The house I live in is about 110 years old and starting to fall apart lol. The walls are mainly old planks filled with horsehair and covered in plaster and I’m pretty sure the electrical and plumbing that was added later was diy😅 I have no idea how it’s still standing
This economic works only for profit in every life aspect and nothing else. You better ask yourself why we tolerate this for years while we have alternative way of economic almost 100 years.
I recall a quote something like "A German builds a home and thinks about how his grandchildren are going to live in it some day. An American builds a home and thinks about when he is going to sell it and move on to a bigger one."
true. we have these people called "house flippers," essentially they buy a crappy home and then do some remodeling, then sell the house in a couple of years. my neighbors are flippers, they did a bunch of remodeling and construction on their house, and plan to sell it soon. its literally a business.
@@canavero4288 which is because most people think they are above living in these affordable homes. So someone comes around, buys it and does the legwork because most people want instant gratification. They want all the nice things right now without any of the responsibility or hassle then complain about a lack of affordable houses. Its the deeply rooted mass consumerism that is the problem.
@Bob Watters Oh honey. In USA you find ways to get in more debt and to make the already rich even richer while everybody else gets more and more screwed. You are an oligarchy that's turning into a full on feudal society and patting yourself on the back for it. Meanwhile European are concentrated on making sure they have a comfortable and fair life full of opportunities- Sincerely an European who has their own home, zero debt, free healthcare and education, great public transit , 4 weeks paid vacation and parental leave . But hey don't me distract you from your flag waving my dear serf ;)
I’m in Kentucky and the housing market here over the last 7-8 years is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Homes that were bought for $130K in 2015 are now being sold for $590k. I’m talking about tiny, disgusting, poorly built 950 square foot shit boxes in quite mediocre neighborhoods. Then you’ve got Better, average sized homes in nicer neighborhoods that were $300K+ 10 years ago selling for $750k+ now. Wild times.
Home prices will come down eventually, but for now; get your money (as much as you can) out of the housing market and get into the financial markets or gold. The new mortgage rates are crazy, add to that the recession and the fact that mortgage guidelines are getting more difficult. Home prices will need to fall by a minimum of 40% (more like 50%) before the market normalizes.If you are in cross roads or need sincere advise on the best moves to take now its best you seek an independent advisor who knows about the financial markets.
The housing market has always had its ups and downs, but it's true that this time feels different. Having a portfolio manager will save you a lot in the market. My coach has helped me expand my portfolio by 200% over the past few months.
Rebecca Noblett Roberts, is respected in her field. I suggest delving deeper into her credentials, as she possesses experience and serves as a valuable resource.
It's not like the separate hot and cold taps, the always creaking floors and stairs, the paper-thin walls, the outward opening windows or that grim brick cladding on every house are so amazing.
The United States has allowed Rampant corruption to permeate through out the Entire Country! Rogue capitalism has been eroding American culture since WW2! Example: Our Former disgraced Orange President!
@@kellibarnhouse6591 What the hell are you talking about. Trump has nothing to do with building codes. Sorry. Shitty houses are still going up. Can we now blame that your your senile, plaguring, socialist Biden? PS If you don't like our system feel free to move. Who needs you!
I live in Scandinavia, where we also have wooden homes... and guess what? They are sturdy, reliable, and last for generations. It's not the building material as such, is the cheap solutions and the cost-cutting exercises they do in putting everything in place.
Yupp gotta build it good once and it’ll last. Make sure the plumbing doesn’t leak at all so the wood won’t rot. The roof and gutters throw water away from the foundation . Concrete well installed so water does not pool in the water too
I am 63 years old and have moved once. I live in upstate NY and when I built my new home in 1984 which I designed myself, I built brick on a high tensile strength concrete foundation. This thing is a tank.
@@CB0408 Schön, ich war am Montag und gestern erst in Wien. Meine Tante ist gerade von dort auf den Besuch zu uns gekommen. Ich lebe im nördlichsten Teil der Steiermark (Bruck-Mürzzuschlag), weniger wie 15km zur Grenze zu Niederösterreich weg
"its not just capitalism so dont click off yet!" minutes later, "contractors knew they could make a killing to if they could build houses fast enough to keep up with demand" 🙄
and then competitive job markets that pretty much force people to move or else never advance in their field lmao. At every point I was like... so.... capitalism
Funniest thing is that we have capitalism outside of the US too, but we also have building codes and quality standards. Cardboard houses would simply never gain permission to be built in modern European countries.
@@johnlohier1008 well first of all ppl ARE homeless n unable to get into homes of any kind, not just the "ones they want" so idk what ur even tryna say. both low quality homes and homelessness exist already so how is it a pick one scenario? n second ur sayin this like these codes n societal phenomena are natural n the only two choices possible. these are all man-made things... they can be unmade. theres no reason that ppl being housed in buildings that are sturdy is impossible or out of the question or not an option lmfao u've been trained to believe choices presented by ppl who hold power n capital are the only ones even materially possible but thats not the case.
@@jamestucker8088 I am pretty sure the builders will put effort to cement those brinks together instead of just dumping them together in a shape of a house. Or perhaps we just have a different mental picture of how a brick house is constructed. There are some brick houses with metal reinforcements.
My parent bought the brick house I grew up in in 1957. It's undergone major renovation with a second floor being added on one wing, but it's still standing today.
Houses from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were way bad just like todays houses American homes have been terrible for a 100 years nothing has changed
it wasnt made of brick... it was encased with brick...big difference... it was made with wood...brick is just the veneer... you must not be a man to not know this
Some places also don't have enough people for new development. My house is from 1953, and I don't think there's been a new housing project since the 70's. The population is staying the same, so the amount of people isn't going up.
If you have more than one child, that is true everywhere. If one of the siblings stays in the house, they have to purchase the share of the house inherited by the sibling(s) that does not.
tangogamma That's exactly what happens in most places though. The children inherit the family home, sell up and buy their own or move further up the property ladder. It seems insane to a European that a person would take out a mortgage and pay, potentially for decades, for an asset that depreciates and will need replacement by the time it's paid off. In Europe, we seen houses as a safe place to put our money, one that ultimately will return to us or our descendants more than we put in. The age of a property here is often immaterial, in fact older homes often do and a significant premium over a similarly sized brand new one.
Im from sweden and live in a pretty classic swedish house its made from wood and it is over 150 years and is still sturdy. Its not about being made out of wood its about being made out of thin walls with weak wood. Sweden is also one of the biggest exporters of wood so wood is very cheap in pretty much all the nordic countries.
true even here in the united states old houses are still standing i think those built before 1920s or 30 after that the wood treatment changed now is not good
@@jjuanmarin absolutely true. Many houses built during the 60s in particular went back to the old building formats, with better materials. My home is from that boom and is substantially better built than the ticky tacky subdivision houses around
Yeah when they made blanket statements about Europe in the video, I was wondering about Scandinavia. They should've used that as an example of good wood construction.
