don't know the exact number, but there are very few cities in Europe with a density higher then NY (10,716.36 people/km2), and i'm pretty sure they're all in France, Greece and Italy
  • IshKebab 5y ago
    The use of bricks over wood can't be due to population density because the practice goes back hundreds of years. I think it is partly due to tradition, and partly due to climate differences.
    • manmal 5y ago
      I think it has to do with prices and available know-how. You can build a typical US home for 1/2 or less than a Central European home. Right now, if I were to build a 150m2 (1600sqft) home, that would cost me at least €250k. More likely 300. Zoning often requires houses to be of a certain build and look, so building cheaper than that is often not even an option. As far as I know, a US home of that size usually costs $100k? Please someone correct me if I‘m wrong.
      • greedo 5y ago
        The average cost per square foot for new construction is between $100-$155 in the US. That might be a bit low considering current lumber prices though. So a 1600 sq/ft house would be between $160K-$248K.
        • manmal 5y ago
          Thank you!
    • xyzzyz 5y ago
      I think it is pretty conceivable that structural lumber could have been more expensive than bricks in the past. Before modernity, there was scarcely enough food for everyone, so using it for something like forest would have been relatively expensive. For this reason, today more Europe is covered with forests than in 1700. On the other hand, bricks only need small amount of land for extraction of substrates, and some fuel, which didn’t have to be prime firewood like we’re used to now, but more like thin twigs from coppiced trees.
      • Someone 5y ago
• fpoling 5y ago
  In US in many areas the earthquakes safety requires to build lighter houses. Plus many areas are subject to tornados and hurricanes when it is rather pointless to build anything that lasts 100 years. On that time scale the house will be destroyed or badly damaged in any case.
  • manmal 5y ago
    Please bear in mind that I don’t mean the following in a cynic way. Damage from storms is horrible, and I feel for the families losing their homes every year. There was a tornado just a few days ago in the Czech Republic (not far from where I live), and as far as I can see, houses did lose their roofs, or the shingles at least, but the structures remained mostly intact. Many houses have basements in which people could hide in relative safety. Five people died unfortunately, not sure how many of those were in their homes at the time. But I think those rather sturdy houses made of bricks did infact save a lot of lives, and prevented many more from totally losing their home. To me it feels deeply illogical to build a house basically made of light wood frames when I know a hurricane can blow it away while I‘m inside of it. I‘m not sure about earthquakes, we have them of course, but they are less severe than in other areas in the world.
    • strstr 5y ago
      The frequency and maximum strength of tornadoes are higher in the central US. Casual skim of the wikipedia page indicates about as many F4 tornadoes in Europe as F5 tornadoes in the US since 2000.
    • octopoc 5y ago
      There are many tornadoes where I live and most of the houses don’t have basements. Directly in the path of the tornado, houses built on a slab were completely gone, leaving only a clean slab. This happened to a few entire neighborhoods. But, tornadoes here follow similar paths over a fifty year period. When I bought my house I found a hole in the fifty year tornado map and I’ve never had one come near me. Every couple decades the patterns may shift to other patterns, but generally speaking both the new patterns and old patterns have all happened in the last fifty years.
• AngryData 5y ago
  I mean there is no reason wooden structures shouldn't last over 100 years if not double or triple that except for lack of maintenance, usually involving leaking roof or a negligent design that traps water. I grew up in a house that was 150 years old and the only thing not wooden on it was the roofing material, although when it was first built it likely was cedar shake. The walls were wood, the floors were wood, the siding was wood, and any interior plaster was backed with wood. We never had to question any of the woods condition despite the majority of it being completely original.
  • manmal 5y ago
    Let’s add a lack of termites, no lightning strikes, and great care about open fires to the list of requirements. While I personally like the idea (and smell!) of pure wood houses, I would not want to live in one permanently. Wood is a great material for sure, but why not mix it with other materials to make things safer and more sturdy.
    • insaneirish 5y ago
      > but why not mix it with other materials to make things safer and more sturdy. Because wood is a renewable resource, not a source of carbon emissions (like concrete), and is absolutely strong enough for single family homes.
