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Modern building construction is cheaper and doesn't demand old growth timber, but it's also much less resilient during a house fire. We use smaller dimensional

Modern building construction is cheaper and doesn't demand old growth timber, but it's also much less resilient during a house fire. We use smaller dimensional lumber, it has less densely packed tree rings causing it to burn faster, and we use I beams made out of 2x3s and OSB instead of solid lumber. A house made in the 30s could survive a long time before collapse in a fire; what we have now collapses much faster. There are definite benefits to modern techniques that are less resource intensive and protecting our remaining old growth forests is important, but we're sacrificing a lot of valuable properties as well.

xnx 3y ago
Do new building codes account for this? Even given the worse materials, I would expect a house built today to be much safer (from fire, hurricane, tornado, etc.) than one built 100 years ago.
- foofie 3y ago
  > Do new building codes account for this? Yes. Survivability to fire is explicitly listed as a requirement, and different classes of buildings have strict requirements on survivability (i.e., how long a structure must remain safe while subjected to a fire). > I would expect a house built today to be much safer (...) It is, but there are nuances. For example, modern houses have additional requirements on energy efficiency, which mean thermal insulation. Elements used in thermal insulation applications are regulated, but it turned out that some assumptions regarding flammability ended up not being met under some circumstances. Consequently, we've started to see a few incidents such as the Grendell tower fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire Another event was the much recent fire in a Spanish residential complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Valencia_residential_complex_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Valencia_residential_comp...
- softfalcon 3y ago
  Comparing homes today with that of 100 years ago ignores the fact that in many ways housing quality has been on a decline since the 1970’s due to cost cutting and lazy workmanship from large scale contractors. In my city, we have entire communities of the city that people avoid buying homes in because of shoddy workmanship. Greed corrupts and it has hit like a plague in many large neighbourhood projects over the decades. You can have all the codes in the world, it doesn’t matter if no one follows them.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    The 1970s were about the worst of that. While cost cutting has continued, engineering is more involved in standards and so the cost cutting is not possible unless engineering determines that the cost cutting doesn't effect something important. Note that what you think is important to lay people and what engineering thinks is important are very different things. Engineering cares about fire safety, insulation, and your house standing up to wind. Engineering doesn't care if you kick a hole in your walls - that is your own stupid fault (engineering cares that you cannot get pushed through the walls cartoon style, but a small hole is not a problem). Laypeople often reject great engineering because the marketing on bad engineering is better - old houses is one of those cases.
    - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      I don't think it's just the marketing. As you said in your earlier comment, old houses overengineer things that are visually obvious to the homeowner but not of actual safety importance. Humans are very susceptible to this visual bias. As you say, they're not inspecting fire stops, insulation standards, sprinkler placement, etc.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      In some places, the problem is that scammy builders are not building homes to spec. I'm talking about very serious flaws: not like drywall being thin, but more like joists that are thinner than the engineer specified or incomplete flashing that lets water leak into the insulation whenever it rains. A few years ago, I worked in a brand new building, and we had issues like windows being installed inside out, pipes not being connected together, and rainwater trickling down walls under the paint. These builds are poorly engineered -- not by the engineers and architects, but by the builders ignoring the engineers and architects. You can see numerous egregious examples here, for example: https://m.youtube.com/@Siteinspections https://m.youtube.com/@Siteinspections
      - softfalcon 3y ago
        Yeah, this is what I’m referring to. It doesn’t matter if you have codes if people don’t follow them because of laziness and corruption. I’m getting down voted, I guess I touched a nerve of the civil engineering folks. I came to the knowledge I have from having discussions with my civil engineering friends. They were immediately disenfranchised a few years into their careers when they saw the corruption of the “construction cartels” in my city. I’m sure it’s not true of every city, but it is in the city I live in here in Western Canada. Also common elsewhere in the world.
- VHRanger 3y ago
