you forgot that when including gang nails, hurricane ties and new treatment methods for most materials and furniture, the wood framed homes in the usa are more disaster proof/replaceable/safe when taking into account certain kinds of disasters, tornados for instance. also Europe; don't feed the pests, enough said.
@overseer7004 While I see the value of hurricane ties and other code required reinforcements (which other countries may not have), our wood homes are often wiped out by hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and more. A solid structure home is going to do a much better job of surviving the aforementioned disasters. Even more so if combined with a conditioned, unvented attic.
Hard to say, as I've never been to the US. But I'm quite happy with my English bungalow, an early 1960s single story home with a cavity wall. The outer skin is brick, the inner is (I think) some sort of block. The cavity between was originally an air gap which prevented water ingress, now filled with cavity wall insulation; polystyrene beads. Many claim that's not a good idea, but I've had no problems with it. Windows and doors are double glazed, though would have probably been steel framed windows and wooden doors when first built. There's about eight inches of fibreglass loft insulation above the ceiling. If I seem a bit obsessed with insulation, it's because England is cold and damp for much of the year and energy prices are high. I'm amazed at the size of many US homes; my bungalow may seem small to you at 600 square feet but I live on my own and it's the right size for me. It's larger than many other one bedroom bungalows here.
You said in your video: It depends. I am of German decent and lived in Switzerland. I came to appreciate the typical US wood house for itās flexibility to make design changes. The biggest draw-back however is energy efficiency. For the vast majority of US houses HVAC is a must - even in northern states like Wyoming, Montana, whereas the vast majority of houses in Europe including Southern Europe do only provide heating for the winter months. The summers in Europe may not be the most comfortable, but people make it through those hot weeks and few months. The other issue is the increase in natural disasters: Hurricanes, wild fires, tornadoes, flooding. In other words: I think in the US, concrete / CMU based buildings should be more seriously considered for energy saving and overall safety reasons at least in certain areas / states. As for Europe: Innovative sustainable, environmentally friendly composite materials are coming to the market there in big box stores, combining the features of both worlds wood, concrete and stone! Finally, I feel the US is much slower in adopting innovation in home building in which I include also plumbing, electrical, interior design, heating. As said, I am not unhappy with my house here, but I feel we could do better.
A home should be built in a way that works with its climate. I grew up in a regular wood-framed home. I live in an apartment (probably brick). I would love to have a concrete home as long as it could stay dry inside and not have any pest problems. What do you think of monolithic domes?
The price for those houses is what got to me too every time. I get that one wants a home and light wood framing is there to make that easy, fast and cheap. So why are they so expensive?!
@Josh.1234 correct -- they stand the test of time .....but only if your 'time' is happy to be spent in a house the size of a rabbit hutch ... and as cold as one.
@ That's very untrue, the older the village the more expensive it is to live there, as a general rule. People love the cosy old homes and will even pay to replace the thatch roofs every [25 years]. They are fitted with double glazed windows, sealed and given better heating, they're not bad to live in at all.
Well, just look at the difficulty of trying to sell a more expensive home. The developer purchased is 40 acres and they have to try to make money on this development so they canāt make them large plots or else theyād have fewer homes and theyād make less money so they have to be smaller to start with and then they have to have as many amenities as possible, but they canāt cost too much or else they priced themselves out of the market for people looking at smaller homes on smaller plots. You canāt build million dollar homes on postage stamps and expect people to be willing to buy them when there are much larger homes for cheaper next-door. Thatās the problemā¦. Itās a bigger country, youād think weād have more land, but it doesnāt work that way because land prices are dependent upon their proximity to downtownā¦. Many Europeans are forced to make do with a real estate culture where your grandparents purchased a home after the war and your parents inherited the house and someday you might inherit the house, but thatās the only way youāre ever going to own one because theyāre just too damn expensive Thatās just not how things work in the United States because we have a much more mobile culture where people donāt plan on buying a house and living in it for 60 years in order to justify the massive expense, they buy a starter home and they worked their way up
@starventure 'Remodeling' is done for only two reasons- 1 To install the latest fixtures to keep up with latest fads to impress the Jones, 2. To replace the flimsy, crappy material used in the original build. Only the USA does this greedy, narcissistic idiocy.
@J-1410 Creating a stable construction only with bricks is a different branch of civil engineering. You can make a seismic steady brick construction if you know how. For such a collapse of a wall you need to blame lousy masonry with sub-standard mortar.
Why would you punch your wall? When you want to change the layout & size of room you can do it easily in NA because you have quick access to electrical wires & plumbing, I doubt they're easy to move when your inside walls are made of bricks, concrete or other heavy material.
I'm not a fan of walls that fight back - I've seen too many people, particularly the elderly, with injuries from falls. But a solid masonry wall with an air gap and a plaster sheet over the air gap will give you a wall surface that breaks before your hand does *and also* a wall structure that will stand the test of time. The air gap behind the plaster is also a handy place to run your plumbing and electrical.
ā@tealkerberus748 "Walls that fight back" my brother in christ it is a WALL. its WHOLE thing is that its a solid slab that does not move what do you MEEEAN fight back?!
Even small towns/villages in Kenya have decent houses made of stone, concrete block, or brick. Makes Agent Oranges comment about "sh*thole" countries look a tad lame š
Europe also calls a water fountain in the street a National Park waterfall and would probably try to make it a UNESCO sight. Of course you do this, the land your house is all you'll ever see and experience, given that it's likely 1/8th of your entire countries landmass.
I dont understand, in a place were wild fires are prevalent, you build with Wood. In a place prone to Hurricanes you also build with Wood. Why? Why? When there are better options.
It's cheap and it's what the local construction labor force knows. I agree, places like California and Florida should not be building wooden homes. Here in the northeast USA, wooden homes are OK because they can be insulated far easier than concrete structures (it goes below -20C here) and hurricanes/wildfires aren't a concern.
āā@LondonEE16think as simple as this,who its better?wood vs fire or earth vs earth??and most important thing fire are more common then rare major earthquake
Everyone on here saying wood is better for earthquakes than concrete. I lived in Japan 17 years and always in solid concrete apartment/townhouses. They have earthquakes every month where I was. They chose concrete for a reason. They were built to withstand severe earthquakes. There is more to earthquake-resistant construction than just the material used. They also use some kind of shock absorbing within the foundation. Also lived in California about 7 years and have seen the wooden houses broken to bits.
Thank you for this Yes, absolutely true. Concrete can be designed to stand higher magnitude earthquakes than wood framing. This is accomplished through the use of seismic joints that allow for movement and reinforced foundations. I think in CA, concrete homes require additional engineering and approval. However l, money doesnāt seem to be the issue and at a minimum homes should be of steel construction
yeah, wooden structures can be extremely solid, but not when heavily optimized for material costs and ease of construction. Unless you have an abundant supply of decent quality lumber it quickly gets more cost effective to use other materials if disaster resistance is a concern. I've seen a 100+ year old wooden house originally built at a time when they just threw more lumber at every problem. Walls of solid lumber, backed by 2 layers of planking and one layer of particle board! Presumably they just kept adding layers in renovations over the years. Mind you, this was built in a sawmill town at a time when lumber was the region's primary export, so it would have been silly to build with anything else. Obviously you always want to adapt your construction techniques and material choices to local conditions. The pain sets in when builders compete on construction price alone, slapping together structures they know will have issues in the long run.
When did you see wood house splintering to bits in an earthquake? I lived in California for six decades, and lived though a number of earthquakes, and the only time wood houses failed was when their concrete foundations heaved. By far the greatest damage was to steel and concrete structures.
Iām a carpenter in the US, and our houses are cheap shit! You could literally cut through the walls with a utility knife! Cut the vinyl siding, then the Celetex, and then thru the drywall! Itās shit. Heavy timber, and stone, and earth homes will last way longer!
And while old layouts (like built for hundreds of years) are often not fitting very well for modern way of living (plumbing, heating, cables, space needs etc.), the fact that they are still standing after centuries testifies for a durable building style. Slop of yesteryear fell over long ago. Those ugly roof overhangs that take up all the light? They keep the rain away from the walls. The steep roofs that make the top floors cramped? They collect less snow before it slides off. The blocky, boring, rectangular footprint? Inside corners are prone to failure, water ingress and the roof becomes more segmented/flat with the same problems. New building techniques allow for new styles, but are they adressing all the issues that this style caused before?
On the other hand it might be cheaper to replace a cheap house that swims away in a flood a couple of times, than to built a resistant but much more expensive house. But still I would always prefer the more sturdy variant.
@woedendstewadpier4922 thats the logic that made it possible to sell that cheap shit, a house build in germany where the chances are high for flooding or other expected problems, the house is build in a way to withstand the problem, its just plain dumb to think replacing is better or easier than keeping, pay 500k for a concrete foundation brickhouse with wood roofing once or pay for a new 100k house and loosing all your belongings and your home, that one time just sucks so incredibly that there is no question which option you should choose (numbers are pure fictional, i know that you can get a decent house in germany that will stand for 100+ years for 250kā¬ and an affordable 50k dollar woodtent that will rot away in 20 yrs )
I wondered over it many times: in Europe, where is no hurricanes, houses are bricked. In the US, where are hurricanes houses are wooden -_- I will never get it why endangered with hurricanes Americans build their houses with wood.
In the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil, there was a major flood, and practically the entire city was submerged. Most of the houses are made of concrete and bricks. After the flood passed, it was necessary to throw the furniture in the trash and wash the houses in order to live in them again. The people who were left without homes were the poor and who had houses made of wood in remote places. In Brazil, houses made of wood are associated with poverty.
@franquil85conn I do not deny in any way that Americans have a higher "purchasing power", but among us Brazilians, whose culture comes from the Mediterranean, building wooden houses is associated with poverty. When someone gets some money, they build a house made of bricks and concrete. It is completely unimaginable for Brazilians to build a wooden house. No one would understand that someone who has money would build a wooden house. And we have a large colonization of Germans in the south of Brazil, who went to live in an area rich in wood. For about two generations they built wooden houses, but as soon as they got better financial conditions, they started to build only with bricks and concrete. The wood industry was completely abandoned, few people know how to work with wood. And all houses must have a civil engineer in charge, otherwise construction is not authorized.
@silvio6904 the problem is that Americans do know how to build with wood because timber was a major commodity in the past, and while you can have unscrupulous builders of wood (and bricks and concrete) you can also have amazing structures, though i do not deny concrete and brick are stronger. My wood built home is 3400sq ft and cost 650,000usd to build, if I built this same house out of brick and concrete it would probably be double. My first house i bought was a wood built Victorian home from 1893 (though I admit it was built with stronger wood than my current home built in 2020.
It's a bitch to to get the moisture completely out of the walls after flooding, may take years, decades, or never, won't be exactly as pre-flood but still livable.
@franquil85conn but a 150k USD house in Brazil is the size of a 800k house on the US and is made of BRICKS. The average house price here is not 150kUSD. It is 30k USD. With 150k USD you can buy an entire mansion with a giant garden space.
I can tell you the answer from experience rather than internet research: I was a carpenter in the USA for over 20 years. I also spent a year building houses in Sweden. The big difference that in Europe, designs are led by architects and engineers. In the USA architects and engineers are led by lawyers. The Simpson Tie company has a monopoly on how homes are built in the USA because they paid engineers to test their product. Engineers always specify what has been tested. If you donāt use exactly what the engineer put in the plans, the inspector makes you take it out. No USA architect will specify local materials without a hefty price tag because engineers wonāt sign off on something that Simpson tie hasnāt paid some engineer to test. Because they are all afraid of being sued. You wonāt get permits for anything that hasnāt been signed off by an architect and an engineer. Building codes are solely for avoiding lawsuits. Not safety. You wonāt get insurance for a house that hasnāt been built in outdated inappropriate, light timber houses because it has been tested. Without insurance no one can get a mortgage. If no mortgage, nothing gets built on spec. So there is basically one residential building style for all climates, because Simpson Tie paid an engineer. Thatās a sham! Forget the ancient adobe houses in the southwest. The ancient stone buildings are curiosities. Forget the 200 year old hay bail house in Missouri. To get a permit you have to prove that a building will potentially last. Actually lasting doesnāt count as potentially lasting. Thatās why everyone laughs at Americans.
By the way, Here in Europe, we donĀ“t need Companies to test some equipment. Everything you can buy here is already tested, and no Inspector can tell us to take it out, Everything here is already tested according to our laws. Otherwise, no one is allowed to sell this stuff here! You simply cannot buy a thing here thatĀ“s not firmly tested.
Many thanks for explaining. This makes sense. In the Europe every contruction material must have certification to be placed on market. Certification require testing of material acc specific methods. There is no monopoly for testing in the Europe. It seems to me, in the USA is main issue by monopoly system for everything. Too much centralised power for private companies which then are allowed to "lobby" (allowed corruption by law) at politics and authorities.
Mostly they're seen as something you take care of now and then can hand down for multiple generations, not the throwaway mindset the US has on normal family homes.
Civil engineer here. first, legally: not a single US home would come even close to comply with structural requirements in Portugal, let alone getting a heat or sound insulation certificates. We have very non-challenging climate, no snow, average wind, average precipitation and ordinary seismic activity, and yet your homes would be considered pretty unsafe for all of the above. in my opinion your homes are made to be a consumable: companies make a quick buck and you buy a quick house - quick to build, quick to rot away. your average home age is stupid small. if we were to abandon one of our modern houses with absolutely no maintenance whatsoever, we know at least the structural elements will be there in 100 years. We walk past houses and constructions older than your country every day, from houses, pubs, aqueducts, state buildings, museums, offices, everything. at the end, i would not be caught dead living at an american-style house if i had a choice. they do suck. and thatĀ“s my professional opinion.
Exactly, I take issue with "increasing time, added cost, added complexity" NO this is the baseline. This is fast fashion Shein but for homes and some can't see it for what it really is. If you're being honest you should say "corporate home builders have the highest profit margin possible, need less qualifications and training, are not held to code and safety standards after close, can continue reselling dilapidated homes with white paint, paper and staples". You don't have to say "I want to copy Europe" you can say "I want better", and wealthy people don't live in those paper homes for a reason.
Thanks. Then everything is about quick quick quick, quick build quick rot quick sell quick bucks then why people think real estate is an āinvestment ā
The US also has a crazy expensive healthcare system and education system. However, you have lower taxes. I think I prefer to live in Europe, where only the state robs me to that extent.
@ I think every US citizen who needs just a diploma should move to europe to get a bachelor for 3-8k dollars and move on with their lives instead of having 100+k in student loan debt
@feandil1713 as a german i would have no problem with high taxes if those would actually benefit the people not just the rich and being used for stupid things especially construction that gets demolished or abandoned 5 years later
@idkiforget Oh yes, I get your point. I've heard about the contemporary political situation in Germany and I'm quite worried. I wish you the best from the depth of my heart, also because I'm convinced that Germany's stability affects Europe a lot. May Germany grow strong and always have wise governors. Greetings from the direct east neighbor country.
@Xenolith41 This kind of structure can withstand any earthquake. The problem is the apartments. They make them from bricks and doesn't obey the structural integrity rules. So, when an earthquake hits the results became catastrophic.
ā@Xenolith41 With the earthquake in the Hatay province not too long ago, a lot of the collapsed buildings were those not built correctly. There was a picture of loads of collapsed homes and shops, in the middle still standing, was the Chamber of Civil Engineers.
I remember seeing a video on RUclips a couple of years ago about a guy in the USA presenting the windows he installed in his new house. He ordered the windows in Europe. Triple layer glass with Aluminium frame. This is the highest grade of windows you could buy. He explained that he paid less for these windows including transportation from europe in comparison to whatever alternative is available in the USA of lower grade. My impression of this and other stories is. That the construction material market in the USA does not have fair prices for anything.
Not just the construction market. The first thing I think about in this regard is what I keep reading about your health care system. Being super capitalistic apparantly does not create cheaper prices.
People in USA are not teached to realise value/price. That is the reason why in capitalism can prices grow way up to the sky. In the Europe we dont have regulated prices (except maybe energies in some cases) but we, people, are counting approximate cost to make such product and actual price of the product. We would never buy something with 10-20x higher price if there are other options. In the Europe we have much healthier concurrence market price fight than cartels in USA.
Honestly, from all stories I have seen, NOTHING is fairly priced. No regulation over medication cost, private healthcare and largely exploitative private education, merely trying to survive sounds like a burden on the wallet. It constantly sounds like there is no regulation AT ALL, even though there is.
āI havenāt seen anyone bragging about their earth homeā - Hold my beer: I grew up in a rammed clay home in Germany. 120 yrs old 16ā thick walls, 3-stories, 6 flats , 5000sq.ft total. There is nothing that comes close in my experience with regard to insulation (heat and cold) and room climate. The walls can absorb a lot of moisture and release it again. In summer it feels like there is an AC running. But nope, itās all passive. Nobody would build like that in Germany these days, so we are really glad we bought this thing.
I did some tests because we live in a wood frame with clay filling. The raw clay bricks can at least absorb their own weight in water before they even soften slightly. Now estimating, that all the clay in the walls and ceilings...we could empty a pool of water in the attic and no permanent damage will happen. In fact, we had a pipe leak and the ceiling absorbed all the water for 6 months before we could see where the leak was. Also: the wood did rot from cement, but where the filling was clay, the wood is still good after 400 years š And wood frame here means wood with 14x14 cm and up to 30x30 cm. I see US America's wood frames as tooth picks. We build a garden shed like that, but not a houseš
Rammed clay is slowly being explored as a climate change appropriate material again. It's just harder to build multi-story multi-family homes with it, it's much more suited to single-family dwellings.
@KingBowserLP actually, rammed clay will most likely remain a niche. Claytec developed raw clay bricks that are strong enough for buildings that are up to 4 floors high. Another solution is clay mortar. Using this a wall becomes completely reusable... Up to 40% of all carbon emissions worldwide are from the building and construction sector. Of course, we can't build bridges with clay, but reusable building materials for buildings could be the solution. Especially because we also have a massive problem with (toxic!) building waste ...
I live on Manhattan Island. It has been illegal to build with combustible materials here since the Great Fire of 1835. All utilities have been underground here since they all came crashing down in the Blizzard of '88. That's 1888, not 1988. This is what a city does to solve glitches in the system. On another note, this is a 10 minute city, never mind a 15 minute one. I am within 10 minutes of two supermarkets, three banks, a public library, elementary school, university, post office, hospital, 3 parks, 2 pharmacies, shoe repair, and a myriad of other destination ON FOOT! I was born and raised in Los Angeles. They've never known how to "city" there. And the rest of the country has forgotten how.