Note the difference ? Sweden is temperate-coastal to arctic-coastal. Here woodhouses is natural. USA ? subtropic-coastal to subtropic-continental. There loam bricks are natural. If you use wood in subtropical climate, you get firestorms or thermites, depending in the humidity. Other subtropical countries use loam. Also Mirror facades may be practical in London, but are a nightmare in Dubai. Americans and Arabs don't get architecture right.
70% of Finland's land mass is covered in wood. not having wood is a south European thing, maybe. Spain, Italy. though i think it's more because they have a hot climate, and stone that cools you is important there. not so in winter Scandinavia. I think it is the profit incentive to just very quickly and cheaply build a big flashy house with 14 bedrooms and the climate does not need to be winterproof, you don't need a house that conserves energy, heating a house is cheap, oil is in abundance. it is the American philosophy of being big and quick, things changing fast. modern Chinese people would have the same thinking. though I was surprised and puzzled about the Japanese houses being flimsy, too. I would've thought the opposite. 6:23 but the earth shakes is the main culprit. if they never had earthquakes like Finland, then they would invest in comfort and longevity, I think. - though i must add that lately finnish construction crews have started to cut corners in the name of profits and on-site construction materials get water inside them, because they don't properly protect all the building materials 24/7 from water, snow, like they used to back in the old days, ruining it. it's a modern problem in both private and public sector building. modular houses that are built in dry condition inside factories are seen as more premium now, than on-site house construction in here, because the elements of nature don't have the chance to ruin the construction blocks. who knows, maybe underground building becomes in vogue, because of climate change as in fires, hurricanes, extreme weather.
My family recently relocated to a new state, and had a house built from scratch that we moved into early last year. Literally, we've been having issues since we moved in. The floors started peeling up, the tile grout started chipping, the walls are crooked, there are electrical issues, two of the fans have been broken since being installed, doorknobs are beginning to fall apart... the house was not cheap, so it's truly angering. My parents wanted this to be their retirement home, but they are so angry that they wish to move again.
The houses I lived in were always older, but well built. But when a whole lot of homes are done in a short time by one company, it is simply the company building with cheap materials and lousy construction so they can make a large quick profit.
@@lizh1988 ruclips.net/video/8xIwmHZLQT0/видео.html How Homes in Iceland are Different than the USA. Can an American build homes according to Icelandic Homes specifications?
It's shocking how the US seems to have completely ignored the three little pigs tale Every kid knows that the brick house is literally the only one that survives
@@TedSchoenling Yes because then they know how to build with real wood and not with 'modern' cheap materials.. Other thing is will they stand next 200years?😂
Oh they are starting to do that now. The frame is wood, the siding is polyvinyl (aka plastic) the trim is not wood it’s cardboard now, the shutters on the exterior are plastic and glued onto the homes (this is why when you drive through 10 year old neighborhoods shutters are randomly missing), the floors are LVP or plastic planks, the tubs and sinks are plastic moulds they plop in etc.
Arlen Burgin Yes, us foreigners and minorities who do not live in shanty towns and refuse to turn our countries into Haiti, Afghanistan and Soweto look-alikes, like you want us all to live perpetually so, are rich jerks, nothing bigoted, hateful, intolerant, supremacist, imperialist, racist and xenophobic. NAILED IT! 👌🏻 Tras de ladrón, bufón.
@@arlenburgin2392 look at the fact that there are still plenty of people who do in fact own a house and that people can establish themselves once they are old enough. they may have bought it before the crisis or could have had it passed down. also, in spain the housing crisis isnt as big an issue as the uk. no need to be so rude when you dont know half the story
My home was build 1564. It has a 80-90cm thick outer wall made from stone and dirt, its like a vertical bunker, in summer when its outside like 32-35C it holds the temperature of like 20-25C over the hole day like in a basement of a normal home. My family lives here since the end of the 1800s.
My childhood home was a converted stone barn built around 1720 and it's walls are over 2 foot thick with no cavity, 2 foot for a barn that stored hay. Although unfortunately it's not great with regulating temperature, however that is probably as much to do with the fact that the conversion happened in the 1980s as it does to do with it being a barn.
@@bl00dkillz No the reinforced concrete ceiling stopped me. Building a house like a bunker has some downsides. Don't get me wrong, I like the way our houses are build, its just a bit annoying at times.
Not me. A double brick house is a brick house, a brick veneer house looks like a brick house, but has non structural bricks on a wood frame. It blows down, shakes down and burns down just as easily. Most houses have an exterior veneer. Not structural.
Unless the expected natural disaster is an earthquake. It's very expensive to insure brickwork where I live. My wood frame home suffered no damage in a recent 5.7 quake.
It's incredible that in a third world country like mine we have homes made out of cement, bricks and iron, while they have those weak houses. My house is standing for 37 years and it doesn't have a single scratch. It tripled its size over my lifetime.
Southeast Asian countries are also using concrete for building houses and that results lasting for decades, even to next generation. But well considering the storms, it just make sense to build something stronger. Also it is harder for families to get new home anyways, so houses are pretty much a lifetime investment and can be transferred to their kids or relative, if not sold.
As someone who has spent their entire life in Massachusetts and has carpenters in her immediate family, I can say there are many homes around here that have been standing 100+ years and much more. The home I grew up in was a 1925 build, built by the family who sold it to my parents. They still live in it. What I’m observing is that many of the older homes *can* have problems that need maintenance, but are often reliable. The newer builds are awful and need so much more maintenance. The newer homes fly up in a matter of days, while the houses built “way back then” were constructed with care.
History has a way of filtering the worst of the older buildings. Many older homes that had problems were fixed while others were just torn down. When you see new houses, you see the best and worst of what today's builders can do.
@@pcno2832 While that bias may be true, it's also true that most new homes are built with young trees, soft woods and short shelf life products like caulk to fill the gaps. The old homes had old growth trees, often hard woods, that will take a lot more before they rot and fall down. My house was built in 1928 and you can see cost cutting from the great depression that, while obviously inferior to some houses made during that time period, is still way better than some of the building techniques employed today.
As a professional firefighter/emt-p from the Northeast I can tell you for a fact and you might not like to hear it but carpenters are getting lazy and material costs are going up and the quality is going down. There's a huge difference in the construction quality from a house or building built in 1925 compared to one built post 2000
Being in the building industry for almost 30 years, I've always joked that a cheap track house has the same building methods and materials used as the 2 million dollar mansion on the hill. Only difference is the finish materials like used like sinks, siding, etc. You still get the same framing, insulation, roof, plumbing and electrical job which is cheap and fast!
As someone who’s worked on affordable housing & luxury homes - the plumbing, mechanical & electrical change ALOT based on budget. And luxury homes clients can afford to pay the better construction workers & contractors who know what they’re doing
@Yo Boo ~ Soooo you've supposedly been *_"...in the building industry for almost 30 years..."_* but you don't know that those cheap houses you refer to are *tract* houses---not "track". A track is what you cycle down, or what the train drives on.