  > Do new building codes account for this? Yes, we have code about fireblocking, minimum insulation in wall cavities, etc. for that. Structural code also updates with wood quality testing. In structural charts I've seen, old growth is around 3x stronger for the same size as newer SPF. It's about on par with an LVL product.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Yes. We now use engineering standards to design houses. Looking at 100 year old houses as an engineering is enlightening (you don't even have to be a good engineer, just look and think). Old houses are often way over built in places where there is no stress and so paper would work - but those places are visible. Meanwhile places that do matter are often under built and it is amazing they are still standing at all - but those places tend to be not easily seen. Which is while people say modern houses are built from cardboard - in many ways they are - but those are all places where strength isn't needed so why waste money. What you won't see in the above is things that are hidden. Modern code requires you to have a firestop in all walls every 10 feet - old houses were often balloon framed which means the inside of the walls becomes a chimney in a fire and will help feed the fire. New houses the inside of walls do not become a chimney because of that fire stop. Modern houses also are insulated to much better standards. Something else that often isn't seen but makes a big difference. Even when it is seen nobody thinks about it - those old windows the article is singing the praises of are universally single pane windows that should have been scrapped 40 years ago. Sure there frame is still like new, but the standards for new back then are not acceptable. The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to last too long. What people want out of a house changes over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will want in the next decade. Eventually that old house will have enough things "wrong" that cannot be retrofitted and the best thing to do is tear down and rebuild from scratch to modern standards.
  - xnx 3y ago
    > The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to last too long. What people want out of a house changes over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will want in the next decade. Probably even more applicable to software projects!
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Maybe, but most software projects isn't designed for as long as things will last (I'm not sure we even know how to do this!). It is best to think of software as under continuous remodels. Very few houses survive for 40 years without a major remodel - adding rooms, moving walls. (much less "minor remodels" like replacing the kitchen cupboards - and the paint will not last for 40 years no matter how hard you try). If you continuously remodel your house like software is, then by the time it is 50 years old there should be zero original walls left. But software is a lot cheaper to make changes to.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Metal brackets and hangers required in new construction make new houses much stronger
  - doubled112 3y ago
    Do those brackets and hangers make up for the particle and pressboard my stairs are made out of? Seriously, they could have come out of a flatpak. I assumed cost cutting, because the risers are a different board than the tread.
    - RyanCavanaugh 3y ago
      Using the same material for load-bearing and non-load-bearing parts seems like the definition of overengineering.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Those metal things they use to hold prefab trusses together are hated by firemen, because once it starts burning they just curl off and the strength is gone.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Iirc sprinklers are now required in homes in many areas. And homes are much more resilient to other forms of damage, like actually having to be bolted to the foundation instead of just resting on it, etc.
ch4s3 3y ago
> but it's also much less resilient during a house fire Mass timber and other new engineered products should be good for this.
RyanCavanaugh 3y ago
We've more than compensated for this in other building materials, processes, and codes. Your odds of dying in a house fire are far lower than they were even in the 1970's, let alone the 50's or 20's.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Perhaps, but I'm not sure I live swimming through an invisible ocean of fire retardant chemicals that are in all home furnishings and most clothing and so forth. I'm not exactly a California Prop 65 fan, but I do wonder if those are anything any sane person wants near them.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > Your odds of dying in a house fire are far lower than they were even in the 1970's, let alone the 50's or 20's. I am very surprised by this. I'm sure that building codes ensure that the actual houses are more fire resistant. And fire fighting has probably come a long way. But the typical home is full of processed plastic fabric. Which burns a whole heck of a lot faster than either cotton or wool. Carpet, curtains, clothes, furniture, etc.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    I am sure smoke alarms make a big difference and people not smoking. Circuit breakers instead of fuses. Plus all the for fire exits and fire doors in apartment blocks.
- tlavoie 3y ago
  That's probably more because of smoke detectors (and perhaps fewer smokers) than anything else. I'd love to get a sprinkler system retro-fit though, as that would make an impressive difference. All the lighter-weight joists made with OSB burn far faster than the 2x8s or whatever they replaced, and home furnishings are made with large amounts of flammable synthetics. At a live-fire course I was on, the scenarios we worked on were fueled by stacks of wooden pallents, lit by an instructor's tiger torch. One of the instructors asked us if we knew the fuel equivalent of a typical love seat with synthetic foam, in pallets. We all figured it was lots, but not the real answer: NINETY.
liquidpele 3y ago
I mean, by the same logic, you could say every house should be built from steel. Of course old growth is stronger, just like steel is, but using them for the majority of cases would be simply ridiculous at scale.
softfalcon 3y ago
Also, in Japan, they are requiring old growth timber for home construction in certain northern areas for earthquake resilience. The reasoning is that old growth lumber handles repeated compression better as they are denser, harder, and firmer. New growth timber is squishier due to it being softer with less tightly grouped growth rings. At first I thought that made no sense, then I realized building a house out of sponges is not ideal. Fighting collapse is sometimes more about rigidity in the correct place rather than absorbing all shakiness everywhere.
huytersd 3y ago
Old growth lumber takes longer to start burning but once it takes, it going to be a hotter more resilient fire.