Its amazing what you can build for $3000 per square foot. However, the rest of the country gets by on $200 per square foot or less and we can't hear our neighbors fart.
Basically what you're saying is that americans prioritized low cost and just building things as fast as possible because the houses are supposed to be temporary and basically disposable in America.
@cristitanase6130 social mobility is still very present in the US if you actually try. More than any country to be honest. Theres a reason millions want to and do move here.
@spooky.- yeah, no, there only reason why they want to move there is so they can work for more money and send the money back home where everything is cheap don't delude yourself, US is gentrified, has high taxation, insane bureaucracy and rising living costs want social mobility? Try Asia!
I have to correct the author about construction in Peru. Construction in Peru is done with concrete, rebar, bricks, cement mix with coarse sand, etc because of earthquakes. The mud construction was done hundreds of years ago and there are some houses still standing but few to find.
The problem isn't the wooden houses in the US the problem is that you build wooden houses in places that are ravage with tornados floods and a hell of natural disasters making those homes easily destroyable with each disaster.
The real problem isnĀ“t that in reality, itĀ“s that they are very much cheaper, quickly and practical than concrete and/or bricks and nothing more. In USA, anything that isnĀ“t very profitable and very quickly to the companies, donĀ“t worthy and thatĀ“s all. Money rules, not society. In California or Florida, the houses that they are made of concrete and/or bricks, the mayority are from "hispanics", not even "anglo-saxons" (from old Spanish Empire), because they know very well that in a tornado, flood or earthquake case, the unique houses that will remain standing are made of concrete and/or bricks, not wooden of course. On the TV all people see when a disaster like that happens. It don't even necessary to study it at a university to see and understand that. Only is necessary think a little with a minimal common sense. Regards.
The houses are made from wood so it's easy to rebuild. Solid material buildings still get fucked up by these disasters, sometimes moreso than wood homes
@kentuckyace1068 How could a concrete house be more fucked up by a natural disaster (or anything really) compared to the wood houses that are wiped away with every hurricane? What do you make hurricane shelters out of? Or fire shelters? Or bomb shelters for that matter?
Iām born and raised in Bavaria, Germany. My house was build by my dad in 1986, which was the cold war peak time. The next mayor city is Munich and so for, my dad decided his home has to be bomb safe, because munich is a nuclear target, so our two basement floors got a 110cm/35ā thick ceilings out of steel concrete. Above the ground level, everything is reinforced too to withstand nuclear blasts. But you couldnāt tell from the out- or inside, besides the outside walls are also a bit thicker that usual. It would be really cool to have a hurricane over here, to see if there would be actually any kind of damage to the houses in our little village. Also we got 3 houses in our village that are 400 years old or older. The church should be like around 500-550 y/o
Believe me the walls and frame would stand,the roof,the Windows and every inside won't,the real damague of an Hurriacanes comes from the floods not from the winds in a strong one can put your house under the water.
Living conditions in the USSR in the 70s and 80s were not bad. The only thing that poisoned our thoughts was the possibility of a nuclear war, BUT THE WAR CAME FROM THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
ā@jetmangti6475Roofing will withstand the hurricane if it's a concrete roofing. Houses nowadays has roofs build with concrete instead of using other roofing solutions. A house build to withstand a nuclear blast will certainly withstand a huricane. Windows will break either way, but it can be replaced quickly and cheaply compared to building an entire house again.
Last year,in eastern Croatia,we had a 200kmh,strong huricane wind. Strong winds in past, where maybe up to 50kmh.. Not one house was destroyed. Only few houses had blown roof-only the ones with small balcony under the roof. My house is in a open area, without protective buildings around it. I lost just a few roof tiles. And my house was a standard build,nothing special,or reinforced. There where houses from 1920s,also,just roof tiles went off,and same thing happened with very tall houses with 2 or 3 floors.
We visited Europe in 2017, and stayed with friends in their rented suburban townhome in Warsaw. The home was a spacious three level, and build quality was eye opening, compared to the stick and drywall we have in the States. I did not expect solid concrete walls, throughout, quality stone stucco roofs, built like the proverbial bunker. Warsaw was 90% destroyed in WWII, and rebuilt largely from the bombed remnants. Frow what I saw, they build their homes to last.
I am from Tanzania. Most residential homes here are built with what you call CMO, but the foundation and the top of the superstructure is often reinforced with concrete slab, which is a mixture of rebars, sand, pebbles, and cement for stability. Roofing is corrugated iron sheets, congrete slab can also be used. In rural areas, red bricks (raw clay bricks burned to red in the kiln to establish stability) are used, and the finishing style is the same. Homes are indeed built to last. Mud homes are becoming rare even in rural homes. You will almost find none in urban areas. You wouldn't convince someone to own a timber home here. They will get the feeling that it is a temporary residency. Before my knowledge on how you guys build your homes, I wondered why could someone shoot through the wall and kill a person inside, your homes are not safe at all. Cost is just a relative term. If you exclude mortgage (which is not common here, actually very rare) home ownership is probably high here in Tanzania than in the US, people can afford to build their homes from scratch. You just need to find builders specilized for each step of your construction process. The major steps of house construction are superstructure, roofing, and finally, for the finishing process. Depending on your financial status, building a home might take say around a year to years. The use of construction companies are for high-rise buildings, this is required by law.
Lived in both, and I'd take an European house any day compared to 2by4s, wooden beams and drywall abominations that sell for 2 million here in Toronto.
They sell for 2 million because Toronto is literally the most populated, most popular, most desirable city in Canada to live in. Of course it's overpriced.
The main reason for such a price is the greediness of the bureaucratic/government system's and construction companies that take advantage of the fact, that there is a high demand for housing. The second problem is speculation in the housing market, when an individual or company buys for 400k, resells for 800k then to a third person's for 1.5 million and so on. The third reason is that there are a lot of greedy investors who do not live in Canada but own hundreds of housing units, their money ends up in the pockets of rich greedy construction companies that reduce prices for work to contractors every year, in turn, the quality of construction also decreases, the output product is a cardboard box for 2-3 million.
@deadthewmo6657and canāt forget the fact that the government purposely does this to please the older population since they are the majority, most likely to vote & easiest to manipulate. If the older generation saw the majority of their net worth go down because of housing expansions, theyāll try to do everything to prevent that from happening so they always have the leverage instead of giving the younger population the keys
Very nice video! Every European who lived in USA are shocked from two things. The wooden homes that come with ridiculous prices and the lack of pedestrians on the streets
ā@LW1Tok or Americans don't prefer to walk and have terrible public transport, We have 4 vehicles at home but I would still prefer to take metro, bus, or train while going somewhere firstly more cost efficient, 80% time faster, also you can take a nap or relax,
People like their wooden homes and we have it in abundance. I have worked the building trade for years, nobody wants a steel stud building or concrete, it's ugly, cold and cheap. Who cares what Europeans think anyway, they live mostly on postage stamps in characterless homes unless they buy historic ones, which are built with wood and stone and would cost millions today.
@TheVistula Cars are louder than pedestrians, but a couple cars per hour is much less noise than the pedestrians would make in order to have sufficient density for a purely-walkable area to make sense. There are even some places I know that are so rural that the people who live there can't even justify the cost of an asphalt street and use gravel instead. Gravel is louder than asphalt, but is one car per hour along asphalt more noisy than a lot of pedestrians? It depends on your definition of "noisy."
Fun fact: I am in the USA btw While non Americans pay the same money for a stone house - Americans get a wood house with fake stone facades if they upgraded ā¦
Everything basic in the US is very cheap. But once you want anything different than the cookie-cutter consumer pipeline, you pay *absurd* premiums. Capitalism is a thing everywhere, but in the US, these houses are squeezed to the max for profits. That being said, if Americans donāt care about owning quality and sturdiness and only care about the outside, the appearance, thatās their choice. But the absolute minimum I want is for people to at least think about it, to be self-critical about it, instead of just yell āiTās OuR cUltUrE!ā (This includes every country, tbh! In Europe, everyone yelling āconcrete, concreteā is kind of seemingly missing, that we are slowly moving *away* from concrete everywhere; the CO2 emissions of concrete are utterly disastrous!). People donāt actually hate wooden houses; Scandinavian houses are almost all wooden and no one complains about them - they are lovely! It is how cheaply they are made in the US and how that is sold to the average American as ālook, you actually *need* that, it is a *good* thing! We can rebuild it quickly and bigger and better!ā. Itās not in the wood, itās in the little things in between. Even if your house gets regularly destroyed, you can build with more quality from wood and it will still have all these attributes! The whole āwoodden houses can be redone easilyā and āstarter homeā and āitās biggerā, ādisposableā etc. *is* exactly the essence of the alienation in this topic: itās the hyper-consumerism mixed with the general public ignorance of the US. This is actually what the world is alienated by in reality, not the wooden houses.
@ very true points - look at Scandinavia wood house construction is present there too but it is not accepted in Germany. Wood construction has many benefits but also some down sides. But nothing is as bad as concrete production too!
Generally speaking, you pay much less for a much larger home in the US when compared to most other places. So yes, it's "fake" but it also wasn't needed. That's why it costs more.
@Shlorpmeister There are no tornados in Scandinavia and severe storms are rare and they don't blow away whole villages. Midwest could make good use of sturdier houses. Then there is another thing to count in. Americans are not as rooted. They move easier and more often cross country, and don't build for generations.
This is my 5 cents to this topic. I am from eastern Europe , currently living in South California. My main complaint about houses here is the lack of soundproofing. I can hear everything that goes on around me, starting with when my family members go to a bathroom and ending when my neighbors have guests. I feel like everyone is a part of my life. And, if someone plays music past 11, I am calling cops. Otherwise, I can't sleep. The quality of lyrics in the music is a separate complaint, though. But I feel like, if the sound insulation was better, I didn't have to do it so often.
Most homes in the US dont have insulation/sound dampening on interior walls to save costs. It can be added later fairly easily, unless you rent. Rockwool insulation is the most effective method, but most laborious. The easiest option is spray foam. It can be done without removing all the drywall.
Yeah, what zach said insulation is extra. Rich peoples houses don't have that problem, In my Aunts place you can't hear what's going on in the next room even if it's full of people and playing loud music.
The quality of houses here (Let's say in Eastern Europe) has dropped drastically since the middle of 2000s. You can hear anything 2 or 3 floors below or above: dog barking, child crying. Developers got rid of brick housing completely, ceilings are getting tinier and tinier from one floor to another. ŠŠ»ŃŠ³Š°, ŠŠ½Š°ŃŠ¾Š»ŃŠµŠ²Š½Š° Š²Ń ŠæŃŠ¾ŃŃŠ¾ Š½Šµ Š²ŠøŠ“ŠµŠ»Šø ŠŠŠŠ¾Š²ŃŠŗŠøŠµ ŠæŠ°Š½ŠµŠ»ŃŠŗŠø. Š”Š¾Š²ŃŠµŠ¼ŠµŠ½Š½ŃŠµ ŠæŠ°Š½ŠµŠ»ŃŠ½ŃŠµ Š“Š¾Š¼Š° ŃŃŠ¼Š½ŠµŠµ Š°Š¼ŠµŃŠøŠŗŠ°Š½ŃŠŗŠøŃ ŠŗŠ°ŃŠŗŠ°ŃŠ½ŠøŠŗŠ¾Š².
I was shocked to see all houses in California to burn to the ground - nothing but piles of dust left. It looked like they were built with cardboard.š®
it's quite baffling, and it's not like a fire in a concrete house couldn't be catastrophic, I've certainly seen fires in my country turn everything within a house into ash, but at least you are left with standing walls to rebuild from.
the only things that survived was fireplace and barbecue... because they was obligated to be made of bricks. I have the feeling that if one day americans find how to build barbecue on wood, they will switch š
@PemaMendez990 Also a fire like the one in CA: would probably damage the first row of houses severly and the one behind a bit, but as ther is a limited fuel in brick house, any subseqent row would be safe. I never heard of any fire in Germany that cased more than a couple of houses to burn down. In CA the entire city block is gone...
ā@fabianfeilcke7220 I don't think there was ever something comparable in Germany to these wildfires. The climate just was too wet to have these massive wild fires. There were occasions where huge parts of cities burned down though. Hamburg and Aachen for example but firesafety was always top priority in wood houses which it wasn't in CA.
It's not that we laugh at wood houses in general, it's about where Americans choose to build wooden houses. Who in their right mind builds something that can go up in flames or get shred to pieces in places where there's risk of wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes and other environmental hazards ? Also the quality for the price is an absolute joke. Your paper house in the suburbs of nowhere often costs more than a solid home in European capitals.
Because its cheaper to rebuild when disasters happen, it would cost twice as much if not more to rebuild stone and cement buildings after a natural disaster.
Not to mention, they'll be rebuilt faster which is important after a disaster like that. I know everyone thinks they know best these days but things are done for a reason sometimes :) Thanks and welcome to construction 101.
@ShutUpBubi So, to sum up what you said - It's better to build a house that lasts 10-15 years and rebuild it entirely 2 or 3 times than to build a house that costs twice as much but will last a CENTURY. - Got it. The cardboard houses of yours are made from permeable materials, meaning that any mold will spread hidden as opposed to on the surface of a stone wall, slowly poisoning you for years and later requiring replacing a decent chunk of the infested timber frame. The hollow walls mean your house requires to annually be sprayed with worst kinds of poisons simply to eradicate whatever rodent and insect societies have developed inside them. So many Americans complain about the cost of their healthcare, yet deny the fact that they themselves make choices causing them triple the health problems of any other country and lowest life expectency of all developed nations.
Perhaps Singapore: We build to last up to ~99 yrs, by which maybe technological advances lets us build taller to fit our growing population density, & by then we want to rebuild something taller in its place (we mostly live in apartments instead of single-family homes)
People in the US would call people third world when truthfully they are the ones living in some of the crappiest houses on the planet. Even my fish pond is built stronger than any house in the USA, it is made of cinder blocks.
Hi there, Iām an architect from Europe so I know, at least to some degree, what Iām talking about here. Modern building techniques in Europe do result in not only modern but in more durable single-family houses, indeed. We use primarily non-combustible roofing (metals, ceramic roof tiles), hollow bricks, plaster, etc. We do not use cheap asphalt shingles, stick framing and cheap vinyl siding widely used across the US in Canada. And strangely enough, our houses are still not more expensive. Go figure.
Thanks for the info! Whatās the average cost of a single family home in Europe as youāve seen it? From what I saw in my very limited research home ownership seems to be lower, rentals / multifamily are preferred and houses could be quite a bit more expensive , almost double the cost in some locations
@Mike_Fortin Thanks for responding. It really depends on the area. Generally itās cheaper in the East (like Romania, Bulgaria, etc.), then it gets more expensive when one goes west. But rural Spain or rural Portugal is cheaper than urban Poland or Czech Republic, for example. Anyhow, a construction of a modern single-family house of 150 m2 (1 m2 is around 10 sq ft) in the East or even Central Europe would cost about $1500.00 per 1 m2. Again, with non-combustible roofing, hollow bricks (they have an excellent thermal properties) and plaster.
ā@kriszukowski4530 " ... in the East or even Central Europe would cost about $1500.00 per 1 m2." In central Europe, especially in Germany, this starts at 3000 euros per square meter. Prices of $1500 per square meter once existed 10 years ago.
As someone who has worked in construction in the Netherlands, you're wrong about one thing, concrete is a very moldable and architectural diverse material. Basically what we do is we make a wooden framework, fill that framework with different types of thickness of steel wires (from 0.3 to 1 inch thick steel wires) depending on the flexibility required of the part. Then several different mixtures of concrete can be used to get the end result desired strength and flexibility. We then remove the wooden framework once the concrete has settled. The most common home here is thus a concrete framework, that can be compared to lightwood framing, filled with masonry. In most cases we do NOT use plaster on the outside, due to masonry absorbing more heat, and we like to stay warm since our yearly average temperature is about 50 Fahrenheit. And while our average house pricing is slightly higher then in America (525k compared to 415k) the benefit is that our houses tend to last on average 300 years compared to the US 50 years. And then we have not even talked about inherit other benefits like noise reduction, energy efficiency (You save roughly $600,-- per year) and disaster proofing. Does that make our homes better? Depends on the situation, we have a culture where our home is expected to stay within the family for generations, or if its a rental home be able to be rented out to multiple families. Then there is also the National and local laws and building requirements, including aesthetic compatibility with the rest of the area. America is vast, with very different climates depending of the location where you live, the Netherlands has in comparison a singular climate. Our buildings are designed to work most efficiently for that climate. We also have different disaster occurrence, our country being basically one big river delta and coastal area benefits from houses that can with stand a lot of water/moisture. So its not as easy to compare one country with the next without keeping climate and disaster occurrence and local laws in account. It could be that in a similar climate and disaster occurrence in America the houses there are quite similar to ours, but because those conditions are a low percentage of America, henceforth the percentage of those houses will be less. Then there is the amount of population density in those area's compared to the rest of America that can increase or decrease that percentage again. And as mentioned before our homes are more expensive, about 20% more expensive then the average house in America. Most people tend to look at their own wallets, instead of also investing for their children, grand children and the next few generations. And fact is, by the time you buy or build a house, you generally have about 50 years left to live give or take. It doesn't matter then that your house will last for 300 years, because you won't enjoy the majority of it. In conclusion, if would live in an area where the risks of a natural disaster of destroying my house would favor one type of house or house construction over the other one, i would build that. And i would probably otherwise use the cheapest house variant that suits my needs. Most likely it just means that the average requirement of a home is different in other countries that have "better" or "worse" housing. I couldn't imagine myself living in a standard American house over here, but that has nothing to do with its quality or longevity, but everything to do with our climate, in combination that if my house would actually get flooded, the chances of very expensive repairs would be much higher then with our typical housing.
American houses aren't optimised for anything else than making a quick buck by building and selling them. There is no argument for it depending on climate or earthquackes because their houses NEED AC in warm climates and they break down in any single natural occurence.