    • belval 5y ago
      One other drawback of wooden houses is that wood absorbs moisture so in winter you have to run a humidifier because the air moisture is basically non-existent and that will irritate your nose and throat. I'll take a typical drywall panels on a wooden frame over wooden walls.
      • Johnny555 5y ago
        Wood can't continually absorb moisture, at some point it would become saturated. I always thought that the reason that winter air is dry is because warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so as you heat it, relative humidity decreases. So, for example, if it's 5C outside with 50% relative humidity, if you heat that air to 22C, then it will have only 17% relative humidity. But modern houses (even wood ones) are so well sealed that even in winter you could end up with too much humidity inside just from normal activities (cooking, bathing, breathing).
• ajuc 5y ago
  Yup, American building culture is so weird.
• crazygringo 5y ago
  Every thread that's ever about US housing construction, some Europeans chime in to talk about how strange it seems to them to build houses out of wood, rather than stone/brick/etc that, as you put it, will "last for a very long time". Here's the thing, though: most Europeans seem to be suffering some pretty serious misconceptions. First, Americans build out of wood because we have wood, lots of it. Europeans don't skip wood because brick or stone is superior -- it's because Europe is largely deforested. Europe doesn't have wood for people to use at the same scale. Second, wooden houses last a plenty long time. "80-150+ years", as you put it, is entirely expected for a well-constructed wooden house. Neighborhoods that date from, say, 1850, e.g. in New England, have plenty of old wooden homes that people adore because of their character. Third, wood construction has a ton of advantages. Not only is it less expensive to build, but it's tremendously more energy-efficient when filled with insulation. Brick and stone homes are absolute energy guzzlers both in hot summers and cold winters. And remember, e.g. in New York State you're dealing with 100°F (38°C) summers and -10°F (-23°C) winters. Insulation matters. The idea that American homes are somehow lower quality or shorter-lasting because they're built out of wood is a myth through and through. To the contrary, they're built out of wood because that's the best construction for local climate and availability.
  • newguy886 5y ago
    ROTFL
  • zdragnar 5y ago
    Insulation does matter, but American insulation is also pretty strange- it is all rated by R value, which is only meaningful if you have a really good airtight seal. Any drafting ruins the insulative value very quickly. Aerated concrete doesn't have that issue, because the concrete cells are closed and don't draft. If you end up with a poorly fitted window or 50+ mph winds, it doesn't let air through. OTOH, totally agree about wood. Cheap(er), plentiful, and most importantly, everyone already knows how to work it and has the tools to do so. Masonry work is physically harder, requires a sounder foundation that won't settle at all due to the increased weight, and there are fewer people willing to do the work. Getting anyone to do foam or aircrete is impossible- you have to watch a bunch of YouTube videos and DIY it yourself.
• dcolkitt 5y ago
  It doesn't economic make sense to build homes to last 100+ years. Equity markets have historically returned 8% per year. You're much better off cutting corners, investing the money, then fixing the problems in the future with your compounded wealth. Pretend you have two options, you can build a home that lasts forever or a house that will fall apart in a half century but is 10% cheaper. By year 40, you'll have enough wealth accumulated to buy two new replacement homes.
  • oblio 5y ago
    The problem with that logic is that once applied pervasively, as it is in the US, you end up with many places where you don't want to live.
    • philwelch 5y ago
      So you tear them down. Japanese housing, to name another example, is routinely torn down and replaced with new construction. The problem is that much of the US makes it needlessly expensive to do the "tear down and replace with new construction" bit.
• jandrewrogers 5y ago
  The US has very different environmental constraints than Europe when it comes to construction. We have strong earthquakes across much of the country, which does violence to masonry. We have more severe and extreme weather than exists in Europe. The US has prodigious quantities of cheap timber for construction, which is increasingly an anachronism in Europe. American construction is optimized for the American environment. Also, the idea that this construction doesn’t last centuries is evidently false, many people live in wood houses built in the 19th and 18th century. The tl;dr: US housing is highly optimized for local conditions, as is the case everywhere. If you built European housing in much of the US it would be destroyed by the ambient environment or not compliant with safety regulations.