Lived in German housing and US housing... Just the quality of the windows in German houses would astound most Americans (if they can appreciate it), not to mention much stricter laws concerning noise made urban living in Germany doable.
Laws never make anything better. in fact the building codes we have in the United States result in worse materials being used to build homes because the government doesn't know a goddamn thing about construction
It still pisses me off that other countries don't get the necessity of "kipp". This is such an awesome yet basic feature of a window. Every window should have it.
Stanley Trask That’s what you are conditioned to think as an American, with an easily corrupted government and political leadership on all levels. This is not true in most other developed countries, where building code is written to protect home owners, not builders and big landlords. Here in Sweden for example building code is strictly enforced, and it is a good thing because even though bad contractors still exist of course (but can be held liable for shoddy work), the code sets a high minimum standard and houses need to be built to withstand the most powerful storms and adverse weather, heavy snow cover on roofs, earthquakes (even though they are almost nonexistent), extremes in temperature (both high and very low) and they have to last a century or more with normal maintenance. They are well insulated to keep the heat in in the winters and out in the summers without excessive costs for heating or cooling. Three-pane insulating windows have been standard since the 90s. They keep weather and sound out and help lower the energy consumption of the building. Even inner walls are insulated for sound proofing and to reduce heat transfer. Plumbing, heating and electricity is also built to rigorous standards. I can guarantee you would be pleasantly surprised with the quality, comfort and low operating costs of our buildings if you visited.
I used to watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition and the houses being built were hilarious. How do you think they built in 3 days? Because its like a childrens playset.
I believe that the head carpenter on this show was trained as a set carpenter in hollywood, most of these TV home improvement shows are similar, they get the job done in time to get the show aired. Real world isn't like that, you need plans, permits, inspection, wait for stuff, changes of all kinds, and all kinds of aholes, especially customers. That why it takes forever.
Here in Scandinavia the old houses that we have are made out of wood but its really sturdy. Our home is at least 100 years old but because of the thiccc high quality wood its expected to exist for a long time. And because Scandinavia has always been a huge export of wood it results in wood being fairly cheap.
Her in America our home was built in 1882. Friends often want to mock us for buying and old home and living within our budget. I rather have a strong sturdy well built home under our budget than some half ass new home to impress our friends on Facebook
@@LuxRoyale norway has a lot of rain bro, even in summer the mirrors on the cars fog up, humidity is really high. Also it has a lot of sea so on the places near the sea the air is salty as well
My Opa is German, so when our house was built in Connecticut in 1949, they used a combination of concrete, brick, and steel for the foundation. It is a little harder to rennovate in terms of tearing down walls for more updated open concepts, but the house still lools glorious to this day. We save so much on a/c, and pest control.
American houses go for quantity (i.e. space) over quality. It's all about "who has the biggest house". As a result, most middle class homes end up being big, but of low quality. Thin walls, cheap carpet floors, squeaky non-sealed windows, plastic bath tub, no tiles in the bathroom, etc. Houses in Europe and other parts of the world are smaller, but of much better quality.
Well in the house my mum lives in it was shitty made, but the buildings them self and in the area where its builts was built a bit over 20 years ago and the builders cut corners during construction. Since last year she had her home and neighbours had visitors that should not be there (rats). Live in Denmark btw. Not all European homes are made in better quality. Even my small apartment is not the greatest, but I at least have something of my own.
7:46 “Hi new neighbor. I’m gonna be building a new home next to you.” “Okay. Just try to keep the construction noise down.” “Oh don’t worry. It’s a pre built modular home. Just gotta get a crane and dangle it precariously above your house for a bit.”
If you get a chance always get extra insulation in your homes interior walls not just exterior. Sound is gone , walls feel solid, temperature stays constant inside no matter what the temp is Outside
Yup, this. I can even attest to using cellulose insulation over fiberglass since it's more dense and does a better job at sound attenuation. A further added measure is dense packing cellulose in the interior walls. I did this as part of my sound attenuation measures for my bedroom in my 2018 built home and it made a great difference.
No. That is a terrible idea. Other than for the sound. HVAC systems are designed to allow air flow in between rooms. What matters is the thermal envelope that separates the interior from the exterior. Properly built homes have transfer grilles that allow air exchange between interior rooms and that pretty well defeats the purpose of insulation in interior walls. If you want sound protection there are better ways to do that than standard insulation.
Wooden framed houses do not have to be flimsy and can last for centuries. I live in a timber framed cottage in Normandy. The timbers are made of oak. It is at least 400 years old.
Yeah, it's oak, I think the wood we use, is fir, soft wood. The problem, is you can't get the type of wood now. Remember, you can't rebuild the Notre Dame, because the wood is no longer available.
@@slewone4905 Well maybe....but traditional pegged oak-framed buildings are still being built here in the Pays d'Auge in Normandy. The same techniques as when our house was built. In fact just a few years ago a local firm who build such houses did come and replace a couple of major timbers in our home. Using thick oak beams (over a foot square) and using the exact same methods as in the past. Also, in the UK there are firms who will build you a traditional 'half-timbered' house either bespoke or in kit form.
@@chris-2496 Yeah, I know that. I was actually making the same point. It isn't the fact a house is made of 'timber' that is the problem regarding longevity....it is WHAT the timber is, and HOW it is constructed.
lol, houses that last 30 years max? When I grew up, we lived in houses build like in the 18th century... and those weren't even "the old ones" under monument protection. Go for bricks, it's worth it.
Just saying, I like in a 100-year-old wooden house in the US...still in pretty good shape! (Not saying that all houses are like this, just putting it out there...)
My dad works in property management and despises the prevalence of wood framing in residential construction. He refers to it as “toothpick construction.” He’s from the West Indies and still prefers the cinder block construction that’s more common there. And I don’t blame him. Those houses are designed to hold up against hurricane force winds. My grandparents’ home was built in 1969-70 and is still in pretty good condition. It may need another roof replacement, but the structure is solid!
I use the term “toothpick construction” constantly, but usually refer to these blocky apartment or mixed use buildings that have been springing up like weeds near me. I’m in the state of New Jersey, and constantly old ex-industrial sites are demolished and replaced with these. Almost all new housing near me is wooden framed apartments. As McMansions aren’t selling, the materials are used for what I sub McMainStreet. (Seems McWallStreet has a heavy hand). There is also a five-floor limit for wooden construction, which makes the developers build extremely “blocky” and rectangular toothpick framed buildings which are angular and usually fill out entire blocks. Max out profits by going as cheap as possible for construction while using the entire land parcels, then rent gouging. In my opinion almost all of them look chintzy and horrible. I would never live in one of those, let alone the fire risks of displacing 500 people instead of 5 in case of fire. They have been controversial in the way they alter towns to look mass-produced. There have been several fires involving them, but most of those have happened at unoccupied complexes under construction. But sadly with all the corruption where I live I don’t expect things to change until an occupied building is destroyed by fire and people die. For now I will vote with my wallet.