In Canada all the homes in my city are mostly original. Since the city dates from about 1870, there are no examples of older homes than 150 years but I know of lots of neighbourhoods where the houses are 115 years old. They usually have a basement added after the fact and are difficult to do repairs to the heating, plumbing and electrical because of the small crawl spaces. I would never buy a cement or brick house, because I am constantly adding new things to my house. I just put in a new garden hose spigot and it took me 30 minutes to put the pipe in and solder the freezable spigot. I also add new electrical wiring all the time and my ceiling in the basement is wide open for me to string wires, plumbing and add new venting for the heating system. I just spruced up my deck last year. I built it in 1995 from another deck that I bought from a guy for $300 , all pressure treated wood. I sanded it and repaired with autobody filler and then put an aluminum deck railing with tinted glass. How would you build a cement deck ? It would feel so much like an unappealing place to go, like the cement balcony off an apartment. Cement and bricks gives you that hard, unforgiving, prison, concrete feel. It is cold. I put SM insulation R10 on my cement basement walls down 8 feet and all the way up my house. I don't have any walls at all except for styrofoam and then 2X6 studs stuffed with fiberglass and drywall on the inside. I have R30 walls. In the basement my concrete is kept relatively warm and I have zero cracks. I added on a 4 car garage in 2005 with a room above the garage with bathroom, kitchenette and living room/ bedroom. To do this with bricks would be a nightmare. Concrete and bricks have zero R value and you have to do your construction is such a way as to isolate the concrete from the inside of the house and this takes a lot of square footage to build second walls inside the brick walls to hold the insulation. My wife has an apartment in Dnipropetrovsk and it is cold and hard and reminds me of a car park. They did put styrofoam on the entire outside of these blocks about 20 years ago and that improved the heat inside but she is on the top floor and her ceiling is cold. I was going to buy some insulation to improve it but ran out of time. I redid some of her aluminum wiring because she had a long hallway with only one light and it was dark. I put in three lights and changed some fixtures. Not enough electrical receptacles , in Canada you must have every 12 feet and I put them in more frequently and can easily add a new fixture in a couple of hours. Fishing new wires inside the walls is easy and no chipping through bricks. How do you even make a square hole in a brick wall for an outlet? I am currently running 8 gauge electrical wire from my breaker panel to the apartment above my garage to put in a stove and I just drill holes in the wood joists and string the line. It will take a couple of hours and be totally hidden when I am finished because my ceiling has panels that I can remove to access the joists. I have no idea how you run cables and things in a brick house and keep them invisible. My wife's apartment has hot water lines visible running all over the place for water and heating and the electrical is in visible conduits. It looks like a zoo. I am also now putting down more hardwood floors and stapling the oak flooring to my plywood subfloor. I have no idea how you would attach hardwood to cement ? I have a compressed air floor stapler and it works great. If I find that a board is defective or crooked, I just pry the board up and out. With concrete you can't make easy corrections and modifications. I put in stone driveways and cut the concrete of my basement to access my added garage and it was a major job to cut through 8 inches of concrete for 3 feet by 1 foot and took many days, I used a diamond saw. Then my driveway was cut with a diamond table saw with water that I bought for $300 and it is a very slow process cutting these things , driveway and planting garden made from stones. .
As a European I've lived in the United States for 9 years. My conclusion on this issue is that USA #1 mindset combined with mega corporations having too much influence in politics is making this country stagnate so badly. The state of infrastructure and housing doesn't feel a developed nation.
@ i did and I know what Iām talking about. Many nations with much lower gdp offer higher living standards to its citizens. You can take that million dollar McMansion made with ticky tacky. All yours.
I live in a house that is older than the USA, that has survived many conflicts, the Thirty Years' War, two world wars and many floodings and natural disasters, minor earthquakes, even a fire in the attic. All brick, stone and wood. And it will be there long after me.
A German friend of mine said the wood used in the foundation of a German house (thrown out after the cement is poured) is better quality than the wood used to build modern American houses!
Ummm actually yeha wood used for coloum casting (or something) even in India is stronk so in Germany such wood would be strnger since they just import it for cheaper from asia
@miku_nakanoismywaifu Actually not really. This wood is cheap and don't last really long. Mostly they take fast growing Trees like Pine. And we have a lot of them in Germany :p
People in the US: Oh it's easy to rebuild. Easy for the workers, not the owner, he still has to pay loads for another cheap shit. Also you won't have to rebuild if your house doesn't fall apart by a slightly heavy wind.
I'm from Sri Lanka. We are currently building a home using Brick and reinforced concrete frame. 3 stories, around 4,500 fq.ft with a luxury finish with air conditioning, floor tiling, swimming pool. Total cost around 170,000 USD.
ā@fritzmeier1717They do pay them decently don't worry about that. It's just that cost of living is pretty cheap there because they don't have corporates robbing them off for every product and services
The oldest half-timbered house I've ever seen was in Ulm, Germany. It was built in the early 12th century. And what's incredible is that it still functions as a tiny hotel.
Yeah if I think of someone living in a concrete home or something made of cinderblocks I'd feel bad for them, that makes me think of poverty and dystopia, like something out of 1984. All homeowners I know that live in wooden house radiate prosperity to me.
We had hurricane force winds in Ireland last week and apart from the odd wall falling down or some roof damage most of the houses which are mostly built of brick and concrete didn't suffer any damage, the same storm in the US and it would be like a pile of matchsticks.
This is something that baffles me. Millions of americans live in locations that have regular hurricanes and or wildfires but they still decide to build all of their houses from wood. It makes no fucking sense, they just building the same shit, having it destroyed and then rebuilding it again the exact same way just to have it destroyed in a couple of years.
@sytricka3318 Most of the houses that collapse from hurricanes are improperly upkept. In places like california, wildfires used to be much less common, and houses built from stuff other than wood are becoming more common. The issues with concrete and brick are readily apparent when you look at the number of people that die from "heatwaves" in Europe that are average US temps. You don't want to be in a concrete box when it's 37c, and AC only became common in US homes in the 60's. I've lived in at least 3 homes from the 50's or earlier in the last 8 years, and they're perfectly stable, and they stay cool.
The problem is capitalism. Homes are considered a rapidly manufactured commodity now. As in all other industries, the builder wants to make the most profit for the lowest expense, so they throw up tons of dogshit quality stick-built structures which crumble in disasters, then charge an arm and a leg for them, keeping average homeowners in debt forever. In the last few years, developers have reduced the rate at which they're building homes to keep supply artificially low, contributing to the current housing crisis. Same thing DeBeers did with diamonds, only with less (recent) ethnic cleansing. For-profit firms can't be trusted to act in the interest of society; they will only act to maximize profit and externalize costs.
@brandonmoreno1752 maybe, part of the housing crisis is that North America builds homes that need to be replaced every 50 years? If we built homes to last centuries, we could put more focus on building more homes instead of expending resources, energy, and labour continually rebuilding them.
ā@TheWeirdDude_419 we do not replace homes after 50 years. Where did you hear this nonsense? If anything, we tear down old homes to make apartment buildings. The average age of a houses are about 50 years, because our population has doubled over the last 70. Europes population has increassd by about 30% in that time. Is it clear now why fast and cheap is a priority for the US?
@ The components of fast and cheap houses are not designed to last even fifty years. Roofing singles have a fifteen to twenty-five-year (depending on climate) lifespan and then need replacing and end up in the landfill. Cheap vinyl siding becomes brittle in less time. Whether a house gets torn down for new builds or has its components regularly changed out, it is still getting replaced... and replacing those components creates strain on the resource, manufacturing, and construction industries that could have focused their efforts elsewhere. Plus, construction has been getting cheaper and lower quality over the last fifty years, so we haven't even got to experience the full repercussions yet.
Sorry, not catching up fast. Your last type of home was done in Germany about 35 years ago. I used to work in installing communication systems in Germany and saw all these new technologies used for building houses. They are at least 20-30 years ahead of US. However, as you mentioned, wood framing as done in US is the cheapest and fastest and not much skill required. That is the only reason it is and will be done that way in the future in the US. To prove that point, look at the Paradise fire a few years back in California. The county wanted to implement stricter building rules after the fire, using concrete, however, the huge building corporations opposed that as it is to expensive, eating into their profits, and at the end they won. No change! Profits over safety.
Since you are using California as an example, there are a couple different things to consider California has extraordinarily strict, stringent, environmental protection laws that make any kind of construction, extraordinarily difficult, California has earthquakes, which makes anything made of concrete or stone or masonry. Extremely difficult to pull off without risking the structure because of the earthquakes. What is preferred in California because of that however, California also has huge fire risk and so there should be a trade-off to mitigate that as well. Youāre also has a lack of trees compared to North America. There are trees there are forests, but they are very heavily protected because there arenāt many of them by comparison. Wood is far more expensive in Europe, closing the gap between wooden construction and Mason reconstruction, the lack of earthquakes also favors concrete and masonry.
Putting up a concrete or masonry construction in Californian is prohibitively expensive, and it's not that it cuts into their profits. They simply know no one will pay the price associated with it partially because yes it is expensive and partly because it has to be built earthquake resistant in Cali. There is a reason only large corporations or rich people build from stone or brick in Cali. Moving to the Midwest and Tornado alley area it wouldn't matter F4 and F5 Tornadoes destroy stone and brick homes just as easily. As for Florida it's a retirement community people moving there can afford it having sold homes in other areas and having retirement to draw on.
unfortunately, I think actually even RUSSIA is getting ahead of the US in methods for building new homes. Interestingly it has also become common there for a small new house to have all radiant floor heating. What that tells me is itās becoming an economy in which common sense takes lead over greed, and that bodes well for the long-term future. Not so in the US.
"In the US, houses are build with light wood frames so they are fast in construction and cheap" While I agree on construction speed benefits, the words "cheap" and "US housing market" placed next to each other sound comically
21:20 As a Western European I disagree with the statement that houses stay in the family for generations. This is extremely rare in my experience, except for farms and castles.
Result: it's expensive and doesn't last. Why is that BTW? Is it because the land is so expensive or are the wood houses simply overpriced? If the houses were cheap, it would be perfectly fine... Build something out of renewable materials, use it for a while, then build something new. Makes sense when you have a low population density and can easily start building a new house while living in the old house.
My father worked his way through seminary as an usher at the Academy of Music. home of the Philadelphia Orchestra As such, he came into contact with a number of celebrities in the immediate post war period. One story was that he came into contact with Le Corbusier smoking in the hall outside the auditorium. He told him that smoking was not permitted. Le Corbusier said Young man, do you know who I am. Dad said Yes, and you, of all people, should know this place is a fire trap. He then went on to note that Le Corbusier was in town scouting out possible sites for the UN, and that he may have caused Philadelphia to lose out to NYC. : )
I lived with a German family in 1977 for a student exchange. The father was an architect. When I told him that houses in the US were built of wood, he could not believe it and laughed his ass off. Houses in Germany were built like a commercial building, zero wood, built to last forever!
I want to say this as a Japanese person. There's always someone worse off than you. It's a wooden building with uninsulated walls and aluminum sash windows (single pane glass). In the summer, it's freezing hot because the air conditioning doesn't work! In the winter, it's freezing cold because the heating doesn't work! It's a waste of electricity, kerosene, and gas! If you're not careful, you could die of heat shock in this house!
I'm in the UK, and in our visits to Japan we have been astonished at the discomfort of anyone living in a traditional-style house: too cold, too hot, high humidity. They look beautiful though!
As said earlier, this is also part of the US culture and philosophy: Why build for generations, when I can foresee I will only live in that house / region for 10-20 years? Or, why committing to a certain construction / style of house when I know designs and technology as well as my income will change over the years? Per se there is nothing wrong with this thinking except maybe (only maybe) from an environmental perspective. But I personally have no proof of the validity of the environmental statement.
@BAG9114 "there is nothing wrong with this thinking except maybe (only maybe) from an environmental perspective." As we have already learned, there is also the fire resistance perspective. Homes in very many developments in the U.S. are built close together. With the right wind and dryness conditions, fire can easily destroy them.
@BAG9114 but then that doesnāt explain why life in the US is so darn expensive! What you describe is actually more applicable to some other countries than the USš„“
Here in Nice, France my parents built a prestressed reinforced concrete frame house with double walls cinderblocks in 1975 with a flat vegetal roof (kitchen garden). 7 forest fires came destroying things around, including wood stored against the walls. People protected themselves by going into the house, including firefighters at the worst time. Gas tank did not explode, trees grew back. A forest fire is to me the worst nightmare, but I know I'm secure in the house if the worst happens. I'm alive thanks to concrete. It is devastating to me to see the houses of L.A. and Paradise before that burn down in minutes. I have seen in front of me pines that are 150 years old burn and explode in seconds. I took the blast of a super scooper dropping close to me. You should build concrete and cinder blocks. It's also good for earthquakes.
Except American homes *don't* cost a million dollars. I bought a brand new, 3 bed, 2/1 bath, house, with appliances (except washer & dryer), with an attached 2 car garage, with a front and (quite large) back yard, in an only 3 year old neighborhood, for 280k$. It probably only cost half that to actually build.
@fnamelname9077 Exactly! If an American house costs $1million, it's usually either huge, or on a lot that costs $750K. Get away from the cities and there are still places where average houses are dirt cheap.
@fnamelname9077 a concrete house is probably 3 to 5 times more pricey than wood, it is a different culture, like planting a tree for the children and granchildren, and also what is the price for a human life ? or the price of pain and loss of item with sentimental value? The very rich that lost a house and can build 10 more are also suffering from loosing part of their life, material is not only material, we attach to things and places. The new house does not taste the same as the old one. Nothing is really replaceable. In my mind it is good to build in stone/concrete and this adds confidence.
Insurance companies are leaving Florida and California this is all over the news. So if Americans want to live in houses they have to make them insurable again.
Right, The idea of ābuilding better is too expensive, the insurance will cover itā does not work when there are major disasters, We need to build to last .. itās not that much more and itās worth every penny
Yeah they have to make houses that float in Florida and make houses that can put out massive wildfires in California. Insurance companies are just predicting possible futures with existing climate change models. Insurance companies will always try to minimize their risk if they can
I spoke to someone recently and regulations prevent them from building high enough above flood level in FL. Our solution was to design a home that was built to flood and then dry out on the first level. Flood vents, concrete walls, steel joists and a concrete slab supporting 2nd floor. In the event of flooding / hurricanes, the homes can survive without collapsing or damaging the living space above
In both Florida and California, the issue of insurability is being driven by government intervention in the industry, rather that intrinsic benefits of particular construction methods. If companies were able to accurate charge premiums based on actual risk, the best construction tactics would win out, as balanced by disaster mitigation tactics and infrastructure. But, we don't trust insurance companies, given that we make insurance obligatory, by either government edict (motor insurance) or the wide spread practice of mortgages (death loans). So, we are evolving to insurance rates being determined by special interest groups, that want to keep rates low to protect us from rapacious insurance companies. But when the resulting rates aren't adequate, you find that some properties are not insurable.
Insurance companies have no issue absorbing individual home losses. However when you build homes in flood plains or your base flood elevation is 15ā ie florida it doesnt matter if you built with cmu or wood its the amount of homes that will be damaged and the rebuild costs. The california urban wildfire as an issue of property setbacks and material. Concrete(icf) is cost prohibitive for California and a state that leads the nation in green nonsense would have to explain why a government that fights co2 is supporting an industry that is the largest producer of co2
@Mike_Fortin: all government construction projects are over planned and over engineered, they are way more durable than housing built for dwelling units, on the open market. But no one could possibly afford the kind of construction the government uses. Notice the government has insurmountable debt, thatās how I did it. And most of those buildings are empty or underutilized
They are very laughable here in BC, Canada. Farmers build houses that look like they could comfortably house thirty people, but you only ever see one or two vehicles around the place and the terrible build quality and cheap facades can be seen a mile away. It's not just the farmers, there also seems to be a vanity battle in the Vancouver and Richmond area where houses are built to look incredibly fancy but the materials and methods used are the cheapest and quickest.
Fun facts : - "The Three Little Pigs" fairy tale originated in England and became a famous classic in USA by Walter Disney, teaching every generation ever after, but still most Americans are building their houses like straw-cabins. - A usual theme in American horror movies is an evil guy who breaks-in through the window, but most Americans still have windows made of only a thin wood frame and glass and a curtain behind that.
@Savvas1640 can confirm, live in a āluxuryā townhouse built just a few years ago and you can feel a chill within 2-3 feet of the windows when itās particularly cold outside (about 20Ā°f right now)ā¦ this wasnāt a thing in any house or apartment Iāve ever lived in, in the US or otherwiseā¦
My wife and I live in an Earthship, it keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, our home is built to withstand strong winds, it's fire resistant, and earthquake resistant, we grow food in it year round, and we have no utility bills.
Good for you. If you have a lot of time and money, a home like that can be built, because itās very expensive and time consuming to use recycled materials not meant to build a home, to actually build a home, such as all those tires
We are building something similar to earth ship. A combination of rammed earth, straw bale and a large conservatory. I would never build a stick home anymore after renovating 3 of them.
@NOWAR-q7s They have their qualities and drawbacks. I would guess I've built or worked on 150 minimum. When it comes to flexability it is difficult to surpass. I'm currently in a double wall 14'' passive, active solar superinsulated one that is all wood and cellulose insulation. I wouldn't do it any other way in Canada.
My house is 300 years old originally all stone and refinished after it survived an earthquake with a clay brick and reinforced cement layers in the walls. My exterior walls are 90cm thick. I'll take that over a popsicle stick and paper mache hut any day. I'm not afraid of earthquakes, wind, floods or fire. š
The homes look better here ! America has some of the most beautiful homes according to my limited travel experience. However, I'm asurprised how cheaply they are built. The frame looks like a bunch of toothpics that can be blown over by any strong wind. My neighborhood got hit with a Tornado a few years ago. So replacement homes are popping up like wild-flowers. Every single one of those homes is built the same way with a wooden skelton that looks more like toothpicks. One neighbor who had his home destroyed by the Tornado, tried to rebuild. The wooden frame was about 90% up, when another mini-tornado hit the structure and flattened everything. He gave up and sold the lot.
People from other countries donāt criticise american construction for it being timber frames but rather for itās poor workmanship and constant use of the lowest quality materials. Even swedes criticise american buildings for being too weak and poorly constructed, itās very clear why when you compare the average Swedish tradesmanās work versus the american counterpart doing the exact same job.
@ Americans get paid more, drywall installers, roof crews and so on get paid a lot more than swedes for doing the same job. And cost of living in Sweden is higher than most american states, higher taxes and higher cost for goods.
Europe also has a tradition of apprenticeships with very elaborate training programs to get craftsmen up to a good standard. And many are quite proud of their work. In the US you're looked down upon if you haven't got a college degree. What's an apprenticeship? Let me just slap that pipe in here that'll be 100 bucks please....