xnx 3y ago

Do new building codes account for this? Even given the worse materials, I would expect a house built today to be much safer (from fire, hurricane, tornado, etc.) than one built 100 years ago.

foofie 3y ago
> Do new building codes account for this? Yes. Survivability to fire is explicitly listed as a requirement, and different classes of buildings have strict requirements on survivability (i.e., how long a structure must remain safe while subjected to a fire). > I would expect a house built today to be much safer (...) It is, but there are nuances. For example, modern houses have additional requirements on energy efficiency, which mean thermal insulation. Elements used in thermal insulation applications are regulated, but it turned out that some assumptions regarding flammability ended up not being met under some circumstances. Consequently, we've started to see a few incidents such as the Grendell tower fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire Another event was the much recent fire in a Spanish residential complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Valencia_residential_complex_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Valencia_residential_comp...
softfalcon 3y ago
Comparing homes today with that of 100 years ago ignores the fact that in many ways housing quality has been on a decline since the 1970’s due to cost cutting and lazy workmanship from large scale contractors. In my city, we have entire communities of the city that people avoid buying homes in because of shoddy workmanship. Greed corrupts and it has hit like a plague in many large neighbourhood projects over the decades. You can have all the codes in the world, it doesn’t matter if no one follows them.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The 1970s were about the worst of that. While cost cutting has continued, engineering is more involved in standards and so the cost cutting is not possible unless engineering determines that the cost cutting doesn't effect something important. Note that what you think is important to lay people and what engineering thinks is important are very different things. Engineering cares about fire safety, insulation, and your house standing up to wind. Engineering doesn't care if you kick a hole in your walls - that is your own stupid fault (engineering cares that you cannot get pushed through the walls cartoon style, but a small hole is not a problem). Laypeople often reject great engineering because the marketing on bad engineering is better - old houses is one of those cases.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    I don't think it's just the marketing. As you said in your earlier comment, old houses overengineer things that are visually obvious to the homeowner but not of actual safety importance. Humans are very susceptible to this visual bias. As you say, they're not inspecting fire stops, insulation standards, sprinkler placement, etc.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    In some places, the problem is that scammy builders are not building homes to spec. I'm talking about very serious flaws: not like drywall being thin, but more like joists that are thinner than the engineer specified or incomplete flashing that lets water leak into the insulation whenever it rains. A few years ago, I worked in a brand new building, and we had issues like windows being installed inside out, pipes not being connected together, and rainwater trickling down walls under the paint. These builds are poorly engineered -- not by the engineers and architects, but by the builders ignoring the engineers and architects. You can see numerous egregious examples here, for example: https://m.youtube.com/@Siteinspections https://m.youtube.com/@Siteinspections
    - softfalcon 3y ago
      Yeah, this is what I’m referring to. It doesn’t matter if you have codes if people don’t follow them because of laziness and corruption. I’m getting down voted, I guess I touched a nerve of the civil engineering folks. I came to the knowledge I have from having discussions with my civil engineering friends. They were immediately disenfranchised a few years into their careers when they saw the corruption of the “construction cartels” in my city. I’m sure it’s not true of every city, but it is in the city I live in here in Western Canada. Also common elsewhere in the world.
VHRanger 3y ago
> Do new building codes account for this? Yes, we have code about fireblocking, minimum insulation in wall cavities, etc. for that. Structural code also updates with wood quality testing. In structural charts I've seen, old growth is around 3x stronger for the same size as newer SPF. It's about on par with an LVL product.
bluGill 3y ago
Yes. We now use engineering standards to design houses. Looking at 100 year old houses as an engineering is enlightening (you don't even have to be a good engineer, just look and think). Old houses are often way over built in places where there is no stress and so paper would work - but those places are visible. Meanwhile places that do matter are often under built and it is amazing they are still standing at all - but those places tend to be not easily seen. Which is while people say modern houses are built from cardboard - in many ways they are - but those are all places where strength isn't needed so why waste money. What you won't see in the above is things that are hidden. Modern code requires you to have a firestop in all walls every 10 feet - old houses were often balloon framed which means the inside of the walls becomes a chimney in a fire and will help feed the fire. New houses the inside of walls do not become a chimney because of that fire stop. Modern houses also are insulated to much better standards. Something else that often isn't seen but makes a big difference. Even when it is seen nobody thinks about it - those old windows the article is singing the praises of are universally single pane windows that should have been scrapped 40 years ago. Sure there frame is still like new, but the standards for new back then are not acceptable. The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to last too long. What people want out of a house changes over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will want in the next decade. Eventually that old house will have enough things "wrong" that cannot be retrofitted and the best thing to do is tear down and rebuild from scratch to modern standards.
- xnx 3y ago
  > The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to last too long. What people want out of a house changes over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will want in the next decade. Probably even more applicable to software projects!
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Maybe, but most software projects isn't designed for as long as things will last (I'm not sure we even know how to do this!). It is best to think of software as under continuous remodels. Very few houses survive for 40 years without a major remodel - adding rooms, moving walls. (much less "minor remodels" like replacing the kitchen cupboards - and the paint will not last for 40 years no matter how hard you try). If you continuously remodel your house like software is, then by the time it is 50 years old there should be zero original walls left. But software is a lot cheaper to make changes to.
NegativeLatency 3y ago
Metal brackets and hangers required in new construction make new houses much stronger
- doubled112 3y ago
  Do those brackets and hangers make up for the particle and pressboard my stairs are made out of? Seriously, they could have come out of a flatpak. I assumed cost cutting, because the risers are a different board than the tread.
  - RyanCavanaugh 3y ago
    Using the same material for load-bearing and non-load-bearing parts seems like the definition of overengineering.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Those metal things they use to hold prefab trusses together are hated by firemen, because once it starts burning they just curl off and the strength is gone.
bombcar 3y ago
Iirc sprinklers are now required in homes in many areas. And homes are much more resilient to other forms of damage, like actually having to be bolted to the foundation instead of just resting on it, etc.

