5 ms·
I wonder why people don't use this in Europe. It's mostly airbrick or brick detached houses and concrete apartment blocks.
by ajuc 4y ago
I wonder why people don't use this in Europe. It's mostly airbrick or brick detached houses and concrete apartment blocks.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoOne reason I've heard is the much higher cost (and lower availability) of appropriate lumber. The forests were mostly cut down hundreds of years ago, while in north America, that process is still underway (though thankfully slowing a bit).
- eugenekolo 4y agoI'm not sure forests being cut down is the problem these days. Wood is one of the most renewable and sustainable materials out there. Old growth has been cut down, or become out of most people's price range at this point in NA, but farmed fast growing pine is cheap and sustainable. Perhaps NA has more land to support such farms though.
- wiredfool 4y agoIt's not in Europe. Wood is expensive here. A 2x4 stick here (Ireland) is ~ 12 eur at the local home center. And yes, we have tree plantations, but they're mostly sitka spruce, and there aren't _that_ many of them compared to potential demand for wood.
- flavius29663 4y agoThe US cut down its forests too! Since the early 20th century, it started to replant more trees than it cut, and now has an ever increasing area of forests, much more than in 1930s for example.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoTotal area is up .. from the 1930s. However, some of the most wooded areas (e.g. the Pacific NW) are currently at about 20% of what they were when europeans arrived.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago> that process is still underway No it's not, the total amount of forest in the USA is increasing.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoOnly since the "trough" caused by human forestry. It is still way, way down from the levels when Europeans first arrived.
- kome 4y agobecause we like real buildings :) now seriously: i have seen some wood structure in northern Europe. but in general, using bricks creates sturdier, better isolated houses. that can resists for centuries, literally. they don't mold. they don't burn. so why not? it's just better from my point of view.
- xxpor 4y agoMost of Europe outside of the Alps don't really have to worry about earthquakes either.
- number6 4y agoAnd they don't evolve. They are hard to replace and are expensive. Most Houses need to last 30 or 50 years. European Houses last twice as long. Instead of modern houses there are so many old bad isolated houses with chimneys for firewood instead of heat pumps and solar roofs.
- kome 4y agoI think I disagree, from experience, old houses can be retrofitted quite successfully to the modern age, while wooden houses just seem to age much faster.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoPlenty of hundred and more year old wooden houses where I live in Norway. It can be hard to tell though until you see someone take off the external planks to renew them and you seethe solid baulks of timber underneath. My wooden house was built in 1953 with a concrete watertight cellar serving as the foundation. The wood doesn't start until more than half a metre above ground. I see no reason why it shouldn't last another fifty years or more.
- abathologist 4y ago> Most Houses need to last 30 or 50 years Why? It seems absurd to me to only have a dwelling last for half a lifetime. This view seems to assume a disposable, consumerist logic, which seems at odds in my view both from reasonable use of energy and time and with a sustainable civilization.
- betaby 4y agoThey are not comparable at all in quality, sturdiness and fire resistance. Since you are paying for a home most of your working life anyway one would better have a real thing.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoMy previous house was a balloon framed townhouse built in 1930. My current house is a balloon framed house built in 1940. For the same amount of money you get a house that is 2 or 3 times larger and yet more power efficient when you build with wood, and both of the houses I have owned had 2 or 3 families grow up and old in them before mine. In Europe and Asia they build with stone and concrete, and people make due with less space, and they can't afford to heat them without cheap Russian gas. It's good that houses in the UK are finally required to be built with some insulation, but Europe is decades behind on this.
- nawitus 4y agoThere are countries in Europe where wood buildings are common (and even most popular option for e.g. single-family homes). They can be considered the slightly cheaper option though.
- rr888 4y agoCould it be that European houses are much smaller? America usually favors size over quality.
- ilyt 4y agoProbably but big houses here are also built with brick
- orthoxerox 4y agoThey do. Finland and Russia love their timber houses (although Russia still mostly uses solid timber walls due to the lower quality of lumber and the lack of skilled labor).