A few months ago, I was in California for a private showing of a mansion. Asking price was mid to upper double digit millions. I couldnāt believe my eyes - and ears. I kept knocking on the walls and looked at the estate curator. I asked him: āWhatās this? Why does it sound hollow?ā. Estate Manager: āSir, I can assure you itās solid constructionā. Me: āYeah, no, I donāt consider it solid when I punch through it with my fist, sorry.ā. I also confronted him about the price. āSo, the high price reflects the prime location and the size of the surrounding property, but not the quality of construction of its buildings, right?ā. He was speechless for a while, then added: āSir, the quality of construction is in line with the high standards and the exclusivity of the areaā. Me: āOh, yeah? Funny. Coincidentally I have been to a different showing 2 days ago, not even 200 meters from here. Same neighborhood, similar size and price. Here, I could punch a hole into the wall and over there I would break my hand. Now, you tell me: Why is that?ā. Needless to say, he didnāt have an answer and I didnāt buy. Ended up buying not even in the same state, due to Californiaās āinteresting rules and regulationsā, but in Florida. Itās just crazy to most Europeans that even if you are in the market for a high end estate, they still seem to find a way to screw you over in the US. If there was a way to build a house with no walls and charge double, they would do it.
Another thing which seems common here in Czechia where most of the residential housing is still build with bricks like blocks is that a lot of houses are still being build in large part by the owners themselves. You can build brick house alone or with one another preson relatively easily. It will take some times (few years) but it could be done even if you have 9 to 5 job. In US it seems most of the housing is build by relatively large teams of contractors quickly. I guess with timber framing can really be effective if you have many hands available to put everything in place timely etc. With bricks you can lay one row over the weekend and walk away for month and you can do it alone because brick is sized to be handled by single person.
I think that attitude towards employment in the US and in Europe makes a significant difference here. In Europe you more likely have some time after work to undertake such projects as building your house on your own (except for some parts like installations and roof e.g.). And there is a higher chance that your relatives live nearby and will be willing to help you. So it's also related to some social conditions.
ā@MarekFajkus the building should ideally last through a complete thermal cycle (winter and summer) before completion in order to "settle down" if using bricks + concrete foundations. So it doesn't matter much for self-built houses but for fast building it may be a bit annoying. It can be avoided with slight additional cost.
ā@MarekFajkus Heads up, a concrete and brick home can easily be built by a skilled crew in 2 weeks. I've seen it happen. If it's a 1 storey house, they don't have to wait for the concrete to fully set before the next storey. I'm not.saying your experience is wrong, I'm saying quick construction is definitely available with concrete.
Many don't want to admit it but the biggest problem with American homes, autos etc. is the lack of consumer protections and the drive to maximize profits and who care about quality. As long as it's going to last to the end of the warranty period it's good to go.
I'm in the Caribbean and if someone is living in a wooden house in my country, they would be considered poor. I remember when I was younger and saw people flying through walls in movies, I was confused about why they would let us see that it's just a movie set made out of fake walls, not realizing that that was what real walls were like in the US. I have started making use of "fake" walls in my house recently though, since it is cheaper and faster for interior walls that are not exposed to moisture and it would make future remodeling easier. The only downside is that it doesn't block sounds as well.
Even our Wooden houses in the Caribbean are stronger than American wooden homes. Plus now a wooden house and a wall house in the Caribbean cost the same š
You can get a well built home in the US if you can afford a builder who cares or build it yourself. Stick framing is actually great if you use thicker lumber ("overbuild" as they say). The problem is corporate developers who are allowed to use cardboard sheathing, the minimum viable amount of lumber for the structure and don't waterproof or insulate their homes properly. Then there's the city/county building department that ignores the obvious problems until there's a disaster and we just get higher taxes and permit fees to cover their mistakes.
Even the luxury builders often donāt care about quality materials, itās all about vanity. And even if you find one that does care, you by the time you get ZIP system, double walls, and or exterior insulation, smart membranes, etc. You could just build an ICF house for the same price. Better efficiency, longevity, SAFETY, sound reduction higher appraisal value, etc. Doesnāt make much sense to me to build stick frame
As a Puertorican living in TX I can say that houses in the US are not worth to buy, they donāt gave me any type of security or solid structure everything is build with thin wood and soft material, one good hurricane and say good bye to your house.
Why don't you implement them in the US? Story time: A friend of my Ma migrated to the US from Germany in the early 90s and wanted to build his own house. Well, he looked at what was offered and didn't liked it, so he called a German architect and asked him to plan his house, meeting German standards, but following US regulation. Well, the first construction company turned him down, as they thought he was completely nuts and that's some kind of a joke and the second one which took the contract was still in quite disbelief in what they were supposed to build and said, I quote "the Germans just build and live in bunkers." To be fair, the friend was quite into renewable energy and thus the plans were for something we would call today passive house, which has a wall thickness (including insulation) of up to 63 cm if constructed in traditional brick and mortar variant, which he opted for as it was at the edge of the hurricane alley
Companies have their local know how and building methods. He also would have a hard time building a German brick house in the US, where bricks are seen as decoration.
In Mexico, houses are typically built of red brick or cinder blocks. Roofs are from reinforced poured concrete. Older houses were made from adobe, specially in the central/north of the country.
Yeah, people around the world and across the US build with what they have on hand. Most of the US has lots of wood more easily available to build with than other materials, so that's what most of the US builds with. Some parts of America build with concrete, adobe, etc... too depending on what's more easily available to them.
Just like in America you guys build with readily avaliable materials for the environment the home is located. I dont get why people can't understand that
Curious, because anytime I see construction workers from the US, they look Mexicans.....so, the know how of their construction workers is not the problem of why the construct with those materials
@escthedark3709 yup only canada and the us have wood. all other places concrete flows in rivers around the landscape. we have our concrete cows that gives healthy natural concrete. we do not have trees. they are only present in USA and canada
US philosofy on housing - pay 300000 usd for cardboard box on wooden sticks. So it's cheap and fast for builders, but people paying price of normal house and getting box from fridge instead of house.
I've spent a few minutes now trying to understand what the second sentence is supposed to mean, I'm still not sure what you're saying. One thing I can say though, people wish they could find a home for 300,000. Unless you're living in pretty specific parts of the country that's about 100,000 under value and in other places that's about half what you can expect to pay. I don't live in a nice area, at all, and the median home price where I live is around 650,000. Also, residents don't have a say in what homes are built out of unless they're building a custom home which is rare for average people.
@zac9933 What I'm saying in second sentence is that way of house construction is cheap and fast, but only for companies that are building that houses. For people who are buying that houses - they are buying overpriced cardboard box, for obnoxious amount of money.
@choro3d191 healthcare in US is shitshow. You need to have insurance, but you steel need to pay for most healthcare expenses. It's absolutely corrupted system, imho. Not sure why you bringing it here (probably because its also about paying a lot of money for shitty and inferior something), but still it is what it is.
9:36 The knowlage of brickmaking was lost only in north-western Europe, brick continued to be widely used in Byzantine Empire and Italy and by the 12th century it spread all across central and eastern Europe where it became far more common than stone. Here in Poland most medieval buildings are brick.
Ironically, California is where modern stick frame housing was born; right down to the tools. The framing hammer was invented in California for guys building tract homes there.
For example, in Florida. How do you build a wood-framed house in a hurricane-stricken area? "Wood-framed houses and roofs are flexible." Yes, of course, until you experience a Category 5 hurricane or a tornado. Look in the Caribbean. There are stone houses over 500 years old that have withstood hundreds of hurricanes without a scratch.
Hey! I stayed in one of those half-timber homes depicted - and yes, it was stunningly beautiful and cozy inside and out! I lived in a very old, non-renovated half timber estate back in the 90s, and I remember there were still straw mattresses in the house, and the walls were still what you call "waddle and dab", also the fill was more straw and earth mix, like perhaps a modern "earth ship." I remember the clay roof leaked, the plaster on the walls was cracking, but it was over 250 years old at the time! I can't imagine many of our modern-built homes in north america lasting half that long. That estate has since been renovated (or renewed as they say in German) and it is stunning.
In Australia the majority of our homes are only clever insulated tents. They leak heat and warmth, they are never square, and by that I mean opposite walls may be different lengths and the rooms end up out of square. My home is almost 50 years old on a cement slab, with a brick exterior that adds nothing to the structure. The frame is hardwood, only because of its age and would be called a balloon type frame that now a similar building would be a softwood plantation pine. We demanded our soffit be 900mm to help with protection from rain and sun. Our energy conservation is due to our planting of trees and shrubs to protect us from the summer sun. We also have a lattice work set out level with the roof gutters and that lattice allows us to grow vines that also protect us from the sun and adds to the warmth in our very mild winters. Our winter day are about 22C during the day with overnight temps of about 12C. It is our summer heat that sits on 30 -32C with overnight temps of 20C. Our heat waves are regular with 39 - 40C and nights of 23C. So I don't think the USA has exclusive rights to poorly built homes.
Todayās standards are better than what you see in the USās worst, but yes, plenty of glorified tents in Australia. A mild climate meant people didnāt literally die (much) if they were bad in Australia, and the US mostly has cheap electricity. Also there are some well built homes everywhere, including the US and Australia. Theyāre just not cheap and large.
There is two materials never mentioned. 1. Siporex/Ytong or light concrete. You add gas (co2 I think) to the manufacturing process to make something like foam but that are almost as hard as bricks but much lighter and with a better heat insulation factor. 2. Leca blocks.
America grande paese, ma ogni tanto si perdono per strada. Anche in Europa abbiamo case in legno soprattutto in montagna, ma sono fatte con tronchi d'albero di minimo 30 cm di diametro, praticamente indistruttibili. Ho notato che negli USA non vi ĆØ una cultura della casa basta un tetto e 4 pareti, la prova ĆØ che ad ogni uragano o simile centinaia di abitazioni vengono spazzate via come castelli di carte. No ragazzi la casa ĆØ una cosa seria non ĆØ un giocattolo. Personalmente cemento armato con muri perimetrali di almeno 40 cm (15,7 pollici) serramenti, infissi e porte esterne blindate. Casa deve essere un posto sicuro dove se arriva un F5 al massimo mi prendo una coperta, un buon caffĆØ caldo e mi metto a guardare lo spettacolo !! Forza ragazzi basta legno degli stuzzicadenti, cemento armato come se non ci fosse un domani š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£šš
One of the biggest shocks when we first moved to the US was that we had walls made out of paper. Some shelf fell against a wall in the garage and created a hole. My mother was absolutely shocked -- we had never lived in a building that was not made out of concrete... even then poorest homes in the villages out in the country (the homes with no running water and outhouses) were built out of thick logs or continuous boards, while more modern houses were built out of cinder blocks. Even the outhouses of were sturdier than the walls of this townhouse. America was also the first time I encountered furniture that was not made out of wood. It was a confusing time. And please tell me more about how we are "trending toward disposable" while the shack down the street from me that would be too small to be a proper 2 car garage is selling for almost half a million dollars...
Walls in the US are made out of wood framing and drywall, not paper. There is paper in drywall, but its main purpose is to provide tensile strength for the gypsum. Drywall provides additional fire protection and an easy to work on substrate for renovation and furnishing work. Logs are a poor wall choice for housing as they're flammable, difficult to insulate and seal against bugs, and require extensive maintenance. Masonry exterior walls would be desirable, but most people cannot afford them and the construction workforce hasn't been trained around building that way.
@robertm5969 "additional fire protection" for a house that's basically an elaborate campfire š You wouldn't need additional fire protection if your house wasn't made out of furnace fuel to begin with.
As someone from Spain: it is common over here for people to joke that houses in the United States are made out of wet cardboard. I can understand if houses are made of cheap materials in areas that are hit by tornados and monsoons often as to rebuild them quickly, but at a certain point they're just making the joke become reality. Punching a wall and making a hole through it wouldn't make me feel one bit secure inside that home, that's for sure.
As someone in Tornado Alley, building with wood isn't just about being able to rebuild quickly and cheaply. It's also about saving lives. It's easier and safer to dig yourself out of a pile of wood and drywall than it is a pile of bricks and stone.
@HeadFullaStuffin ??? such a stupid thing to say ....when you can build house that rezist 200km wind ....i wonder whay quality is equal with cheep in US
@mellasio3911 200 km per hour winds are fine. But we also get over 300 km per hour winds. That kind of wind speed not only tears apart buildings, it also carries the debris with it. I don't know of any structure that would withstand that kind of intensity for even a couple minutes.
@HeadFullaStuffin i can show you projects of housings that are build for huricanes survive and many other stuff like look at systens that japan has in place for natural dezaster.s...it looks the tehnology exist ...we have a saing in my country ...am to poor to be cheep
16:42 another big factor in the American Southwest is termite infestation. I've seen homes that were wood frame nearly collapse due to termite damage. In fact when I was building houses back in the 80s, after Chlordane was banned, the Bank we worked with quit financing wood frame, temporarily.
Are houses in other countries better than the US? š š¤
What do you think?
you forgot that when including gang nails, hurricane ties and new treatment methods for most materials and furniture, the wood framed homes in the usa are more disaster proof/replaceable/safe when taking into account certain kinds of disasters, tornados for instance. also Europe; don't feed the pests, enough said.
@overseer7004 While I see the value of hurricane ties and other code required reinforcements (which other countries may not have), our wood homes are often wiped out by hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and more.
A solid structure home is going to do a much better job of surviving the aforementioned disasters. Even more so if combined with a conditioned, unvented attic.
Hard to say, as I've never been to the US. But I'm quite happy with my English bungalow, an early 1960s single story home with a cavity wall. The outer skin is brick, the inner is (I think) some sort of block. The cavity between was originally an air gap which prevented water ingress, now filled with cavity wall insulation; polystyrene beads. Many claim that's not a good idea, but I've had no problems with it. Windows and doors are double glazed, though would have probably been steel framed windows and wooden doors when first built.
There's about eight inches of fibreglass loft insulation above the ceiling. If I seem a bit obsessed with insulation, it's because England is cold and damp for much of the year and energy prices are high.
I'm amazed at the size of many US homes; my bungalow may seem small to you at 600 square feet but I live on my own and it's the right size for me. It's larger than many other one bedroom bungalows here.
You said in your video: It depends. I am of German decent and lived in Switzerland. I came to appreciate the typical US wood house for itās flexibility to make design changes. The biggest draw-back however is energy efficiency. For the vast majority of US houses HVAC is a must - even in northern states like Wyoming, Montana, whereas the vast majority of houses in Europe including Southern Europe do only provide heating for the winter months. The summers in Europe may not be the most comfortable, but people make it through those hot weeks and few months.
The other issue is the increase in natural disasters: Hurricanes, wild fires, tornadoes, flooding.
In other words: I think in the US, concrete / CMU based buildings should be more seriously considered for energy saving and overall safety reasons at least in certain areas / states.
As for Europe: Innovative sustainable, environmentally friendly composite materials are coming to the market there in big box stores, combining the features of both worlds wood, concrete and stone!
Finally, I feel the US is much slower in adopting innovation in home building in which I include also plumbing, electrical, interior design, heating. As said, I am not unhappy with my house here, but I feel we could do better.
A home should be built in a way that works with its climate. I grew up in a regular wood-framed home. I live in an apartment (probably brick). I would love to have a concrete home as long as it could stay dry inside and not have any pest problems. What do you think of monolithic domes?
The problem I see with US homes is their quality doesn't fit to their price
Most definitely!!
We have $800k homes being built that won't last 10 years if they're lucky
American homes are on average twice the size for the same price as european homes.
@chicagoan81 Uhh, please give an example this. š¤Ø
The price for those houses is what got to me too every time. I get that one wants a home and light wood framing is there to make that easy, fast and cheap. So why are they so expensive?!
In the UK it's not just not rare, but it's extremely common to walk past houses that are older than the United States
Yep and no one wants to live in old European houses either. Poorly conditioned spaces, unergonomic and downright depressing.
@Josh.1234 correct -- they stand the test of time .....but only if your 'time' is happy to be spent in a house the size of a rabbit hutch ... and as cold as one.
@ That's very untrue, the older the village the more expensive it is to live there, as a general rule. People love the cosy old homes and will even pay to replace the thatch roofs every [25 years]. They are fitted with double glazed windows, sealed and given better heating, they're not bad to live in at all.
Why are they more expensive? Supply and demand.
@ note that supply and demand requires there to be demand, which is exactly my point! Also, there's quite a lot of them
Homebuilding in the US is designed to make a quick buck for investors rather than to build decent homes.
You cannot remodel a concrete house. Remodeling is an integral part of the home owning experience in the USA, which is alien to Europeans.
How much more do you want to go into debt buying a home.
@starventure You certainly remodel a house built using concrete blocks. I have done it twice here in he UK.
Well, just look at the difficulty of trying to sell a more expensive home. The developer purchased is 40 acres and they have to try to make money on this development so they canāt make them large plots or else theyād have fewer homes and theyād make less money so they have to be smaller to start with and then they have to have as many amenities as possible, but they canāt cost too much or else they priced themselves out of the market for people looking at smaller homes on smaller plots.
You canāt build million dollar homes on postage stamps and expect people to be willing to buy them when there are much larger homes for cheaper next-door.
Thatās the problemā¦. Itās a bigger country, youād think weād have more land, but it doesnāt work that way because land prices are dependent upon their proximity to downtownā¦. Many Europeans are forced to make do with a real estate culture where your grandparents purchased a home after the war and your parents inherited the house and someday you might inherit the house, but thatās the only way youāre ever going to own one because theyāre just too damn expensive
Thatās just not how things work in the United States because we have a much more mobile culture where people donāt plan on buying a house and living in it for 60 years in order to justify the massive expense, they buy a starter home and they worked their way up
@starventure 'Remodeling' is done for only two reasons- 1 To install the latest fixtures to keep up with latest fads to impress the Jones, 2. To replace the flimsy, crappy material used in the original build. Only the USA does this greedy, narcissistic idiocy.
well because only 2 little piggies arrived the third stayed in europe.
there is a story for kids it is called āthree little pigsā itās quite educational
Maybe I should do a video on it lol
Posted also on another channel the same! AMERICA !!!! MAGA!!! and they build cardboard buildings! So Shame!
As is seeing brick walls toppled on top of people after a tornado, especially in schools. 2013 in Moore, OK is an example.
ā@w8stralWell, the added cost of rebuilding, etc. compensates those extra costs. In the problematic areas, not everywhere.
@J-1410 Creating a stable construction only with bricks is a different branch of civil engineering. You can make a seismic steady brick construction if you know how. For such a collapse of a wall you need to blame lousy masonry with sub-standard mortar.
When you punch a American Wall, you can grab a coffee. When you punch a wall in germany, you get a trip to the ER
Why would you punch your wall?
When you want to change the layout & size of room you can do it easily in NA because you have quick access to electrical wires & plumbing, I doubt they're easy to move when your inside walls are made of bricks, concrete or other heavy material.
I'm not a fan of walls that fight back - I've seen too many people, particularly the elderly, with injuries from falls.
But a solid masonry wall with an air gap and a plaster sheet over the air gap will give you a wall surface that breaks before your hand does *and also* a wall structure that will stand the test of time. The air gap behind the plaster is also a handy place to run your plumbing and electrical.