@@ecoRfan Here in the UK, especially inner city areas a lot of the old industrial buildings are repurposed as apartments. They tend to consider them as part of the history of the city so they keep as much as they can where they can while still making it a practical, functional structure. I guess it helps that a lot of these older buildings are listed too which makes it harder to just knock them down.
I was born in a stick house in Wisconsin 70 years ago. It is still habitable and standing next to Yerkes Observatory. This nonsense about wooden stick houses being weak is silly.
I think that the main problem is that most new houses are built by developers who are only interested in making these structures as cheaply as possible, because once they have built it and sold it, it is the new owner's problem, not theirs. I also believe that politicians are bribed to weaken standards and go along with this. By the way in Spain the developers do the same thing with ultra-thin and cheap walls with no noise or thermal insulation. It is only in the last few years that they have gotten a bit better about this.
You don’t know what your talking about, while big developers can make questionable design decisions and install cheaper finishes, they are structurally built the same way as pretty much every new wood framed house in the US. The vast majority of houses follow the local building codes to the T and don’t spend extra time or expense on making the house stronger.
politicians are not briden to weaken the standards, this isn't some weirdo 3rd world country. There isn't a problem with any building codes here, the presenter was desperate to assert that but, its nonsense.
When we watch home improvement shows on TV we are constantly shocked by the lousy quality of and lack of insulation in the houses people live in in the US. Yet the houses are ridiculously expensive.
When i watch those US Home Improvement Shows i am always shocked when the Thermo Camera comes out. and Windows are deep blue. Like ... WTF .... then i learned you guys dont use double glass Windows.
Nice to see our Amsterdam canal house, 30 seconds in (the small one in the middle)! But though it indeed has been standing for about 500 years, we actually do hear the neighbors climbing their stairs through the shared single-brick wall...
When I stayed in a hotel in the center of Amsterdam, I could hear everything going on outside like there was no wall there and the single-glass window did nothing for wind isolation. I had a really hard time there, being used to sturdy central European houses with 40cm+ walls.
When we lived in the US (we are French), we saw a few houses being built in our neighborhood and boy it seemed they were done in no time! Felt crazy to us how little time was needed for construction to be complete.
Yeah most people just assume price and think quality, oh no no no. They don't expect you to be able to pay for it in full either because nobody usually gets that far lol. Usually with interest over the years the price that you'll pay will be much higher than what it was when you started.
I mean what they define as a house we call a cottage. It’s not somewhere you live, but a cheap weekend getaway where you keep your fishing equipment etc.
Fabienne, part of the reason is they hired very poorly skilled people. They also rely too heavily on pneumatic nail guns. The click click you hear is the nail gun. The migrant workers don't care one bit about quality, just getting their paycheck and going home. The quality is so bad that some of these homes WILL need to be remodeled because they will develop issues. I walked through a home that was under construction and it will NOT pass a tornado inspection. The beams attaching the roof to the main structure were NOT done correctly. They clearly used a nail gun with the air pressure set to maximum pressure. The nails actually damaged the wooden beam but failed to join the two pieces. I was able to shake the beams. The house is a ticking time bomb. If it's still lived in, I KNOW the owner spent thousands on a roof repair. It is not going to hold up in a hail storm.
I’ve always thought US buildings seemed super flimsy, I live in the UK and most things are made out of brick and plaster, walls definitely aren’t soundproof and you can hear people and your terraced neighbors occasionally, but it’s never that serious. When I first heard US buildings are mostly wooden I was shocked, it seemed so risky and easy to break.
Here in the Boston area, both masonry and wood houses are built to the same wind-load standard, about 100-110 MPH, which is the same range they use in most of the UK. But a brick house will be more resistant against flying objects like storm debris and, if you live in a bad neighborhood, bullets.
@@pcno2832 This is not to attack the quality of wood. For me it's not just about the houses being sturdy. It is also about the fact that there is quite a large amount of videos of people stumbling heavily into drywall and it just breaking and I like my walls hole free.
I'm just gonna plug the book "Strong Towns" for anyone interested. It goes into explaining why the American suburban boom happened and why its dependence on constant economic growth has put American cities into impossible debts.
Living in FL, most homes are center block construction (outer walls). Lately, I’m seeing more and more wood structures being built. Personally, I think that isn’t the best idea due to Hurricanes.
A block structure with rebar and solid poured concrete grout, like we build them in the PNW, is 1000 times stronger than wood could ever be, and would hold up to a hurricane/tornato, no problem. The building codes in FL allow block structures to be built with out any grout, and very little if any rebar, which is insane in this day and age, when we know how unsafe that is, and it should be illegal everywhere, let alone where hurricanes are common. Everyone knows a block is just a container to put concrete and steel in. I have made a living earthquake proofing old cmu buildings, or tearing them down and building them right.
@@klubstompers compared to living in a wood structure. Concrete block structures suck. Sound is terrible. Cold hard floors. Wood homes make it through hurricanes too.
It amazed me the time I saw a picture after a hurricane in America - where there was one house left standing after the hurricane had passed. It belonged to a European couple that build it with EU regulation standards... 🤷🏼♀️
Yes but the Americans who lost their homes are out buying jetskis and White Claw with the insurance payout, and don't have to do that last sink full of dishes.
I've seen a few stories like that, but nothing was said about EU standards. Some of them just had stucco siding and more metal bracing where the wood was joined. The codes vary widely in the USA, but FL and the Gulf coast have some of the strongest standards (for post 1992 construction) in the world.
You liar! You made this up. A European couple did not build a home that was the only survivor after a hurricane. THERE ARE NO "HURRICANE REGULATIONS [or] STANDARDS" IN EUROPE. European homes are not even subjected to hurricanes. NEVER. Hurricanes don't happen in Finland, England, Germany, France, Italy, or anywhere on this continent. Further, Florida housing codes around wind and coastal flooding protections are some of the most strict and best designed in the world. You want to know why only a few houses were left standing on Galveston Beach after Hurricane Ike in 2008, well it is because those owners paid a lot of money to build a better more resiliant design on stilts. The homes that washed away did so because the builders of those homes were allowed to get away with building a weaker less expensive home in an area where they knew, or should have known, that these homes were not going to survive a moderate hurricane in the near future. The builders, home owners, politicians, and others all looked the other way betting on they probably wouldn't be held accountable when the hurricane hit. After all, the federal income tax supported National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) would probably pay for most of the damage when it does occur. Probably. Maybe? But hopefully not for much longer.
Over the last couple years I've been seeing 3-400 unit apartment buildings pop up everywhere using prefab wooden stud walls. I don't expect these to last long either.
Yuuh, but remember that firstly us ski hippies don't need to worry as much about wood burning down, pests etc, secondly house renovation like, is a thing and thirdly iirc a lot of new wooden houses are modular and the rest... not really mass produced balloonframedly lol. I lived in a wooden house from 1908 for half of my life and it got renovated and upgraded in 1995 and later in 2007-9 when it's value had dropped to the price of a new Nissan Leaf due to being legit in shit condition. Wood can last long but only if you build and treat it to last.