ch4s3 3y ago

> but it's also much less resilient during a house fire Mass timber and other new engineered products should be good for this.

RyanCavanaugh 3y ago

We've more than compensated for this in other building materials, processes, and codes. Your odds of dying in a house fire are far lower than they were even in the 1970's, let alone the 50's or 20's.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Perhaps, but I'm not sure I live swimming through an invisible ocean of fire retardant chemicals that are in all home furnishings and most clothing and so forth. I'm not exactly a California Prop 65 fan, but I do wonder if those are anything any sane person wants near them.
nordsieck 3y ago
> Your odds of dying in a house fire are far lower than they were even in the 1970's, let alone the 50's or 20's. I am very surprised by this. I'm sure that building codes ensure that the actual houses are more fire resistant. And fire fighting has probably come a long way. But the typical home is full of processed plastic fabric. Which burns a whole heck of a lot faster than either cotton or wool. Carpet, curtains, clothes, furniture, etc.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I am sure smoke alarms make a big difference and people not smoking. Circuit breakers instead of fuses. Plus all the for fire exits and fire doors in apartment blocks.
tlavoie 3y ago
That's probably more because of smoke detectors (and perhaps fewer smokers) than anything else. I'd love to get a sprinkler system retro-fit though, as that would make an impressive difference. All the lighter-weight joists made with OSB burn far faster than the 2x8s or whatever they replaced, and home furnishings are made with large amounts of flammable synthetics. At a live-fire course I was on, the scenarios we worked on were fueled by stacks of wooden pallents, lit by an instructor's tiger torch. One of the instructors asked us if we knew the fuel equivalent of a typical love seat with synthetic foam, in pallets. We all figured it was lots, but not the real answer: NINETY.

liquidpele 3y ago

I mean, by the same logic, you could say every house should be built from steel. Of course old growth is stronger, just like steel is, but using them for the majority of cases would be simply ridiculous at scale.

softfalcon 3y ago

Also, in Japan, they are requiring old growth timber for home construction in certain northern areas for earthquake resilience. The reasoning is that old growth lumber handles repeated compression better as they are denser, harder, and firmer. New growth timber is squishier due to it being softer with less tightly grouped growth rings. At first I thought that made no sense, then I realized building a house out of sponges is not ideal. Fighting collapse is sometimes more about rigidity in the correct place rather than absorbing all shakiness everywhere.

huytersd 3y ago

Old growth lumber takes longer to start burning but once it takes, it going to be a hotter more resilient fire.