ā@tealkerberus748 "Walls that fight back" my brother in christ it is a WALL. its WHOLE thing is that its a solid slab that does not move what do you MEEEAN fight back?!
ā@BananaBlooD9517they just don't put wires and plumbing inside the walls
In Germany, you don't have to worry about hospital costs either!
Not just in Europe, even us in Africa are wondering
Europe is Africa now
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Doesn't that depend from where you are? Shanty town, Maasai village or a mega city like Johannesburg.
@combongi1 africa is wondering how they were able to make a house out of something other than piles of dung
Even small towns/villages in Kenya have decent houses made of stone, concrete block, or brick.
Makes Agent Oranges comment about "sh*thole" countries look a tad lame š
In Europe we call this kind of "house" a shed.
Sheds built out of twigs and sheeet
An 8x16 shed needs 20 concrete foundation blocks in most US states. A 3k lb building requires the weight rating of close to 120k lbs
We have so much land here we can do whatever we want. If we want a stone/brick house we can build it, people just donāt generally want to.
@YegorKin-e4c Made of shit and sticks
Europe also calls a water fountain in the street a National Park waterfall and would probably try to make it a UNESCO sight. Of course you do this, the land your house is all you'll ever see and experience, given that it's likely 1/8th of your entire countries landmass.
I dont understand, in a place were wild fires are prevalent, you build with Wood. In a place prone to Hurricanes you also build with Wood. Why? Why? When there are better options.
It's cheap and it's what the local construction labor force knows. I agree, places like California and Florida should not be building wooden homes. Here in the northeast USA, wooden homes are OK because they can be insulated far easier than concrete structures (it goes below -20C here) and hurricanes/wildfires aren't a concern.
This was my exact thoughtš¤
You didn't watch the video did you.
āā@LondonEE16think as simple as this,who its better?wood vs fire or earth vs earth??and most important thing fire are more common then rare major earthquake
Cheap
Everyone on here saying wood is better for earthquakes than concrete. I lived in Japan 17 years and always in solid concrete apartment/townhouses. They have earthquakes every month where I was. They chose concrete for a reason. They were built to withstand severe earthquakes. There is more to earthquake-resistant construction than just the material used. They also use some kind of shock absorbing within the foundation. Also lived in California about 7 years and have seen the wooden houses broken to bits.
Thank you for this
Yes, absolutely true.
Concrete can be designed to stand higher magnitude earthquakes than wood framing. This is accomplished through the use of seismic joints that allow for movement and reinforced foundations.
I think in CA, concrete homes require additional engineering and approval. However l, money doesnāt seem to be the issue and at a minimum homes should be of steel construction
yeah, wooden structures can be extremely solid, but not when heavily optimized for material costs and ease of construction. Unless you have an abundant supply of decent quality lumber it quickly gets more cost effective to use other materials if disaster resistance is a concern. I've seen a 100+ year old wooden house originally built at a time when they just threw more lumber at every problem. Walls of solid lumber, backed by 2 layers of planking and one layer of particle board! Presumably they just kept adding layers in renovations over the years. Mind you, this was built in a sawmill town at a time when lumber was the region's primary export, so it would have been silly to build with anything else.
Obviously you always want to adapt your construction techniques and material choices to local conditions. The pain sets in when builders compete on construction price alone, slapping together structures they know will have issues in the long run.
Mediterranean too. Stone and concrete
exactly! thats why apple built their round office using japanese eartquake proof foundations in california
When did you see wood house splintering to bits in an earthquake? I lived in California for six decades, and lived though a number of earthquakes, and the only time wood houses failed was when their concrete foundations heaved. By far the greatest damage was to steel and concrete structures.
Iām a carpenter in the US, and our houses are cheap shit! You could literally cut through the walls with a utility knife! Cut the vinyl siding, then the Celetex, and then thru the drywall! Itās shit. Heavy timber, and stone, and earth homes will last way longer!
And while old layouts (like built for hundreds of years) are often not fitting very well for modern way of living (plumbing, heating, cables, space needs etc.), the fact that they are still standing after centuries testifies for a durable building style. Slop of yesteryear fell over long ago.
Those ugly roof overhangs that take up all the light? They keep the rain away from the walls.
The steep roofs that make the top floors cramped? They collect less snow before it slides off.
The blocky, boring, rectangular footprint? Inside corners are prone to failure, water ingress and the roof becomes more segmented/flat with the same problems.
New building techniques allow for new styles, but are they adressing all the issues that this style caused before?
On the other hand it might be cheaper to replace a cheap house that swims away in a flood a couple of times, than to built a resistant but much more expensive house. But still I would always prefer the more sturdy variant.
Dang, I didn't know you guys still use Wattle and Daub houses. Literally materials made with a lot of shit!
Iām also a carpenter in the US. Iām embarrassed by the houses I build. Itās all such crap that will never last.
@woedendstewadpier4922 thats the logic that made it possible to sell that cheap shit, a house build in germany where the chances are high for flooding or other expected problems, the house is build in a way to withstand the problem, its just plain dumb to think replacing is better or easier than keeping, pay 500k for a concrete foundation brickhouse with wood roofing once or pay for a new 100k house and loosing all your belongings and your home, that one time just sucks so incredibly that there is no question which option you should choose (numbers are pure fictional, i know that you can get a decent house in germany that will stand for 100+ years for 250kā¬ and an affordable 50k dollar woodtent that will rot away in 20 yrs )
I stayed in an Italian apartment and I could not hear the neighbors through the floors and ceilings. The floors were marble.
Oversimplified summary:
USA: Bigger is better
Rest of World: Quality over Quantity
I wondered over it many times: in Europe, where is no hurricanes, houses are bricked. In the US, where are hurricanes houses are wooden -_-
I will never get it why endangered with hurricanes Americans build their houses with wood.
@plrc4593 Look at the rest of the country, look at their president...
@plrc4593Probably because you dont live in one of those places is why you dont understand. And thats fine.
Oversimplified indeed.
@longwingdetrain3183 or because it doesn't make sense.
In the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil, there was a major flood, and practically the entire city was submerged. Most of the houses are made of concrete and bricks. After the flood passed, it was necessary to throw the furniture in the trash and wash the houses in order to live in them again. The people who were left without homes were the poor and who had houses made of wood in remote places. In Brazil, houses made of wood are associated with poverty.
Well the average home price there is 150,000USD..... thats damn near poverty level here in America
@franquil85conn I do not deny in any way that Americans have a higher "purchasing power", but among us Brazilians, whose culture comes from the Mediterranean, building wooden houses is associated with poverty. When someone gets some money, they build a house made of bricks and concrete. It is completely unimaginable for Brazilians to build a wooden house. No one would understand that someone who has money would build a wooden house. And we have a large colonization of Germans in the south of Brazil, who went to live in an area rich in wood. For about two generations they built wooden houses, but as soon as they got better financial conditions, they started to build only with bricks and concrete. The wood industry was completely abandoned, few people know how to work with wood. And all houses must have a civil engineer in charge, otherwise construction is not authorized.
@silvio6904 the problem is that Americans do know how to build with wood because timber was a major commodity in the past, and while you can have unscrupulous builders of wood (and bricks and concrete) you can also have amazing structures, though i do not deny concrete and brick are stronger. My wood built home is 3400sq ft and cost 650,000usd to build, if I built this same house out of brick and concrete it would probably be double. My first house i bought was a wood built Victorian home from 1893 (though I admit it was built with stronger wood than my current home built in 2020.
It's a bitch to to get the moisture completely out of the walls after flooding, may take years, decades, or never, won't be exactly as pre-flood but still livable.
@franquil85conn but a 150k USD house in Brazil is the size of a 800k house on the US and is made of BRICKS.
The average house price here is not 150kUSD. It is 30k USD. With 150k USD you can buy an entire mansion with a giant garden space.
I can tell you the answer from experience rather than internet research:
I was a carpenter in the USA for over 20 years. I also spent a year building houses in Sweden. The big difference that in Europe, designs are led by architects and engineers. In the USA architects and engineers are led by lawyers. The Simpson Tie company has a monopoly on how homes are built in the USA because they paid engineers to test their product. Engineers always specify what has been tested. If you donāt use exactly what the engineer put in the plans, the inspector makes you take it out.
No USA architect will specify local materials without a hefty price tag because engineers wonāt sign off on something that Simpson tie hasnāt paid some engineer to test. Because they are all afraid of being sued.
You wonāt get permits for anything that hasnāt been signed off by an architect and an engineer. Building codes are solely for avoiding lawsuits. Not safety. You wonāt get insurance for a house that hasnāt been built in outdated inappropriate, light timber houses because it has been tested. Without insurance no one can get a mortgage. If no mortgage, nothing gets built on spec. So there is basically one residential building style for all climates, because Simpson Tie paid an engineer. Thatās a sham!
Forget the ancient adobe houses in the southwest. The ancient stone buildings are curiosities. Forget the 200 year old hay bail house in Missouri. To get a permit you have to prove that a building will potentially last. Actually lasting doesnāt count as potentially lasting.
Thatās why everyone laughs at Americans.
You should make a video about this
So it's all because of Corpo Trash. Makes sense.
And every year that goes by I put more and more of Simpsons products into houses. It's obviously based on politics.
By the way, Here in Europe, we donĀ“t need Companies to test some equipment. Everything you can buy here is already tested, and no Inspector can tell us to take it out, Everything here is already tested according to our laws. Otherwise, no one is allowed to sell this stuff here! You simply cannot buy a thing here thatĀ“s not firmly tested.
Many thanks for explaining. This makes sense. In the Europe every contruction material must have certification to be placed on market. Certification require testing of material acc specific methods. There is no monopoly for testing in the Europe.
It seems to me, in the USA is main issue by monopoly system for everything. Too much centralised power for private companies which then are allowed to "lobby" (allowed corruption by law) at politics and authorities.
In Croatia, it is forbidden to build wooden houses in cities. The reason? Fire prevention.
The rest of the world just sees their houses as homes, something permanent, not investments, that's why we're baffled
I concur! Also hello fellow Plli!
Mostly they're seen as something you take care of now and then can hand down for multiple generations, not the throwaway mindset the US has on normal family homes.
Not Japan.
Not in Norway. Housing is an investment and the prices are skyrocketing out of control as we speak. It's gotten real bad.
ā@Frygiskthats a globalish trend
How to turn Sawdust and glue onto a million bucks, come to America and see the new houses
True and then HOA comes and wants to throw you out of your property because you have 3 cars parked in the driveway or something
Maybe call it Sawdust and garbage from the Butcher :p
American mass construction methods evolved from building film sets for Hollywood. They just have to look good on camera.
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This comment is a fire hazard lol
Civil engineer here. first, legally: not a single US home would come even close to comply with structural requirements in Portugal, let alone getting a heat or sound insulation certificates. We have very non-challenging climate, no snow, average wind, average precipitation and ordinary seismic activity, and yet your homes would be considered pretty unsafe for all of the above.
in my opinion your homes are made to be a consumable: companies make a quick buck and you buy a quick house - quick to build, quick to rot away. your average home age is stupid small. if we were to abandon one of our modern houses with absolutely no maintenance whatsoever, we know at least the structural elements will be there in 100 years. We walk past houses and constructions older than your country every day, from houses, pubs, aqueducts, state buildings, museums, offices, everything.
at the end, i would not be caught dead living at an american-style house if i had a choice. they do suck. and thatĀ“s my professional opinion.
Exactly, I take issue with "increasing time, added cost, added complexity" NO this is the baseline. This is fast fashion Shein but for homes and some can't see it for what it really is.
If you're being honest you should say "corporate home builders have the highest profit margin possible, need less qualifications and training, are not held to code and safety standards after close, can continue reselling dilapidated homes with white paint, paper and staples".
You don't have to say "I want to copy Europe" you can say "I want better", and wealthy people don't live in those paper homes for a reason.
Thanks. Then everything is about quick quick quick, quick build quick rot quick sell quick bucks then why people think real estate is an āinvestment ā
Yet wooden homes in US are stupidly expensive compared to what you get
Seriously š¤¦āāļø
The US also has a crazy expensive healthcare system and education system. However, you have lower taxes. I think I prefer to live in Europe, where only the state robs me to that extent.
@ I think every US citizen who needs just a diploma should move to europe to get a bachelor for 3-8k dollars and move on with their lives instead of having 100+k in student loan debt
@feandil1713 as a german i would have no problem with high taxes if those would actually benefit the people not just the rich and being used for stupid things especially construction that gets demolished or abandoned 5 years later
@idkiforget Oh yes, I get your point. I've heard about the contemporary political situation in Germany and I'm quite worried. I wish you the best from the depth of my heart, also because I'm convinced that Germany's stability affects Europe a lot. May Germany grow strong and always have wise governors. Greetings from the direct east neighbor country.
I am from Turkey and I witnessed that a bulldozer couldn't demolish a house which made of stone and cement.
What about earthquakes?š¢
@Xenolith41
This kind of structure can withstand any earthquake.
The problem is the apartments.
They make them from bricks and doesn't obey the structural integrity rules.
So, when an earthquake hits the results became catastrophic.
ā@Xenolith41 With the earthquake in the Hatay province not too long ago, a lot of the collapsed buildings were those not built correctly. There was a picture of loads of collapsed homes and shops, in the middle still standing, was the Chamber of Civil Engineers.
I remember seeing a video on RUclips a couple of years ago about a guy in the USA presenting the windows he installed in his new house. He ordered the windows in Europe. Triple layer glass with Aluminium frame. This is the highest grade of windows you could buy. He explained that he paid less for these windows including transportation from europe in comparison to whatever alternative is available in the USA of lower grade.
My impression of this and other stories is. That the construction material market in the USA does not have fair prices for anything.
Not just the construction market. The first thing I think about in this regard is what I keep reading about your health care system. Being super capitalistic apparantly does not create cheaper prices.
ā@raaf4678 Dude just explained how capitalism allowed the guy to buy a better product at a lower price on the free market.
ā@ShermanistDruidFrom a continent that mostly regulates said capitalism instead of letting it "regulate itself"
People in USA are not teached to realise value/price. That is the reason why in capitalism can prices grow way up to the sky. In the Europe we dont have regulated prices (except maybe energies in some cases) but we, people, are counting approximate cost to make such product and actual price of the product. We would never buy something with 10-20x higher price if there are other options. In the Europe we have much healthier concurrence market price fight than cartels in USA.
Honestly, from all stories I have seen, NOTHING is fairly priced. No regulation over medication cost, private healthcare and largely exploitative private education, merely trying to survive sounds like a burden on the wallet. It constantly sounds like there is no regulation AT ALL, even though there is.
Switzerland: I'm neutral, and btw, your house sucks USA.
āI havenāt seen anyone bragging about their earth homeā - Hold my beer: I grew up in a rammed clay home in Germany. 120 yrs old 16ā thick walls, 3-stories, 6 flats , 5000sq.ft total.
There is nothing that comes close in my experience with regard to insulation (heat and cold) and room climate. The walls can absorb a lot of moisture and release it again. In summer it feels like there is an AC running. But nope, itās all passive.
Nobody would build like that in Germany these days, so we are really glad we bought this thing.
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I did some tests because we live in a wood frame with clay filling. The raw clay bricks can at least absorb their own weight in water before they even soften slightly.
Now estimating, that all the clay in the walls and ceilings...we could empty a pool of water in the attic and no permanent damage will happen.
In fact, we had a pipe leak and the ceiling absorbed all the water for 6 months before we could see where the leak was.
Also: the wood did rot from cement, but where the filling was clay, the wood is still good after 400 years š
And wood frame here means wood with 14x14 cm and up to 30x30 cm. I see US America's wood frames as tooth picks. We build a garden shed like that, but not a houseš
Rammed clay is slowly being explored as a climate change appropriate material again. It's just harder to build multi-story multi-family homes with it, it's much more suited to single-family dwellings.
@KingBowserLP actually, rammed clay will most likely remain a niche. Claytec developed raw clay bricks that are strong enough for buildings that are up to 4 floors high.
Another solution is clay mortar. Using this a wall becomes completely reusable...
Up to 40% of all carbon emissions worldwide are from the building and construction sector. Of course, we can't build bridges with clay, but reusable building materials for buildings could be the solution. Especially because we also have a massive problem with (toxic!) building waste ...
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I live on Manhattan Island. It has been illegal to build with combustible materials here since the Great Fire of 1835. All utilities have been underground here since they all came crashing down in the Blizzard of '88. That's 1888, not 1988. This is what a city does to solve glitches in the system. On another note, this is a 10 minute city, never mind a 15 minute one. I am within 10 minutes of two supermarkets, three banks, a public library, elementary school, university, post office, hospital, 3 parks, 2 pharmacies, shoe repair, and a myriad of other destination ON FOOT! I was born and raised in Los Angeles. They've never known how to "city" there. And the rest of the country has forgotten how.
Def a stark difference between east and west coast cities. The age of eastern ones really makes a difference for this sorta stuff here
That someone would leave Los Angeles for New York, now that is truly insane.
Its amazing what you can build for $3000 per square foot. However, the rest of the country gets by on $200 per square foot or less and we can't hear our neighbors fart.
Is no cash bail for violent criminals the proper way to "city"? Because that's what y'all do.
Itās called infrastructure.
Basically what you're saying is that americans prioritized low cost and just building things as fast as possible because the houses are supposed to be temporary and basically disposable in America.
the age when Americans had social mobility is long gone... they are living in the past
Apparently, EVERYTHING is disposable in the USA. Especially the humans.
@cristitanase6130 social mobility is still very present in the US if you actually try. More than any country to be honest. Theres a reason millions want to and do move here.
@spooky.- yeah, no, there only reason why they want to move there is so they can work for more money and send the money back home where everything is cheap
don't delude yourself, US is gentrified, has high taxation, insane bureaucracy and rising living costs
want social mobility? Try Asia!
The issue is that the low cost part is a lie.
I have to correct the author about construction in Peru.
Construction in Peru is done with concrete, rebar, bricks, cement mix with coarse sand, etc because of earthquakes.
The mud construction was done hundreds of years ago and there are some houses still standing but few to find.
The problem isn't the wooden houses in the US the problem is that you build wooden houses in places that are ravage with tornados floods and a hell of natural disasters making those homes easily destroyable with each disaster.
The real problem isnĀ“t that in reality, itĀ“s that they are very much cheaper, quickly and practical than concrete and/or bricks and nothing more.
In USA, anything that isnĀ“t very profitable and very quickly to the companies, donĀ“t worthy and thatĀ“s all.
Money rules, not society.