Paint protects the wall, we Norwegians like to build our house, its just cheaper than buying a brick house. You wouldnt know the difference anyway if i wanted to let my wall look like bricks or stones
Did you look @3:44. They are using toothpicks! Most houses here are from brick in Belgium. They are amongst the strongest build in the world. Even the wooden ones cost just as much and use massive framing. We use 7/18 or even 8/23cm here for our roofs. That's >3 by 9"... With proper maintenance our new houses can last a thousand year. Look at Bruges, and that are just some ancient techniques...
Depends. Sure some houses here are built with plastic and cardboard, but some wooden houses can take a beating. And wooden houses are better for winter.
Honestly, as an American myself, I've always held so much more appreciation for well-built older houses. I lived in the suburb of a town that's been around since 1851 for most of my childhood, and the brick historic district was always so much prettier and looked sturdier from the outside, even though they were physically smaller. The suburbs were wrought with tract housing and the houses were huge, yes, but they lacked individuality and there were always accidents regarding the build of these residences. I've always wished I could live somewhere like Europe to have a house that was beautiful and functional.
Yeah, newer "brick" houses are usually just junky facades or just use ugly, cheap bricks now with no character. If if there's "character", it's painted on.
1851 is old for you??? LOL muricans! You should take a trip to Europe where many people still live in Medieval houses built in the 14th - 15th century! And the way they were designed, these constructions will still be around for a thousand years!
I remember online once is one comment section, a heated debate between an american and european and given how crazy comments sections are, anyway, the european typed "My kitchen table is older than your country"
@@joefriday8607 I'd like a well built house, better than just wood frame and drywall, but also one with double glazed modern windows, central heating, and that was actually built with plumbing and wiring already in mind.
I’m Mexican and live about a 3 hour drive from the US border. Around 30 years ago it was really appealing traveling over there for vacations or shopping, so we did frequently. There were many things I admired during those visits but the flimsy houses were very unsettling for me
That is only that area. In some places the homes are built to last longer. My American home is 125 years old. The house I grew up in was wood, in Michigan, still standing probably around 90 years or more. In another state now, the house is 125 years old. The homes not built well were built for profit only.
Lol, have you ever even seen a house in Mexico? Your average house is literally built out of cardboard, for those few who are even lucky enough to have a house
That's absurd, you cross over from the US to Mexico and you are literally entering a 3rd world nation on par with Somalia or other poverty stricken countries in Africa . That's why we have about 20 million Mexicans that left Mexico and come here illegally . @@701delbronx8
Absolutely correct. But when you need to sell something with the profit, ecology, economy of construction materials or common sense doesnot matter. Matter only big money.
Very true. If you use thick, dry wood and don't skimp on assembly and insulation, that house is going to last longer than a typical brick/concrete house.
It does, the shorter the life expectancy, the lower the price. A house built in he same location, with the same square footage, but with with more durable materials, would cost more.
@@fordhouse8b Exactly. The same as with clothes. Because everything is so cheap all the time we aren't used to payig more for things that will eventually be cheaper in the long term.
@@fordhouse8b that's only true if you look at the price for building the house. If you keep in mind, that brick/concrete houses last much longer it will be WAY cheeper in the long run. Moreover, the annual price for maintenance is lower. But as the video said, we in Europe see a house as a long time investment and expect to live in it for years. Once we sell it, we can expect to earn something because the value has risen (unless one sells during a financial crisis of course)
@@mkpetersen1607 Price and long term cost are different things. As is return on investment. As you alluded to, the cyclical nature of the economy factors into how much your house is worth when you do sell it, but even with that, real estate is generally a good long term investment in the US.
It's totally understandable, but as a small correction (on a now older video, I know); Light timber framing is extensively used in Europe. For example the vast majority of new build houses in the UK and Ireland in large housing developments (we call the large, completely or mostly single use zoned housing developments 'housing estates' here rather than suburbs) are built in that manner. Even many new build houses on private plots outside of developments also use the same construction method. Generally only the exterior walls will be brick or some other material. This is done here for the same reasons as in the US, to reduce cost. This method is used not only in houses, but also in apartment buildings and elsewhere. The building's exterior walls and some internal walls will be constructed of concrete or similar material but most of the internal walls in the apartments (or shop units etc) will be constructed of the same light timber frames with light drywall outer skin (we call drywall 'plasterboard' over here). This has been the case for many decades now. I believe this is also the case in many other European countries, though that's an assumption on my part. So here, in homes and apartments we have the same issues with poor insulation and lack of sound dampening. Although older homes still exist that use heavier materials, it's pretty rare to see new private homes built using those methods. It's largely become a choice only really available to the very wealthy, unless one is happy to buy an old home, which generally comes with a lot of other issues over here.
As a British person, this is an interesting twist. We're always hearing about one of the obstacles to reaching net-zero carbon emissions is the fact that our housing stock is so old (even by European standards). Older homes can also be drafty, and sometimes difficult to retrofit with things like solar panels and heat pumps. But this video also presents the problems with some types of newer home as well.
Keeping existing buildings is the greenest option and they can be made more energy efficient using much less resources and cost than rebuilding new. Concrete and the steel needed to reinforce it is incredibly dirty and has a huge carbon footprint. Wood is the greenest building material and when done right, as the video proves, can last for centuries. Unfortunately right now, building codes don't require it done right.
In the event that installing solar panels isn't possible in the short term, there's always solar farms to invest in. I just switched my power grid provider to a solar source far away in some other county.
The video seem to exagerarte a bit about the lifetime of an american home. At lest in the New England area, there are a large amount of homes that surpass 100yrs. Mine is a wood frame with 68 yrs. But as you said, older homes tend to be leaky, inefficient and hard to retrofit. There are, however, many new constructions that are made very cheaply and do not last long.
The only real thing holding back the greenification of those old homes is space for insulation. Without which a heat pump becomes unviable. I believe most UK homes are build like ours in the Netherlands. Brick or concrete structural inside face, air/insulation gap, brick outside face. As you can't increase the air/insulation gap, extra insulation has to either go on the outside (preferable but then you lose the pretty brick). Or on the inside, which means losing interior space (and a tad more challenging in managing moisture). And the average UK home is tiny enough as is!
Its insane that there are many buildings built in England when wolves still roamed the land and we spoke Anglo-Saxon that are holding up better than modern American homes made less than 70 years ago.
Anglo saxon houses were built of wood and replaced frequently. There are exactly zero Anglo Saxon houses in existance today. In fact even finding out where they were built is incredibly difficult.
After moving into a brick apartment building for the first time, i was DELIGHTED to not hear my neighbors walk around and not feel the building shake in the wind
@@reyrey6295 yea, i live in a windy area and our 2 story wooden townhouse would shake in the wind all the time. They were built in probably around the 60's-70's
@@dipnitty8184 holy shit :D all houses here are from concrete and few walls brick and concrete and when we have low huricane wind you cant even hear it in the house. Thats insane ahahaha
Haha I moved into a 1910s duplex brick apartment building, but it had HUGE (beautiful) windows so I could hear everything outside 🤷🏻♀️😭😂 Also, we could hear the first floor and the basement through this weird HVAC shaft/closet. It kept in heat pretty well though!