• gjhh244 5y ago
  In Finland we have 100+ years old log houses still in good condition. Wood lasts just fine, as long as design, building and maintenance are done right. As some have pointed out, wooden buildings are also way, way more ecological than concrete ones. They capture carbon long-term, while concrete production causes major carbon emissions.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• matttproud 5y ago
  You pay for the land and all that other blah-blah-blah aside: Having grown up in the United States and lived over a decade in various parts of Europe, I find U.S. construction quality and expectations (esp. modern) absolutely dismal. It’s truly in the space of relative deprivation. In no way are most of the property structures worth their market prices (pre-bubble). I spoke to a Swiss colleague who lives part time in the States recently about this. He attempted to have a house built to modern Swiss design spec. where he was living (climatically similar to the Schweizer Mittelland) and gave up due to infeasibility. Money was not the problem; knowledge, at-grade quality inputs, etc. are all lacking in the United States. And I’d believe it being in CH now and today. I’ve kept an eye open for quality execution on all of my return trips (various parts of the country), and I just don’t see anything that can hold a candle to modern construction in DACH. Simple quality of life improvement for many buildings Stateside would be retrofitting these onto more doors: https://planet.ag/produkte/produkteuebersicht/ https://planet.ag/produkte/produkteuebersicht/. Folks deserve noise, smell, and climatic isolation. You don’t know what you are missing. I’d easily spend $50 a night more for hotels that’d use these. I don’t want to be able to hear a mouse fart from a room down the hall unattenuated at perfect fidelity.
  • manmal 5y ago
    To add to that - it’s a totally different industry, but Tesla cars made in China are known to be superior in quality compared to the US produced one‘s.
  • oblio 5y ago
    What's that thing in your link?
  • yourapostasy 5y ago
    > ...and I just don’t see anything that can hold a candle to modern construction in DACH. You say "Money was not the problem". I take that to mean your friend was reasonably not willing to pay as much as an order of magnitude more in the US than average (say a range of $300-1K psf for just the improvement and not including the dirt). Generally, if he went to high-end commercial builders, opened a checkbook, and said, "use these materials and parts, build to these specs and tolerances", he'll get whatever he wants in the US. Compare average US tract residential SFH construction build quality to what you find in private venture companies that builds and operate their own MFH's. While the interiors are similar, the private venture companies are staffed by people who know what will and will not work in the bones of the structure over the investment payoff timeline. They won't care about insulation for the tenants' benefit, but they will make very certain for example that the walls, roof and foundation stand for as long as they project to hold the investment. The US aggressively min-maxes for the wealthy capital-holding class. It is no accident that if you want something done right and will last, you will avail yourself of the same kinds of resources that class will use themselves.
• johnchristopher 5y ago
  To add a counterpoint to the conversation: I recently had to deal with a house built in the 70's, western Europe. It's now basically four walls and a roof. No isolation. No central heating except for the first floor. Gaz boilers for hot tap water, connected to outside gaz cylinders you replace every two months. Electricity will be hard to redo, actual central heating too. The costs to get it up to date will be another house. Utility costs while it was inhabited were through the roofs. In the 70's, it was easy money and full employment for a lot of people and single house income could buy you such house. Some people built houses for themselves that wouldn't last more than a generation and wouldn't care at all about their descendants.
• moogly 5y ago
  I also live in the EU. It's not foreign to me because I live in Scandinavia where we have plenty of wood. In Scandinavia (and the Baltics and parts of Russia) we build houses largely the same way as they do in North America. Western Platform Framing construction, though lately Swedish Platform Framing is taking over since it has improved insulation and fewer thermal bridges inbetween floors and thus much better for passive houses. I suspect it will take over in North America in a couple of decades. Advanced Framing (which is largely meant to lower costs, but also leaves more space for in-wall insulation since it has 24" studs on center) in the US isn't really taking off that quickly, but maybe we'll see a combination of the two. https://youtu.be/LUthssuOYks?t=262 https://youtu.be/LUthssuOYks?t=262