In California or Florida, the houses that they are made of concrete and/or bricks, the mayority are from "hispanics", not even "anglo-saxons" (from old Spanish Empire), because they know very well that in a tornado, flood or earthquake case, the unique houses that will remain standing are made of concrete and/or bricks, not wooden of course.
On the TV all people see when a disaster like that happens. It don't even necessary to study it at a university to see and understand that. Only is necessary think a little with a minimal common sense.
Regards.
Go ahead, put your brick house in an EF5 tornado. See what happens.
The houses are made from wood so it's easy to rebuild. Solid material buildings still get fucked up by these disasters, sometimes moreso than wood homes
@kentuckyace1068 How could a concrete house be more fucked up by a natural disaster (or anything really) compared to the wood houses that are wiped away with every hurricane? What do you make hurricane shelters out of? Or fire shelters? Or bomb shelters for that matter?
@ @leocurious9919 Yeah concrete is more secure and if build with disasters in mind can stay strong for years.
Iām born and raised in Bavaria, Germany.
My house was build by my dad in 1986, which was the cold war peak time. The next mayor city is Munich and so for, my dad decided his home has to be bomb safe, because munich is a nuclear target, so our two basement floors got a 110cm/35ā thick ceilings out of steel concrete.
Above the ground level, everything is reinforced too to withstand nuclear blasts. But you couldnāt tell from the out- or inside, besides the outside walls are also a bit thicker that usual.
It would be really cool to have a hurricane over here, to see if there would be actually any kind of damage to the houses in our little village. Also we got 3 houses in our village that are 400 years old or older. The church should be like around 500-550 y/o
Imho roofing and windows would not be able to withstand. But core would be fine.
Believe me the walls and frame would stand,the roof,the Windows and every inside won't,the real damague of an Hurriacanes comes from the floods not from the winds in a strong one can put your house under the water.
Living conditions in the USSR in the 70s and 80s were not bad. The only thing that poisoned our thoughts was the possibility of a nuclear war, BUT THE WAR CAME FROM THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
ā@jetmangti6475Roofing will withstand the hurricane if it's a concrete roofing. Houses nowadays has roofs build with concrete instead of using other roofing solutions. A house build to withstand a nuclear blast will certainly withstand a huricane.
Windows will break either way, but it can be replaced quickly and cheaply compared to building an entire house again.
Last year,in eastern Croatia,we had a 200kmh,strong huricane wind.
Strong winds in past, where maybe up to 50kmh..
Not one house was destroyed. Only few houses had blown roof-only the ones with small balcony under the roof.
My house is in a open area, without protective buildings around it. I lost just a few roof tiles. And my house was a standard build,nothing special,or reinforced.
There where houses from 1920s,also,just roof tiles went off,and same thing happened with very tall houses with 2 or 3 floors.
We visited Europe in 2017, and stayed with friends in their rented suburban townhome in Warsaw. The home was a spacious three level, and build quality was eye opening, compared to the stick and drywall we have in the States. I did not expect solid concrete walls, throughout, quality stone stucco roofs, built like the proverbial bunker. Warsaw was 90% destroyed in WWII, and rebuilt largely from the bombed remnants. Frow what I saw, they build their homes to last.
Concrete homes are available in the US. But they won't be a tract home. Custom home only.
Polish builders subconsciously build for war.
@Rhaspun Same in Canada.
@ I wonder if tract house developments happen in Europe like it is here in the US. If they do are they still built to the standard they use.
Thats probably the reason, they expect to get bombed again
I am from Tanzania. Most residential homes here are built with what you call CMO, but the foundation and the top of the superstructure is often reinforced with concrete slab, which is a mixture of rebars, sand, pebbles, and cement for stability. Roofing is corrugated iron sheets, congrete slab can also be used.
In rural areas, red bricks (raw clay bricks burned to red in the kiln to establish stability) are used, and the finishing style is the same. Homes are indeed built to last. Mud homes are becoming rare even in rural homes. You will almost find none in urban areas.
You wouldn't convince someone to own a timber home here. They will get the feeling that it is a temporary residency. Before my knowledge on how you guys build your homes, I wondered why could someone shoot through the wall and kill a person inside, your homes are not safe at all.
Cost is just a relative term. If you exclude mortgage (which is not common here, actually very rare) home ownership is probably high here in Tanzania than in the US, people can afford to build their homes from scratch. You just need to find builders specilized for each step of your construction process. The major steps of house construction are superstructure, roofing, and finally, for the finishing process. Depending on your financial status, building a home might take say around a year to years.
The use of construction companies are for high-rise buildings, this is required by law.
Lived in both, and I'd take an European house any day compared to 2by4s, wooden beams and drywall abominations that sell for 2 million here in Toronto.
They sell for 2 million because Toronto is literally the most populated, most popular, most desirable city in Canada to live in. Of course it's overpriced.
ā@wowomah6194Even with that it shouldn't cost 2 million for crap like that.
You're paying for the land, not the house.
The main reason for such a price is the greediness of the bureaucratic/government system's and construction companies that take advantage of the fact, that there is a high demand for housing. The second problem is speculation in the housing market, when an individual or company buys for 400k, resells for 800k then to a third person's for 1.5 million and so on. The third reason is that there are a lot of greedy investors who do not live in Canada but own hundreds of housing units, their money ends up in the pockets of rich greedy construction companies that reduce prices for work to contractors every year, in turn, the quality of construction also decreases, the output product is a cardboard box for 2-3 million.
@deadthewmo6657and canāt forget the fact that the government purposely does this to please the older population since they are the majority, most likely to vote & easiest to manipulate. If the older generation saw the majority of their net worth go down because of housing expansions, theyāll try to do everything to prevent that from happening so they always have the leverage instead of giving the younger population the keys
Very nice video! Every European who lived in USA are shocked from two things. The wooden homes that come with ridiculous prices and the lack of pedestrians on the streets
Some people prefer to live in quiet neighborhoods, not tiny streets with constant public foot traffic.
Cars are.much louder than pedestrians.ā@LW1Tok
ā@LW1Tok or Americans don't prefer to walk and have terrible public transport, We have 4 vehicles at home but I would still prefer to take metro, bus, or train while going somewhere firstly more cost efficient, 80% time faster, also you can take a nap or relax,
People like their wooden homes and we have it in abundance. I have worked the building trade for years, nobody wants a steel stud building or concrete, it's ugly, cold and cheap. Who cares what Europeans think anyway, they live mostly on postage stamps in characterless homes unless they buy historic ones, which are built with wood and stone and would cost millions today.
@TheVistula Cars are louder than pedestrians, but a couple cars per hour is much less noise than the pedestrians would make in order to have sufficient density for a purely-walkable area to make sense. There are even some places I know that are so rural that the people who live there can't even justify the cost of an asphalt street and use gravel instead. Gravel is louder than asphalt, but is one car per hour along asphalt more noisy than a lot of pedestrians? It depends on your definition of "noisy."
Fun fact: I am in the USA btw
While non Americans pay the same money for a stone house - Americans get a wood house with fake stone facades if they upgraded ā¦
Everything basic in the US is very cheap. But once you want anything different than the cookie-cutter consumer pipeline, you pay *absurd* premiums. Capitalism is a thing everywhere, but in the US, these houses are squeezed to the max for profits.
That being said, if Americans donāt care about owning quality and sturdiness and only care about the outside, the appearance, thatās their choice. But the absolute minimum I want is for people to at least think about it, to be self-critical about it, instead of just yell āiTās OuR cUltUrE!ā (This includes every country, tbh! In Europe, everyone yelling āconcrete, concreteā is kind of seemingly missing, that we are slowly moving *away* from concrete everywhere; the CO2 emissions of concrete are utterly disastrous!).
People donāt actually hate wooden houses; Scandinavian houses are almost all wooden and no one complains about them - they are lovely! It is how cheaply they are made in the US and how that is sold to the average American as ālook, you actually *need* that, it is a *good* thing! We can rebuild it quickly and bigger and better!ā. Itās not in the wood, itās in the little things in between. Even if your house gets regularly destroyed, you can build with more quality from wood and it will still have all these attributes!
The whole āwoodden houses can be redone easilyā and āstarter homeā and āitās biggerā, ādisposableā etc. *is* exactly the essence of the alienation in this topic: itās the hyper-consumerism mixed with the general public ignorance of the US. This is actually what the world is alienated by in reality, not the wooden houses.
@ very true points - look at Scandinavia wood house construction is present there too but it is not accepted in Germany. Wood construction has many benefits but also some down sides. But nothing is as bad as concrete production too!
Generally speaking, you pay much less for a much larger home in the US when compared to most other places.
So yes, it's "fake" but it also wasn't needed. That's why it costs more.
@Shlorpmeister There are no tornados in Scandinavia and severe storms are rare and they don't blow away whole villages. Midwest could make good use of sturdier houses. Then there is another thing to count in. Americans are not as rooted. They move easier and more often cross country, and don't build for generations.
5.40 dollar for 50kg bag of most expensive cement (110.23 lbs)
58 dollar for 1000 most expensive red bricks
There are cheaper onesššš
20:30 basically, your houses are cheaper and easier to build, so basically your comfort is not worth the penny
This is my 5 cents to this topic. I am from eastern Europe , currently living in South California. My main complaint about houses here is the lack of soundproofing. I can hear everything that goes on around me, starting with when my family members go to a bathroom and ending when my neighbors have guests. I feel like everyone is a part of my life. And, if someone plays music past 11, I am calling cops. Otherwise, I can't sleep. The quality of lyrics in the music is a separate complaint, though. But I feel like, if the sound insulation was better, I didn't have to do it so often.
Most homes in the US dont have insulation/sound dampening on interior walls to save costs. It can be added later fairly easily, unless you rent. Rockwool insulation is the most effective method, but most laborious. The easiest option is spray foam. It can be done without removing all the drywall.
Yeah, what zach said insulation is extra. Rich peoples houses don't have that problem, In my Aunts place you can't hear what's going on in the next room even if it's full of people and playing loud music.
The quality of houses here (Let's say in Eastern Europe) has dropped drastically since the middle of 2000s. You can hear anything 2 or 3 floors below or above: dog barking, child crying. Developers got rid of brick housing completely, ceilings are getting tinier and tinier from one floor to another.
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In America we build houses that make most money to isreal
@zachdemand4508 that being said, brick and concrete walls naturally insulate sound much better than drywall so you don't have to add extra insulation.
I was shocked to see all houses in California to burn to the ground - nothing but piles of dust left. It looked like they were built with cardboard.š®
it's quite baffling, and it's not like a fire in a concrete house couldn't be catastrophic, I've certainly seen fires in my country turn everything within a house into ash, but at least you are left with standing walls to rebuild from.
the only things that survived was fireplace and barbecue... because they was obligated to be made of bricks. I have the feeling that if one day americans find how to build barbecue on wood, they will switch š
@PemaMendez990 Also a fire like the one in CA: would probably damage the first row of houses severly and the one behind a bit, but as ther is a limited fuel in brick house, any subseqent row would be safe. I never heard of any fire in Germany that cased more than a couple of houses to burn down. In CA the entire city block is gone...
Because they are ?
ā@fabianfeilcke7220 I don't think there was ever something comparable in Germany to these wildfires. The climate just was too wet to have these massive wild fires.
There were occasions where huge parts of cities burned down though. Hamburg and Aachen for example but firesafety was always top priority in wood houses which it wasn't in CA.
It's not that we laugh at wood houses in general, it's about where Americans choose to build wooden houses. Who in their right mind builds something that can go up in flames or get shred to pieces in places where there's risk of wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes and other environmental hazards ?
Also the quality for the price is an absolute joke. Your paper house in the suburbs of nowhere often costs more than a solid home in European capitals.
And when their houses are pulverized by tornadoes or fires....they go on and build new wood houses again in the same spot.
Because its cheaper to rebuild when disasters happen, it would cost twice as much if not more to rebuild stone and cement buildings after a natural disaster.
Not to mention, they'll be rebuilt faster which is important after a disaster like that. I know everyone thinks they know best these days but things are done for a reason sometimes :) Thanks and welcome to construction 101.
@ShutUpBubi maybe build houses that don't get demolished completely if the wind blows?
@ShutUpBubi So, to sum up what you said - It's better to build a house that lasts 10-15 years and rebuild it entirely 2 or 3 times than to build a house that costs twice as much but will last a CENTURY. - Got it.
The cardboard houses of yours are made from permeable materials, meaning that any mold will spread hidden as opposed to on the surface of a stone wall, slowly poisoning you for years and later requiring replacing a decent chunk of the infested timber frame. The hollow walls mean your house requires to annually be sprayed with worst kinds of poisons simply to eradicate whatever rodent and insect societies have developed inside them. So many Americans complain about the cost of their healthcare, yet deny the fact that they themselves make choices causing them triple the health problems of any other country and lowest life expectency of all developed nations.
Main thing I'm thinking of is "I'm building my house of straw, I'm building my house of sticks, I'm building my house of bricks".
American : we biuld to reap profit as fast as possible
Europe : we build to last
Japan : we build to save life , home can rebuild
To be fair, a proper concrete/rebar building can survive a tornado or a hurricane. But japan experiences earthquakes that can topple even those
Perhaps Singapore: We build to last up to ~99 yrs, by which maybe technological advances lets us build taller to fit our growing population density, & by then we want to rebuild something taller in its place (we mostly live in apartments instead of single-family homes)
Northern countries: one sauna pls
ā@DaisyBee11the basic Japanese home is not expected to last more than 20 years.
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People in the US would call people third world when truthfully they are the ones living in some of the crappiest houses on the planet. Even my fish pond is built stronger than any house in the USA, it is made of cinder blocks.
My house is concrete/block. I live in the US. Fish pond?
Your ignorance is showing
I agree. People should stop moving to my third world dump. It's horrible!
Hi there, Iām an architect from Europe so I know, at least to some degree, what Iām talking about here. Modern building techniques in Europe do result in not only modern but in more durable single-family houses, indeed. We use primarily non-combustible roofing (metals, ceramic roof tiles), hollow bricks, plaster, etc. We do not use cheap asphalt shingles, stick framing and cheap vinyl siding widely used across the US in Canada. And strangely enough, our houses are still not more expensive. Go figure.
Thanks for the info!
Whatās the average cost of a single family home in Europe as youāve seen it?
From what I saw in my very limited research home ownership seems to be lower, rentals / multifamily are preferred and houses could be quite a bit more expensive , almost double the cost in some locations
@Mike_Fortin Thanks for responding. It really depends on the area. Generally itās cheaper in the East (like Romania, Bulgaria, etc.), then it gets more expensive when one goes west. But rural Spain or rural Portugal is cheaper than urban Poland or Czech Republic, for example. Anyhow, a construction of a modern single-family house of 150 m2 (1 m2 is around 10 sq ft) in the East or even Central Europe would cost about $1500.00 per 1 m2. Again, with non-combustible roofing, hollow bricks (they have an excellent thermal properties) and plaster.
ā@kriszukowski4530 " ... in the East or even Central Europe would cost about $1500.00 per 1 m2."
In central Europe, especially in Germany, this starts at 3000 euros per square meter. Prices of $1500 per square meter once existed 10 years ago.
ā@Mike_Fortinaround 70-80k to build š
Have you factored in the cost to the environment of your concrete houses?
i am literally watching this video in my 350 year old house in germany.
As someone who has worked in construction in the Netherlands, you're wrong about one thing, concrete is a very moldable and architectural diverse material. Basically what we do is we make a wooden framework, fill that framework with different types of thickness of steel wires (from 0.3 to 1 inch thick steel wires) depending on the flexibility required of the part. Then several different mixtures of concrete can be used to get the end result desired strength and flexibility. We then remove the wooden framework once the concrete has settled. The most common home here is thus a concrete framework, that can be compared to lightwood framing, filled with masonry. In most cases we do NOT use plaster on the outside, due to masonry absorbing more heat, and we like to stay warm since our yearly average temperature is about 50 Fahrenheit. And while our average house pricing is slightly higher then in America (525k compared to 415k) the benefit is that our houses tend to last on average 300 years compared to the US 50 years. And then we have not even talked about inherit other benefits like noise reduction, energy efficiency (You save roughly $600,-- per year) and disaster proofing.
Does that make our homes better? Depends on the situation, we have a culture where our home is expected to stay within the family for generations, or if its a rental home be able to be rented out to multiple families. Then there is also the National and local laws and building requirements, including aesthetic compatibility with the rest of the area. America is vast, with very different climates depending of the location where you live, the Netherlands has in comparison a singular climate. Our buildings are designed to work most efficiently for that climate. We also have different disaster occurrence, our country being basically one big river delta and coastal area benefits from houses that can with stand a lot of water/moisture. So its not as easy to compare one country with the next without keeping climate and disaster occurrence and local laws in account. It could be that in a similar climate and disaster occurrence in America the houses there are quite similar to ours, but because those conditions are a low percentage of America, henceforth the percentage of those houses will be less. Then there is the amount of population density in those area's compared to the rest of America that can increase or decrease that percentage again. And as mentioned before our homes are more expensive, about 20% more expensive then the average house in America. Most people tend to look at their own wallets, instead of also investing for their children, grand children and the next few generations. And fact is, by the time you buy or build a house, you generally have about 50 years left to live give or take. It doesn't matter then that your house will last for 300 years, because you won't enjoy the majority of it.
In conclusion, if would live in an area where the risks of a natural disaster of destroying my house would favor one type of house or house construction over the other one, i would build that. And i would probably otherwise use the cheapest house variant that suits my needs. Most likely it just means that the average requirement of a home is different in other countries that have "better" or "worse" housing.
I couldn't imagine myself living in a standard American house over here, but that has nothing to do with its quality or longevity, but everything to do with our climate, in combination that if my house would actually get flooded, the chances of very expensive repairs would be much higher then with our typical housing.
American houses aren't optimised for anything else than making a quick buck by building and selling them.
There is no argument for it depending on climate or earthquackes because their houses NEED AC in warm climates and they break down in any single natural occurence.
This all came about because some Euros watched the collapse of an American home under construction š¤£š¤£
Wow. An actual reasonable European.
Good answer, and yes, this method is how we build warehouses and highways in the U.S.
In Canada all the homes in my city are mostly original. Since the city dates from about 1870, there are no examples of older homes than 150 years but I know of lots of neighbourhoods where the houses are 115 years old. They usually have a basement added after the fact and are difficult to do repairs to the heating, plumbing and electrical because of the small crawl spaces. I would never buy a cement or brick house, because I am constantly adding new things to my house. I just put in a new garden hose spigot and it took me 30 minutes to put the pipe in and solder the freezable spigot. I also add new electrical wiring all the time and my ceiling in the basement is wide open for me to string wires, plumbing and add new venting for the heating system.