I live in the midwest in United States and our cities and small towns are actually pretty old, and its a lot of skilled trades people that dont move. So we often have 100-150 year old wooden houses made of logs or large timbers that are constantly upgraded or repaired. So I think this is more of a suburb or west coast thing more than a whole US thing.
I think the US was simply built in a frenzied hurry. I'm rebuilding my grandfather's barn, a Sears kit barn from the 1930's, and it's amazing it's still standing! The metal roof helped, but everything was done so fast and sloppily, as were most other homes and barns of that era. Then mobile homes came out, even flimsier! I wish we had your construction standards.😉
@@chuckkottke . Construction standards aren't always followed properly. I live in a building from newly built on the coast of Mid Wales. 30 years later a minor hurricane did so much damage, it was easier to demolish it than patch it up. A few more wall ties might have prevented the brick cladding from being blown off, I had bricks all over my balcony.
@@chuckkottke A lot of British cities were build extremely fast too during the Industrial Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of homes were built in rows (we call them terraced, I believe they're called row houses in the US) so the workers could live close by to the factories, as a result towns sprang up around larger cities that were rather compact and easy to walk places because public transport wasn't really a thing back then outside of the bigger cities where it was largely warehousing, logistics and administration rather than actual manufacturing. Despite these being built rather fast and in VAST numbers, there are still millions of these homes standing today. Very few of them have a square corner or consistently sized door way but they were sturdy and simple to maintain. They were literally built as they went with no real plans, which is why they're not all standardised. After the war large flats/apartment blocks seemed to be the new thing, but that seems to have failed pretty much everywhere they went with such things (though oddly not in the Soviet style concrete slabs, they thrived far more than our attempts in the west at high density housing).
@@caesar7734 A British house that will still be standing in 200 years while your cheap American house is falling apart after 20 without a LOT of maintenance?
@@TalesOfWar most american houses dont really need that much maintenance. I live in west texas where we get severe thunder storms, large hail, and semifrequent tornadoes. Worst thing that happened to us was a minor roof leak caused by hail and wind, but it took maybe a day to repair everything including the water damaged sheetrock.
Quite interesting! I live in the Philippines. While most informal and lower income families do build their homes basically exactly like this, we decided to build what would be termed a "proper" home. Foundation pylons were pounded into the bedrock, foundations were poured concrete, and the walls were made of reinforced concrete. Fireproofed firewalls shield the house from fires from neighboring houses on either side. The ground floor was raised 4 feet off the street to defend from flooding, and the second floor main living area was raised an additional 20 feet from that for further defense. The electrical mains connected on the third floor and the first floor system was made separate so it could be turned off completely in case the flood exceeded 5 feet. I'll be the first to say that it's not a particularly handsome home. It's basically a concrete box. But it's proof against many hazards and it's very defensible.
exactly!! My house in the philippines has been up for more than 40 years now. The outer part of the house is concrete and the falls inside are wood. There are also traditional spanish houses made in wood in my city that has been up for more than 100 years too!!!
When I compare our Finnish wooden house built in early 50's and american houses of the same period our house is like a 100 more sturdy. We often joke about how american houses are made of cardboard.
It is not only the flimsy building I abhor, it is a lack of safety. Many row/town houses don't have fire-resisting walls. So when one house burns others will follow. Here in Germany it is law to built them, if your houses stand together or are near to each other. I've seen it live. A house in a town I visited was burning, the first in a long row of brickhouses. It burnt several hours and the heat was intense. It was a big one with at least 4 floors. It could not be saved, so the fire brigades just tried to control it and cooled the other houses. When the house was cold (several days later) it was teared down (bricks were burned out, so they were not solid enough). The next house had next to no damage and we could see the fire-resisting wall. After this I looked at youtube for reports of fires in the US, and low and behold, fires often spread to several houses, sometimes even the whole street. With the materials they are built they go up like a match. Not a nice image.
I am from Germany and We just renovated a decommissioned cattle farm build in the 50's. Besides updating the technical systems like heating and kitchen appliances and adding sufficient insulation, the house along with the barn and everything needed very little overall work, cutting down costs dramatically.
I was trying to explain what "flimsy" meant to this fella from Cameroon one time, all I could come up with was "unstable". He said, "Ahh, so you say your girlfriend, she is *flimsy*. Shit was too funny
My home was built in 1862. Living in an older home has a couple of drawbacks (no closets!) but let me tell you this brick house is mighty mighty. This thing is STURDY. I think we are the home's 4th owner, in 160 YEARS! That's how rarely people were selling their homes. The house I grew up in was built of wood in the 1920s. My parents bought it in 1953 and my mother still lives there - that's almost 70 years. It is a great house. My brother tells me that when the house gets sold, it will be a tear down. My quaint little hometown has become very posh and our plenty-big-enough house is not the McMansion that the new young professionals want. I have been in these McMansions and they are as flimsy as hell, but HUGE with ludicrous features. They will never put up a new house on the property of my parents' home that will be as well built or have half the charm. It's just be another cookie cutter job on steroids. But anyway, this video is making me very glad that I am a homeowner.
These new McMansions are poorly constructed money pits. I would *never* buy a new build. They age terribly and instead of eventually looking quaint, charming, or classic, look dated and ugly and things will usually start going wrong fast. The house I grew up in was built in 1926. My mom has been there 50 years. My house was built in 1930 and all original. Mine is only the second family to live here. It didn’t have up-to-code heaters when I moved in (they’re unusable but some are ornate brass and others glazed in porcelain so of course I left them) and no one had ever installed modern phone jacks. It still had a bell 🔔 in a box on the wall dated 1928 from the days when the ringer was in the box, not the telephone ☎️ and the phones had cloth-covered cords and could not be unplugged. No one had painted over the inlaid doors, woodwork, and built-ins, and the pegged oak floors were still in excellent condition. The kitchen has floor-to-ceiling tile. I couldn’t pass it up! I love how builders back then incorporated quality materials, beautiful craftsmanship, and well-thought-out floor plans and design in even the most modest homes, like mine.
@@hereforit2347 I can’t stand the practice of gutting the interiors of period houses. Things like antique furniture and solid doors and walls make house fires safer. Antique furniture was built to last as is furniture made traditionally.
This is a thing I have been wondering about a lot. Watching wood-frame buildings built in the USA one has to worry about the wind, and mostly about water rot and mould. Recently I had seen a home repair show where a house had to be completely torn down the cause of single open window and rot spread trough walls and a frame after the abandonment of just one and a half year.
I saw this a lot when I worked in real estate. There were a lot of crappy people trying to hide the fact the house had mold because there's always more & it's terrible for your health. US homes need temperature regulation & ventilation to maintain usability.