I just spruced up my deck last year. I built it in 1995 from another deck that I bought from a guy for $300 , all pressure treated wood. I sanded it and repaired with autobody filler and then put an aluminum deck railing with tinted glass. How would you build a cement deck ? It would feel so much like an unappealing place to go, like the cement balcony off an apartment. Cement and bricks gives you that hard, unforgiving, prison, concrete feel. It is cold. I put SM insulation R10 on my cement basement walls down 8 feet and all the way up my house. I don't have any walls at all except for styrofoam and then 2X6 studs stuffed with fiberglass and drywall on the inside. I have R30 walls. In the basement my concrete is kept relatively warm and I have zero cracks.
I added on a 4 car garage in 2005 with a room above the garage with bathroom, kitchenette and living room/ bedroom. To do this with bricks would be a nightmare. Concrete and bricks have zero R value and you have to do your construction is such a way as to isolate the concrete from the inside of the house and this takes a lot of square footage to build second walls inside the brick walls to hold the insulation. My wife has an apartment in Dnipropetrovsk and it is cold and hard and reminds me of a car park. They did put styrofoam on the entire outside of these blocks about 20 years ago and that improved the heat inside but she is on the top floor and her ceiling is cold. I was going to buy some insulation to improve it but ran out of time. I redid some of her aluminum wiring because she had a long hallway with only one light and it was dark. I put in three lights and changed some fixtures. Not enough electrical receptacles , in Canada you must have every 12 feet and I put them in more frequently and can easily add a new fixture in a couple of hours. Fishing new wires inside the walls is easy and no chipping through bricks. How do you even make a square hole in a brick wall for an outlet? I am currently running 8 gauge electrical wire from my breaker panel to the apartment above my garage to put in a stove and I just drill holes in the wood joists and string the line. It will take a couple of hours and be totally hidden when I am finished because my ceiling has panels that I can remove to access the joists. I have no idea how you run cables and things in a brick house and keep them invisible. My wife's apartment has hot water lines visible running all over the place for water and heating and the electrical is in visible conduits. It looks like a zoo.
I am also now putting down more hardwood floors and stapling the oak flooring to my plywood subfloor. I have no idea how you would attach hardwood to cement ? I have a compressed air floor stapler and it works great. If I find that a board is defective or crooked, I just pry the board up and out. With concrete you can't make easy corrections and modifications. I put in stone driveways and cut the concrete of my basement to access my added garage and it was a major job to cut through 8 inches of concrete for 3 feet by 1 foot and took many days, I used a diamond saw. Then my driveway was cut with a diamond table saw with water that I bought for $300 and it is a very slow process cutting these things , driveway and planting garden made from stones. .
As a European I've lived in the United States for 9 years. My conclusion on this issue is that USA #1 mindset combined with mega corporations having too much influence in politics is making this country stagnate so badly. The state of infrastructure and housing doesn't feel a developed nation.
Try living somewhere that actually is still developing and you'll see how it really feels to not live in a developed nation.
@ i did and I know what Iām talking about. Many nations with much lower gdp offer higher living standards to its citizens. You can take that million dollar McMansion made with ticky tacky. All yours.
I live in a house that is older than the USA, that has survived many conflicts, the Thirty Years' War, two world wars and many floodings and natural disasters, minor earthquakes, even a fire in the attic. All brick, stone and wood. And it will be there long after me.
Are you slow?
@MyCamilla1989why are you living in McMansions or assuming that other people do?
A German friend of mine said the wood used in the foundation of a German house (thrown out after the cement is poured) is better quality than the wood used to build modern American houses!
Ummm actually yeha wood used for coloum casting (or something) even in India is stronk so in Germany such wood would be strnger since they just import it for cheaper from asia
@miku_nakanoismywaifu Actually not really. This wood is cheap and don't last really long. Mostly they take fast growing Trees like Pine. And we have a lot of them in Germany :p
ā@fugoogie1321All american houses are build with small pine sticks, so the original comment is right š
@fugoogie1321 wrongggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
very correct
People in the US: Oh it's easy to rebuild.
Easy for the workers, not the owner, he still has to pay loads for another cheap shit.
Also you won't have to rebuild if your house doesn't fall apart by a slightly heavy wind.
I'm from Sri Lanka. We are currently building a home using Brick and reinforced concrete frame. 3 stories, around 4,500 fq.ft with a luxury finish with air conditioning, floor tiling, swimming pool.
Total cost around 170,000 USD.
That's it, I'm moving there
Hahaha for that price they dont even unload the lumber for your House in the usa
ā@BigBlobProductions you should. People are very welcoming too. And the awesome climate.
If you would pay the workers a decent wage...
ā@fritzmeier1717They do pay them decently don't worry about that. It's just that cost of living is pretty cheap there because they don't have corporates robbing them off for every product and services
The oldest half-timbered house I've ever seen was in Ulm, Germany. It was built in the early 12th century. And what's incredible is that it still functions as a tiny hotel.
My hometown
Epic cathedral
In other countries wooden houses are a sign of poverty
Not quite right. It's cheap, energy effective and durable. It works for Eastern Europe and ex soviet states.
@esyr well in Brazil they are seen that way
@zb4847 he is right tho
ā@zb4847 "In eastern Europe and ex Soviet states" - so in poor countries, got it
Yeah if I think of someone living in a concrete home or something made of cinderblocks I'd feel bad for them, that makes me think of poverty and dystopia, like something out of 1984. All homeowners I know that live in wooden house radiate prosperity to me.
In MĆ©xico (next to the USA) the houses are made of reinforced concrete, bricks, that kind of materials. But in the US are made of paper & air and even a car Can hit your house and enter without anything to stop it
We had hurricane force winds in Ireland last week and apart from the odd wall falling down or some roof damage most of the houses which are mostly built of brick and concrete didn't suffer any damage, the same storm in the US and it would be like a pile of matchsticks.
I'm from Portugal and when I saw the images of the hurricane in Ireland I thought exactly the same!
This is something that baffles me. Millions of americans live in locations that have regular hurricanes and or wildfires but they still decide to build all of their houses from wood. It makes no fucking sense, they just building the same shit, having it destroyed and then rebuilding it again the exact same way just to have it destroyed in a couple of years.
@sytricka3318 its true. And the houses they build arent any cheaper than those made with concrete and bricks.
@sytricka3318 Most of the houses that collapse from hurricanes are improperly upkept. In places like california, wildfires used to be much less common, and houses built from stuff other than wood are becoming more common. The issues with concrete and brick are readily apparent when you look at the number of people that die from "heatwaves" in Europe that are average US temps. You don't want to be in a concrete box when it's 37c, and AC only became common in US homes in the 60's. I've lived in at least 3 homes from the 50's or earlier in the last 8 years, and they're perfectly stable, and they stay cool.
@xshocproductions7923 Concrete/brick buildings tend to stay really cool during the summer and warm during the winter.
"fast and cheap" sums up the USA really well.
Because weāre in a housing crisis
The problem is capitalism. Homes are considered a rapidly manufactured commodity now. As in all other industries, the builder wants to make the most profit for the lowest expense, so they throw up tons of dogshit quality stick-built structures which crumble in disasters, then charge an arm and a leg for them, keeping average homeowners in debt forever. In the last few years, developers have reduced the rate at which they're building homes to keep supply artificially low, contributing to the current housing crisis. Same thing DeBeers did with diamonds, only with less (recent) ethnic cleansing. For-profit firms can't be trusted to act in the interest of society; they will only act to maximize profit and externalize costs.
@brandonmoreno1752 maybe, part of the housing crisis is that North America builds homes that need to be replaced every 50 years? If we built homes to last centuries, we could put more focus on building more homes instead of expending resources, energy, and labour continually rebuilding them.
ā@TheWeirdDude_419 we do not replace homes after 50 years. Where did you hear this nonsense? If anything, we tear down old homes to make apartment buildings.
The average age of a houses are about 50 years, because our population has doubled over the last 70. Europes population has increassd by about 30% in that time. Is it clear now why fast and cheap is a priority for the US?
@ The components of fast and cheap houses are not designed to last even fifty years. Roofing singles have a fifteen to twenty-five-year (depending on climate) lifespan and then need replacing and end up in the landfill. Cheap vinyl siding becomes brittle in less time. Whether a house gets torn down for new builds or has its components regularly changed out, it is still getting replaced... and replacing those components creates strain on the resource, manufacturing, and construction industries that could have focused their efforts elsewhere. Plus, construction has been getting cheaper and lower quality over the last fifty years, so we haven't even got to experience the full repercussions yet.
Sorry, not catching up fast. Your last type of home was done in Germany about 35 years ago. I used to work in installing communication systems in Germany and saw all these new technologies used for building houses. They are at least 20-30 years ahead of US. However, as you mentioned, wood framing as done in US is the cheapest and fastest and not much skill required. That is the only reason it is and will be done that way in the future in the US.
To prove that point, look at the Paradise fire a few years back in California. The county wanted to implement stricter building rules after the fire, using concrete, however, the huge building corporations opposed that as it is to expensive, eating into their profits, and at the end they won. No change! Profits over safety.
Since you are using California as an example, there are a couple different things to consider California has extraordinarily strict, stringent, environmental protection laws that make any kind of construction, extraordinarily difficult, California has earthquakes, which makes anything made of concrete or stone or masonry. Extremely difficult to pull off without risking the structure because of the earthquakes. What is preferred in California because of that however, California also has huge fire risk and so there should be a trade-off to mitigate that as well.
Youāre also has a lack of trees compared to North America. There are trees there are forests, but they are very heavily protected because there arenāt many of them by comparison. Wood is far more expensive in Europe, closing the gap between wooden construction and Mason reconstruction, the lack of earthquakes also favors concrete and masonry.
Putting up a concrete or masonry construction in Californian is prohibitively expensive, and it's not that it cuts into their profits. They simply know no one will pay the price associated with it partially because yes it is expensive and partly because it has to be built earthquake resistant in Cali. There is a reason only large corporations or rich people build from stone or brick in Cali. Moving to the Midwest and Tornado alley area it wouldn't matter F4 and F5 Tornadoes destroy stone and brick homes just as easily. As for Florida it's a retirement community people moving there can afford it having sold homes in other areas and having retirement to draw on.
Eating their profits ?? Wouldn't they just pass the cost to the consumer?? And make it even less affordable??
Paradise IS being rebuilt with stricter building codes and fire resistant components, though not concrete.
unfortunately, I think actually even RUSSIA is getting ahead of the US in methods for building new homes. Interestingly it has also become common there for a small new house to have all radiant floor heating. What that tells me is itās becoming an economy in which common sense takes lead over greed, and that bodes well for the long-term future. Not so in the US.
"In the US, houses are build with light wood frames so they are fast in construction and cheap"
While I agree on construction speed benefits, the words "cheap" and "US housing market" placed next to each other sound comically
21:20 As a Western European I disagree with the statement that houses stay in the family for generations. This is extremely rare in my experience, except for farms and castles.
Because we ask the wrong question when building.
We ask how cheap is it when we should be asking how long will it last!
š
Result: it's expensive and doesn't last. Why is that BTW? Is it because the land is so expensive or are the wood houses simply overpriced? If the houses were cheap, it would be perfectly fine... Build something out of renewable materials, use it for a while, then build something new. Makes sense when you have a low population density and can easily start building a new house while living in the old house.
Your wood shed is still more expensive than a proper house in Europe. You are constantly ripped off from pretty much any company .
I only got about 30-40 years left. Will it last that long? Thatās my question.
@frankmueller7660yeah bruh. A house in Germany thatās the same size as the average house in the US is at least twice the price.
My father worked his way through seminary as an usher at the Academy of Music. home of the Philadelphia Orchestra As such, he came into contact with a number of celebrities in the immediate post war period. One story was that he came into contact with Le Corbusier smoking in the hall outside the auditorium. He told him that smoking was not permitted. Le Corbusier said Young man, do you know who I am.
Dad said Yes, and you, of all people, should know this place is a fire trap.
He then went on to note that Le Corbusier was in town scouting out possible sites for the UN, and that he may have caused Philadelphia to lose out to NYC. : )
Thatās an awesome story, thanks for sharing
I lived with a German family in 1977 for a student exchange. The father was an architect. When I told him that houses in the US were built of wood, he could not believe it and laughed his ass off. Houses in Germany were built like a commercial building, zero wood, built to last forever!
I want to say this as a Japanese person.
There's always someone worse off than you.
It's a wooden building with uninsulated walls and aluminum sash windows (single pane glass).
In the summer, it's freezing hot because the air conditioning doesn't work!
In the winter, it's freezing cold because the heating doesn't work!
It's a waste of electricity, kerosene, and gas!
If you're not careful, you could die of heat shock in this house!
I'm in the UK, and in our visits to Japan we have been astonished at the discomfort of anyone living in a traditional-style house: too cold, too hot, high humidity. They look beautiful though!
I have worked abroad, and YES, our homes do not compare to foreign countries. USA construction is NOT durable.
As said earlier, this is also part of the US culture and philosophy: Why build for generations, when I can foresee I will only live in that house / region for 10-20 years? Or, why committing to a certain construction / style of house when I know designs and technology as well as my income will change over the years? Per se there is nothing wrong with this thinking except maybe (only maybe) from an environmental perspective. But I personally have no proof of the validity of the environmental statement.
@BAG9114 "there is nothing wrong with this thinking except maybe (only maybe) from an environmental perspective."
As we have already learned, there is also the fire resistance perspective.
Homes in very many developments in the U.S. are built close together. With the right wind and dryness conditions, fire can easily destroy them.
@tj92834 Irrelevant if you build a home to last four centuries
@BAG9114 but then that doesnāt explain why life in the US is so darn expensive! What you describe is actually more applicable to some other countries than the USš„“
@tj92834 whoās benefit and whoās cost?
Here in Nice, France my parents built a prestressed reinforced concrete frame house with double walls cinderblocks in 1975 with a flat vegetal roof (kitchen garden). 7 forest fires came destroying things around, including wood stored against the walls. People protected themselves by going into the house, including firefighters at the worst time. Gas tank did not explode, trees grew back. A forest fire is to me the worst nightmare, but I know I'm secure in the house if the worst happens. I'm alive thanks to concrete. It is devastating to me to see the houses of L.A. and Paradise before that burn down in minutes. I have seen in front of me pines that are 150 years old burn and explode in seconds. I took the blast of a super scooper dropping close to me. You should build concrete and cinder blocks. It's also good for earthquakes.
Except American homes *don't* cost a million dollars. I bought a brand new, 3 bed, 2/1 bath, house, with appliances (except washer & dryer), with an attached 2 car garage, with a front and (quite large) back yard, in an only 3 year old neighborhood, for 280k$. It probably only cost half that to actually build.
@fnamelname9077 Exactly! If an American house costs $1million, it's usually either huge, or on a lot that costs $750K. Get away from the cities and there are still places where average houses are dirt cheap.
@fnamelname9077 a concrete house is probably 3 to 5 times more pricey than wood, it is a different culture, like planting a tree for the children and granchildren, and also what is the price for a human life ? or the price of pain and loss of item with sentimental value? The very rich that lost a house and can build 10 more are also suffering from loosing part of their life, material is not only material, we attach to things and places. The new house does not taste the same as the old one. Nothing is really replaceable. In my mind it is good to build in stone/concrete and this adds confidence.
@fnamelname9077 houses in L.A. do cost a million dollars.
@ So what? How much does a house cost in Tokyo or Seoul?
In my country the "poor and cheap" houses are built with Stone,brick,concrete ,steel bars st Windows and armored Doors ,and cost an average of 200k
Insurance companies are leaving Florida and California this is all over the news. So if Americans want to live in houses they have to make them insurable again.
Right,
The idea of ābuilding better is too expensive, the insurance will cover itā does not work when there are major disasters,
We need to build to last .. itās not that much more and itās worth every penny
Yeah they have to make houses that float in Florida and make houses that can put out massive wildfires in California. Insurance companies are just predicting possible futures with existing climate change models. Insurance companies will always try to minimize their risk if they can
I spoke to someone recently and regulations prevent them from building high enough above flood level in FL.
Our solution was to design a home that was built to flood and then dry out on the first level.
Flood vents, concrete walls, steel joists and a concrete slab supporting 2nd floor. In the event of flooding / hurricanes, the homes can survive without collapsing or damaging the living space above
In both Florida and California, the issue of insurability is being driven by government intervention in the industry, rather that intrinsic benefits of particular construction methods. If companies were able to accurate charge premiums based on actual risk, the best construction tactics would win out, as balanced by disaster mitigation tactics and infrastructure. But, we don't trust insurance companies, given that we make insurance obligatory, by either government edict (motor insurance) or the wide spread practice of mortgages (death loans). So, we are evolving to insurance rates being determined by special interest groups, that want to keep rates low to protect us from rapacious insurance companies. But when the resulting rates aren't adequate, you find that some properties are not insurable.
Insurance companies have no issue absorbing individual home losses. However when you build homes in flood plains or your base flood elevation is 15ā ie florida it doesnt matter if you built with cmu or wood its the amount of homes that will be damaged and the rebuild costs. The california urban wildfire as an issue of property setbacks and material. Concrete(icf) is cost prohibitive for California and a state that leads the nation in green nonsense would have to explain why a government that fights co2 is supporting an industry that is the largest producer of co2
15:55 really? that's the mexican house you chose to show? š¤£š¤£š¤£
I personally apologize for the racism
ā@movie30000 thanks and don't worry, most of us take those little things with humor when we know it wasn't intentional. Greetings from Chihuahua
The US has plenty of structures for residence made of concrete! They are called prisons and public housing.
Our prisons are built better than our homes? š®š¤š
@Mike_Fortin Of course they have to be. Otherwise prisoners could easily escape by punching holes in the tticky tacky walls.
So funny, so true!
@Mike_Fortin: all government construction projects are over planned and over engineered, they are way more durable than housing built for dwelling units, on the open market. But no one could possibly afford the kind of construction the government uses. Notice the government has insurmountable debt, thatās how I did it. And most of those buildings are empty or underutilized
@ Well, do you see prisons getting walls moved around?
Itās because here in America weāre were bred with a sense of āif it aināt American, I donāt want itā mentalityšš
They are laughing at your McMansions mostly š
They are very laughable here in BC, Canada. Farmers build houses that look like they could comfortably house thirty people, but you only ever see one or two vehicles around the place and the terrible build quality and cheap facades can be seen a mile away. It's not just the farmers, there also seems to be a vanity battle in the Vancouver and Richmond area where houses are built to look incredibly fancy but the materials and methods used are the cheapest and quickest.