I had to have the front of my new house replaced after 4 or 5 years because the stone veneer was put on wrong & resulted in rain getting into the wall & rotting it.
Yup mold is terrible and almost impossible not to avoid unless you keep air circulation everywhere ... but if you open your window for air circulation, well, that just leads to mold ... so ...
Not all wood frame buildings, just poorly built balloon, and really all platform framing, timber frame is great and lasts centuries, post and beam is also good but not as good. Balloon framing can be done well but really it all depends on the materials, for it to last it needs to be real solid wood, not junk plywood and particleboard.
Wind isn't really a problem until you're getting into like tornado or hurricane wind speeds. That speed can occasionally show up in normal (non-vortex) wind on occasion but generally if that happens more often than "rarely", they probably reinforce the roofs. Water rot and mold are definitely both huge problems, as are insects like termites. There are treatments that can be used to protect against all of that, but they usually have to be installed as part of the construction and not really something you can retrofit onto a poorly-built house (things like plastic linings within the walls, building with wood that's been treated with insect repellant, etc). None of that lasts forever either of course so its only going to extend the duration of your house for a decade or two, certainly not forever. And obviously doing all that extra work is more expensive so there's an economic incentive to avoid it whenever local regulations don't require it - especially for developers that build an entire subdivision at once and nobody's really going to ever see the inside of the walls by the time you go to sell it. As long as the house you build holds up long enough to escape warranty claims, its far more beneficial to put the money towards fancy flooring and bathrooms and other surface level visible stuff. As I'm sure you can guess, that leads to a lot of "brand new" homes that are giant piles of crap with a pretty paint job. The only real solution is to implement building codes, but Americans are always loathe to implement new laws that interfere with the "free market" (notably something that doesn't exist in this case since true free market capitalism relies on all parties having perfect knowledge of the transaction they're making, the exact thing we don't have in this case). But even when you do have decent building codes in place, getting them enforced is a whole other can of worms. Inspection offices tend to be just as underfunded and understaffed as everything else in government in our eternal drive for lower and lower taxes. So inspections are often half-assed and easy to get around by clever-yet-slimy builders. But hey I guess 2008 half solved our problem and 2020/2021 is looking to be on the road to solving a lot of the other half: when everybody's house has been foreclosed and bought up by massive national rental organizations, nobody has to worry about them getting run down! The new army of renters aren't going to pay for repairs, and the new army of corporate land lords are going to avoid them as well until everything's condemned and nobody can afford to build new houses! Capitalism!
I grew up in West Yorkshire in an area where the great majority of older buildings are made of stone. The house we lived in was part of a terrace of weavers' cottages, with huge upstairs windows to let light in and reinforced upstairs floors to take the weight of a big loom. The houses were over 100 years old then and are still occupied. Stone buildings are common in many areas of the UK where suitable rock is found, in this case a good hard sandstone.
The USA also has a huge commercial forestry industry. In the South there are literally acres of cultivated pine tree forests, grown in neat rows and heavily fertilized and harvested for lumber in 10 to 15 years.
That sounds unpleasant, but I'd much rather have that then what they're doing here in BC - destroying what remains of forests that are thousands of years old.
@@finnk1289 Here in the USA, old barns built more than one hundred years ago are salvaged for their valuable wood, cut from ancient trees that grew slowly.
@@finnk1289 Also in the US for every Tree cut down for industry it is Law to plant one in its place, it has been that way since the 40's. Some businesses have taken the practice a step farther by planting 2 trees for each tree they cut.
Remote working and outrageous energy costs are forcing a huge shift in the housing market, so people will be more inclined to stay in one place longer and improve what they have.
I think it's the opposite. With jobs less tied to a specific location, people are free to move elsewhere without also having to change jobs. Also, there are fewer in-person events and activities, so there is less of a reason to stay in a location for social purposes. Witness how many people are moving from California and New York to Texas and Florida.
@@haxney Facts state otherwise, as the real estate markets in those areas you cite are skyrocketing and often reaching record levels, something that would not be true if your theory were correct. The majority of people want the stability and potential financial gains of owning property. And a lot of people have kids, and endlessly moving around is not good for children as psychological studies of military families proves.
Well thingäk about how much money gets spent in commercial real estate and when it's getting used your are freeing a huge amount of money that's going to be spent at hole in stead
Texas is the fastest growing state because so many Californians and Californian businesses are moving there, they already were because of taxes and laws before the pandemic and now 36 percent increase. In Manhattan, vacant apartments tripled and office buildings are empty, that would not make their value go up. Housing in those areas is so expensive and is where the wealthiest people and companies are, people are there for work. Now that they could work from anywhere, or have lost their jobs, why or even how would they stay. When this is over maybe people will settle but there is much less reason for people to live in urban areas like that and many are moving.
Then proceeds to say shit like "if Americans decide to move houses less often, things might change" and "This would be a problem if Americans didn't move that much"... Never acknowledging that Americans move houses BECAUSE of their absolute dogshit cheap houses.
She literally stated that America has far more forest to use than Europe, which led to wooden structures becoming prominent. Balloon framing was capitalism yes, but it stuck around because of the housing boom, and the surplus of trees.
@@ChrisSalgado_ Yes, all of those are economical, therefore capitalistic factors. Which I'm not making a comment on capitalism, just how they said it wasn't;t just capitalism, and then listed all capitalistic reasons as to why.
My American home was built in 1926. Local hand made brick, field stone foundation, with lime mortar. Very hard to find brick masons in America who understand how to use the proper mortars. And when you do it’s insanely expensive. That and my cracking plaster are my biggest complaints but I’d prefer this over a post war ramshackle with asbestos and rotting young timber.
How comes it is insanely expensive in the US but apparantly just expensive in Europe ? In Belgium, there are almost no wooden houses, unless maybe in the open air museum in Bokrijk. Still, houses are far less expensive here than in many places in the US. But more expensive of course than in Detroit.
I am originally from Zurich I agree 110% with you. Living in California I realized that the buildings are very poor made no interior walls isolation poor pluming etc... fast build and fast breaking down.
They're not really, people just don't bother to fix roofs and plumbing until it's too late so the water ruins the wood. My house is 70 years old and I'm in the process of spending tens of thousands of dollars fixing the house including damage from carpenter ants because the last owner rented it out and didn't bother to fix anything
Disposable houses are one thing. How about the disposable family? When we devalue the reason to even own a house, what's the point? It's no wonder things seem to be crumbling all around us. This ideal of bigger is better isn't always the case. If society could only grasp the notion that a strong foundation built with strong family values would have better outcome, than we'd see a change in how we value life.
My house was built in the 1940's...back when almost every man had tools and a little built of construction knowledge. That means anytime someone does some kind of renovations they usually find some nightmare wiring/plumbing from the first owner. My house is solid, but was a nightmare to remodel and i wish i would have just demo'd it and started from scratch
There are so many homes I have been in, in America that if you close the front door with any amount of force, it'll shake the entire home. You'll feel the shaking on the other side of the home...