The problem was never that you build your houses out of wood. It's that you build them in places with frequent natural disasters
Or just generally unsuitable for wooden lightweight houses lol
Fun facts :
- "The Three Little Pigs" fairy tale originated in England and became a famous classic in USA by Walter Disney, teaching every generation ever after, but still most Americans are building their houses like straw-cabins.
- A usual theme in American horror movies is an evil guy who breaks-in through the window, but most Americans still have windows made of only a thin wood frame and glass and a curtain behind that.
Funny, we know about this tale from childhood in Russia and our houses are built of brick
Because people want to have clear views. Most break-ins arenāt even through windows. Additionally, double pane windows are the norm.
Other fun fact: in the US, we don't rely on walls to keep us safe from predators.
Does someone have to point out horror movies are not real.
@Savvas1640 can confirm, live in a āluxuryā townhouse built just a few years ago and you can feel a chill within 2-3 feet of the windows when itās particularly cold outside (about 20Ā°f right now)ā¦ this wasnāt a thing in any house or apartment Iāve ever lived in, in the US or otherwiseā¦
Made by using sticks, paper and plaster. There are "Mobile and Trailer Homes" as well.
My wife and I live in an Earthship, it keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, our home is built to withstand strong winds, it's fire resistant, and earthquake resistant, we grow food in it year round, and we have no utility bills.
Good for you. If you have a lot of time and money, a home like that can be built, because itās very expensive and time consuming to use recycled materials not meant to build a home, to actually build a home, such as all those tires
They have good aspects but do not work well with high density surburban housing. Nice in the right climate with a large acerage
We are building something similar to earth ship. A combination of rammed earth, straw bale and a large conservatory.
I would never build a stick home anymore after renovating 3 of them.
@NOWAR-q7s They have their qualities and drawbacks. I would guess I've built or worked on 150 minimum. When it comes to flexability it is difficult to surpass. I'm currently in a double wall 14'' passive, active solar superinsulated one that is all wood and cellulose insulation. I wouldn't do it any other way in Canada.
@NOWAR-q7s Renovating is not the same as building
My house is 300 years old originally all stone and refinished after it survived an earthquake with a clay brick and reinforced cement layers in the walls. My exterior walls are 90cm thick. I'll take that over a popsicle stick and paper mache hut any day. I'm not afraid of earthquakes, wind, floods or fire. š
The homes look better here ! America has some of the most beautiful homes according to my limited travel experience. However, I'm asurprised how cheaply they are built. The frame looks like a bunch of toothpics that can be blown over by any strong wind. My neighborhood got hit with a Tornado a few years ago. So replacement homes are popping up like wild-flowers. Every single one of those homes is built the same way with a wooden skelton that looks more like toothpicks. One neighbor who had his home destroyed by the Tornado, tried to rebuild. The wooden frame was about 90% up, when another mini-tornado hit the structure and flattened everything. He gave up and sold the lot.
I'd rather have a shoe box-like house made of bricks than a three stories mansion made of wood.
People from other countries donāt criticise american construction for it being timber frames but rather for itās poor workmanship and constant use of the lowest quality materials.
Even swedes criticise american buildings for being too weak and poorly constructed, itās very clear why when you compare the average Swedish tradesmanās work versus the american counterpart doing the exact same job.
Aren't Swedes paid something like four times more than the relative wage of an American tradesman?
@ Americans get paid more, drywall installers, roof crews and so on get paid a lot more than swedes for doing the same job.
And cost of living in Sweden is higher than most american states, higher taxes and higher cost for goods.
Europe also has a tradition of apprenticeships with very elaborate training programs to get craftsmen up to a good standard. And many are quite proud of their work. In the US you're looked down upon if you haven't got a college degree. What's an apprenticeship? Let me just slap that pipe in here that'll be 100 bucks please....
You can buy a better quality home. They just cost more per square foot, and most people prefer a larger house instead.
ā@jwg9338You'd need to balance the salary statement with cost of living in order to sell it.
A few months ago, I was in California for a private showing of a mansion. Asking price was mid to upper double digit millions.
I couldnāt believe my eyes - and ears. I kept knocking on the walls and looked at the estate curator. I asked him: āWhatās this? Why does it sound hollow?ā. Estate Manager: āSir, I can assure you itās solid constructionā. Me: āYeah, no, I donāt consider it solid when I punch through it with my fist, sorry.ā.
I also confronted him about the price. āSo, the high price reflects the prime location and the size of the surrounding property, but not the quality of construction of its buildings, right?ā. He was speechless for a while, then added: āSir, the quality of construction is in line with the high standards and the exclusivity of the areaā. Me: āOh, yeah? Funny. Coincidentally I have been to a different showing 2 days ago, not even 200 meters from here. Same neighborhood, similar size and price. Here, I could punch a hole into the wall and over there I would break my hand. Now, you tell me: Why is that?ā.
Needless to say, he didnāt have an answer and I didnāt buy. Ended up buying not even in the same state, due to Californiaās āinteresting rules and regulationsā, but in Florida.
Itās just crazy to most Europeans that even if you are in the market for a high end estate, they still seem to find a way to screw you over in the US. If there was a way to build a house with no walls and charge double, they would do it.
and then everybody clapped
And you mae a good.choice..Look the fires in Cal.
Not only is he incredibly wealthy but extremely intelligent. Well done sir. Please tell us more of this fascinating story.
Weird flex but okay
Even in the poor countries, they build with concrete or bricks. So the "concrete houses are expensive" point is just something to fool their citizens.
Card Board crap with toothpicks as rebar... š
Another thing which seems common here in Czechia where most of the residential housing is still build with bricks like blocks is that a lot of houses are still being build in large part by the owners themselves. You can build brick house alone or with one another preson relatively easily. It will take some times (few years) but it could be done even if you have 9 to 5 job. In US it seems most of the housing is build by relatively large teams of contractors quickly. I guess with timber framing can really be effective if you have many hands available to put everything in place timely etc. With bricks you can lay one row over the weekend and walk away for month and you can do it alone because brick is sized to be handled by single person.
2-3 weeks š 35 people working, sometimes 5-7 simultaneously
@ikaustralia that's crazy fast. In here it usually take 2 years or more even if you hire company for the job.
I think that attitude towards employment in the US and in Europe makes a significant difference here. In Europe you more likely have some time after work to undertake such projects as building your house on your own (except for some parts like installations and roof e.g.). And there is a higher chance that your relatives live nearby and will be willing to help you. So it's also related to some social conditions.
ā@MarekFajkus the building should ideally last through a complete thermal cycle (winter and summer) before completion in order to "settle down" if using bricks + concrete foundations. So it doesn't matter much for self-built houses but for fast building it may be a bit annoying. It can be avoided with slight additional cost.
ā@MarekFajkus Heads up, a concrete and brick home can easily be built by a skilled crew in 2 weeks. I've seen it happen. If it's a 1 storey house, they don't have to wait for the concrete to fully set before the next storey.
I'm not.saying your experience is wrong, I'm saying quick construction is definitely available with concrete.
Many don't want to admit it but the biggest problem with American homes, autos etc. is the lack of consumer protections and the drive to maximize profits and who care about quality. As long as it's going to last to the end of the warranty period it's good to go.
I'm in the Caribbean and if someone is living in a wooden house in my country, they would be considered poor. I remember when I was younger and saw people flying through walls in movies, I was confused about why they would let us see that it's just a movie set made out of fake walls, not realizing that that was what real walls were like in the US. I have started making use of "fake" walls in my house recently though, since it is cheaper and faster for interior walls that are not exposed to moisture and it would make future remodeling easier. The only downside is that it doesn't block sounds as well.
Even our Wooden houses in the Caribbean are stronger than American wooden homes. Plus now a wooden house and a wall house in the Caribbean cost the same š
Hasta en mi pais atrasado de Latinoamerica tenemos casas de ladrillos...
You can get a well built home in the US if you can afford a builder who cares or build it yourself. Stick framing is actually great if you use thicker lumber ("overbuild" as they say). The problem is corporate developers who are allowed to use cardboard sheathing, the minimum viable amount of lumber for the structure and don't waterproof or insulate their homes properly. Then there's the city/county building department that ignores the obvious problems until there's a disaster and we just get higher taxes and permit fees to cover their mistakes.
Even the luxury builders often donāt care about quality materials, itās all about vanity.
And even if you find one that does care, you by the time you get ZIP system, double walls, and or exterior insulation, smart membranes, etc.
You could just build an ICF house for the same price. Better efficiency, longevity, SAFETY, sound reduction higher appraisal value, etc.
Doesnāt make much sense to me to build stick frame
No one is competing against the BlackRocks, VC's etc., anymore. It's all junk with a few exceptions where a developer also holds rentals long term.
@Mike_Fortin "luxury builder" is more a marketing term nowadays, you really have to find an experienced builder with integrity
The problem is not the corporate whatever, but the sheeple who buys it.
Stick framing is basically firewood sooner are later.
As a Puertorican living in TX I can say that houses in the US are not worth to buy, they donāt gave me any type of security or solid structure everything is build with thin wood and soft material, one good hurricane and say good bye to your house.
Then go back.
Why don't you implement them in the US?
Story time: A friend of my Ma migrated to the US from Germany in the early 90s and wanted to build his own house.
Well, he looked at what was offered and didn't liked it, so he called a German architect and asked him to plan his house, meeting German standards, but following US regulation.
Well, the first construction company turned him down, as they thought he was completely nuts and that's some kind of a joke and the second one which took the contract was still in quite disbelief in what they were supposed to build and said, I quote "the Germans just build and live in bunkers."
To be fair, the friend was quite into renewable energy and thus the plans were for something we would call today passive house, which has a wall thickness (including insulation) of up to 63 cm if constructed in traditional brick and mortar variant, which he opted for as it was at the edge of the hurricane alley
Companies have their local know how and building methods. He also would have a hard time building a German brick house in the US, where bricks are seen as decoration.
In Mexico, houses are typically built of red brick or cinder blocks. Roofs are from reinforced poured concrete. Older houses were made from adobe, specially in the central/north of the country.
Yeah, people around the world and across the US build with what they have on hand. Most of the US has lots of wood more easily available to build with than other materials, so that's what most of the US builds with. Some parts of America build with concrete, adobe, etc... too depending on what's more easily available to them.
Just like in America you guys build with readily avaliable materials for the environment the home is located. I dont get why people can't understand that
Curious, because anytime I see construction workers from the US, they look Mexicans.....so, the know how of their construction workers is not the problem of why the construct with those materials
@fitito500 itās the availability of materials.
@escthedark3709 yup only canada and the us have wood. all other places concrete flows in rivers around the landscape. we have our concrete cows that gives healthy natural concrete. we do not have trees. they are only present in USA and canada
US philosofy on housing - pay 300000 usd for cardboard box on wooden sticks. So it's cheap and fast for builders, but people paying price of normal house and getting box from fridge instead of house.
I've spent a few minutes now trying to understand what the second sentence is supposed to mean, I'm still not sure what you're saying. One thing I can say though, people wish they could find a home for 300,000. Unless you're living in pretty specific parts of the country that's about 100,000 under value and in other places that's about half what you can expect to pay. I don't live in a nice area, at all, and the median home price where I live is around 650,000. Also, residents don't have a say in what homes are built out of unless they're building a custom home which is rare for average people.
@zac9933 What I'm saying in second sentence is that way of house construction is cheap and fast, but only for companies that are building that houses. For people who are buying that houses - they are buying overpriced cardboard box, for obnoxious amount of money.
ā@fryzvova...and why is the health care in US so expensive, is it so much better the anywhere in the World?
@choro3d191 healthcare in US is shitshow. You need to have insurance, but you steel need to pay for most healthcare expenses. It's absolutely corrupted system, imho. Not sure why you bringing it here (probably because its also about paying a lot of money for shitty and inferior something), but still it is what it is.
Yep, that's how successful businesses in the US operate; Promise everything, deliver nothing, blame someone else.
9:36 The knowlage of brickmaking was lost only in north-western Europe, brick continued to be widely used in Byzantine Empire and Italy and by the 12th century it spread all across central and eastern Europe where it became far more common than stone. Here in Poland most medieval buildings are brick.
Brickmaking was also used in the Netherlands during medieval times. Probably due to a lack of good stone in the more wet parts of the country.
This might be something California should pay attention to...
Ironically, California is where modern stick frame housing was born; right down to the tools. The framing hammer was invented in California for guys building tract homes there.
For example, in Florida. How do you build a wood-framed house in a hurricane-stricken area? "Wood-framed houses and roofs are flexible." Yes, of course, until you experience a Category 5 hurricane or a tornado. Look in the Caribbean. There are stone houses over 500 years old that have withstood hundreds of hurricanes without a scratch.
Hey! I stayed in one of those half-timber homes depicted - and yes, it was stunningly beautiful and cozy inside and out! I lived in a very old, non-renovated half timber estate back in the 90s, and I remember there were still straw mattresses in the house, and the walls were still what you call "waddle and dab", also the fill was more straw and earth mix, like perhaps a modern "earth ship." I remember the clay roof leaked, the plaster on the walls was cracking, but it was over 250 years old at the time! I can't imagine many of our modern-built homes in north america lasting half that long. That estate has since been renovated (or renewed as they say in German) and it is stunning.
In Australia the majority of our homes are only clever insulated tents. They leak heat and warmth, they are never square, and by that I mean opposite walls may be different lengths and the rooms end up out of square. My home is almost 50 years old on a cement slab, with a brick exterior that adds nothing to the structure. The frame is hardwood, only because of its age and would be called a balloon type frame that now a similar building would be a softwood plantation pine. We demanded our soffit be 900mm to help with protection from rain and sun. Our energy conservation is due to our planting of trees and shrubs to protect us from the summer sun. We also have a lattice work set out level with the roof gutters and that lattice allows us to grow vines that also protect us from the sun and adds to the warmth in our very mild winters. Our winter day are about 22C during the day with overnight temps of about 12C. It is our summer heat that sits on 30 -32C with overnight temps of 20C. Our heat waves are regular with 39 - 40C and nights of 23C. So I don't think the USA has exclusive rights to poorly built homes.
Todayās standards are better than what you see in the USās worst, but yes, plenty of glorified tents in Australia. A mild climate meant people didnāt literally die (much) if they were bad in Australia, and the US mostly has cheap electricity.
Also there are some well built homes everywhere, including the US and Australia. Theyāre just not cheap and large.
Ive heard NZ houses are pretty shit, no insulation and mold issues.
Thank you I was getting tired of people only targeting American homes and acting like the entire rest of the world only builds with stone
There is two materials never mentioned.
1. Siporex/Ytong or light concrete. You add gas (co2 I think) to the manufacturing process to make something like foam but that are almost as hard as bricks but much lighter and with a better heat insulation factor.
2. Leca blocks.
America grande paese, ma ogni tanto si perdono per strada. Anche in Europa abbiamo case in legno soprattutto in montagna, ma sono fatte con tronchi d'albero di minimo 30 cm di diametro, praticamente indistruttibili. Ho notato che negli USA non vi ĆØ una cultura della casa basta un tetto e 4 pareti, la prova ĆØ che ad ogni uragano o simile centinaia di abitazioni vengono spazzate via come castelli di carte. No ragazzi la casa ĆØ una cosa seria non ĆØ un giocattolo. Personalmente cemento armato con muri perimetrali di almeno 40 cm (15,7 pollici) serramenti, infissi e porte esterne blindate. Casa deve essere un posto sicuro dove se arriva un F5 al massimo mi prendo una coperta, un buon caffĆØ caldo e mi metto a guardare lo spettacolo !! Forza ragazzi basta legno degli stuzzicadenti, cemento armato come se non ci fosse un domani š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£šš
One of the biggest shocks when we first moved to the US was that we had walls made out of paper. Some shelf fell against a wall in the garage and created a hole. My mother was absolutely shocked -- we had never lived in a building that was not made out of concrete... even then poorest homes in the villages out in the country (the homes with no running water and outhouses) were built out of thick logs or continuous boards, while more modern houses were built out of cinder blocks. Even the outhouses of were sturdier than the walls of this townhouse.
America was also the first time I encountered furniture that was not made out of wood. It was a confusing time.
And please tell me more about how we are "trending toward disposable" while the shack down the street from me that would be too small to be a proper 2 car garage is selling for almost half a million dollars...
Walls in the US are made out of wood framing and drywall, not paper. There is paper in drywall, but its main purpose is to provide tensile strength for the gypsum. Drywall provides additional fire protection and an easy to work on substrate for renovation and furnishing work. Logs are a poor wall choice for housing as they're flammable, difficult to insulate and seal against bugs, and require extensive maintenance. Masonry exterior walls would be desirable, but most people cannot afford them and the construction workforce hasn't been trained around building that way.
@robertm5969 the us uses the flimmsiest drywall known to man
and calling it paper is absolutely accurate
Makes it a lot easier when I had to run 3 new electrical circuits and a couple of runs of cat5 through the house.
@robertm5969 "additional fire protection" for a house that's basically an elaborate campfire š
You wouldn't need additional fire protection if your house wasn't made out of furnace fuel to begin with.
Such bs.
As someone from Spain: it is common over here for people to joke that houses in the United States are made out of wet cardboard. I can understand if houses are made of cheap materials in areas that are hit by tornados and monsoons often as to rebuild them quickly, but at a certain point they're just making the joke become reality. Punching a wall and making a hole through it wouldn't make me feel one bit secure inside that home, that's for sure.
As someone in Tornado Alley, building with wood isn't just about being able to rebuild quickly and cheaply. It's also about saving lives. It's easier and safer to dig yourself out of a pile of wood and drywall than it is a pile of bricks and stone.
in a land full of people with (unlicenced) guns i'd also rather have a concrete wall around my sleeping place.
@HeadFullaStuffin ??? such a stupid thing to say ....when you can build house that rezist 200km wind ....i wonder whay quality is equal with cheep in US
@mellasio3911 200 km per hour winds are fine. But we also get over 300 km per hour winds. That kind of wind speed not only tears apart buildings, it also carries the debris with it. I don't know of any structure that would withstand that kind of intensity for even a couple minutes.
@HeadFullaStuffin i can show you projects of housings that are build for huricanes survive and many other stuff like look at systens that japan has in place for natural dezaster.s...it looks the tehnology exist ...we have a saing in my country ...am to poor to be cheep
17:37 bro i could watch a hour long video of you talking about different building styles and materials. Gimme it all
You got it boss!
16:42 another big factor in the American Southwest is termite infestation. I've seen homes that were wood frame nearly collapse due to termite damage. In fact when I was building houses back in the 80s, after Chlordane was banned, the Bank we worked with quit financing wood frame, temporarily.