LOL. It's like when entering an american house anymore can become Superman by punching holes in the walls or tearing down the entire place by slamming the door.
I'm from Switzerland and live in our family home built in 1810 ! With each generation we improved/expanded/modernised it, but its core structure has been there for 211 years now.
@Nolan Is Innocent many cracks, not just one. The ceiling in a part of our house actually fell down, because some of the 2x6 support beams split in half!
Worked for a builder, reasons this happens . A) the once fresh and not totally dry wood used to build the house has dried and slightly shrank. Causing trusses to heave (if there's no floor above the cracked ceiling you speak of). B) do live where winter sees below freezing? Humidity or dry air can cause wood to swell and shrink without humidity control of some sort. C) where the walls meet the foundation they make not have been packed with non shrink grout causing settlement but that would normally show on an exterior crack.
With Japan: it’s also the constantly updating earthquake safety regulations. Older houses tend to be cheaper in Japan because their more dangerous because they’re not up to modern code.
I’d say that up here in Northern Europe wooden houses are really common, at least in Sweden. Probably due to large part of our land being forests. My own house is over 100 years old and the framing is wood. Depending on your source, construction and maintenance wood is actually a really great material. Remember that our temperatures drop significantly and back in the day most people lived in small wooden houses in the country side with only the stove to heat the family.
There would be more American houses over 100 years old, if there were Americans around 100 years ago. One can find American houses over 100 year old in the downtown areas of the city but as the populations were much smaller this percentage of the housing stock is much smaller. Why did the percentage of Americans grow? It was Europeans moving to America 100 years ago that grew the size of American cities because housing (and other material goods) were less expensive more affordable.
This video is pretty full of shit. Lots of 100+ year old houses in the US. Wooden buildings can be well built or poorly built just like any other material.
@@awsomevideoperson yes but it's about balloon framing, not wood in particular. wood (when used correctly) is a really good building material and the video also states that. the video ltrly acknowledged older buildings made of wood.
Thank god im from europe. In my life i have never moved and my house is over 100, like most houses on my street. Within the next few years we're renovating the attic!
This is a sorta silly video. Mainly comparing cities and old homes to modern US construction. My house is wood, it's over 100 years old. Same with my brothers, his whole neighborhood is from the late 1800's and there are a lot of places like that. in the northeast US. The US has a lot of sh(tty homes, but it depends upon the region and when it was built. Basically any home here is of the disposable type if it's not taken care of. I've toured some foreclosed homes that are ready to be torn down after 30 years, but that's becasue someone let the roof leak and mice completely infest the place till the ceilings collapsed. The homes being torn down that are still liveable and good are being torn down because the property is worth more with a "new" house on it... this disgusts me most of the time, pricing out new home buyers and destroying old property that actually had a "soul" and unique charm, unlike new boxy plastic sided homes.
lol im in america, my house was built in the 1960s and its literally falling apart. mold everywhere, the vents are bad, the sealing on the doors/windows is broken, the floorboards creak and are rotting, its awful. these houses are made like toothpicks.
@@volvo09 To be fair the more i learn about the US the more convinced i become that the northeast of the US is the most European part of the US and implicitly the most sane part of the US.
@@RoScFan It was built when the Europeans still ruled the colonies and the early settlers were European. Even the early years after the revolution and European migrations, the States still retained European qualities since those aren't gonna disappear overnight and the whole "American" culture hasn't set in completely yet.
The southwest uses brick, concrete and hollow blocks. The northeast and parts of the midwest that experiences brutal winters uses brick. PNW and other areas in the south where trees are plentiful use wood. Dry wall isn't structural.
It's not directly capitalism because of the attitude many people have of houses, that they see them as disposable. Because they see them as disposable they feel free to just move and leave. Symptom is capitalism, but causation isn't. Causation is attitude of US homeowners.
No it isn't. The job market is a reflection of the people's preferences. Americans are all about their careers. If they wanted to settle, the job market would allow for it. But, as it is, only weirdos don't want to move every six years for the pay increase.
@@venomtailOG If America was socialist, the bureau of housing maintenance would automatically schedule every new home for demolition in 30 years, since it is clearly what the majority of Americans want. The few of us Americans that actually care about our houses and maintain them properly would be wasting our time.
@@lonesnark But the American people already by choice choose to tear down houses after 30 years. What's the difference if this choice was done by some bereau? It's entirely a cultural thing and not an economical. Nothing to do with capitalism or socialism
bro visited a small neighborhood people have big yards to but not in the neighborhood that are made for space and to fit as many noobs in a living space
I grew up in a house from 1730 in Sweden. When I studied on thw West coast of the US I stayed in some houses built within the last 20 years thst had more leaks and gaps than my old barn. And then I saw new houses beung built out of wood frames. My friend thought I was joking when I asked "you still build with wood here?"
Nah, most one family houses in Sweden are built out of of wood, and it has always been like that. Older buildings out of timber, newer ones out of wood frames and panels, like in the US. The main difference to US is that we have much stricter building regulations. Actually new buildings are almost all prefabricated indoors in factories, and assembled outdoors. The wall segments are complete with wiring, insulation and paint.
Watching this from my family’s 300 year old home in Germany 🧐 (it’s built out of wood and straw btw) My family has lived on the same plot of land for about 800 years 😅
Not to forget that there are buildings in Europe that are around 1500 years old (Saint-Germain d'Auxerre / France, the oldest part of the building before 448-> The original burial chapel of Germanus von Auxerre was expanded into an abbey in Carolingian times. ) As a privately used living space, the "Korbisch-Haus" from the 13th century is considered to be the oldest constantly inhabited building in Germany. And of course you can also maintain wooden houses: "In the small open-air museum of Eidsborg in western Telemark there is a real gem with the Vindlausloftet. The inconspicuous building is in all probability the oldest wooden house in Europe. According to the latest dendrochronological dating, it was built around the year 1170. For comparison, House Nideröst comes from Switzerland Canton Schwyz, which was previously considered the oldest, from 1176. The oldest wooden house in Sweden was built in 1229. " [www.norwegenservice.net/europas-aeltestes-holzhaus]
@@nicholasfu5937 we have a separate smaller apartment in the house that my grandparents moved into once my parents took over the farm and moved into the main house. So we have two separate households and I guess once one of my siblings takes over my parents will either move there or somewhere else. So we do move out and get our own houses, the farm and the house on it has just been passed down to one child every generation and that’s how the same plot of land has been in the family for that long 😅
I'm french and I live in a house whose oldest archive is from 1712, it is made of stone with walls 1 meter wide in some places, my parents renovated it and of course does not let the sound pass through the wall. The old house where I lived was a house built by my father, in brick, of the same style with large wall. In 300 years it will still be there, that's for sure.
Exactly. People need to stop conflating Capitalism with profit. Profit has been a concept since the dawn of man. Without the promise of profit, there is no incentive for someone to provide a service or a good for someone else.
@@screenshotted Oh for fuck's sake. Family is different. I'm talking about providing services and goods for free for strangers. But thank you for your worthless opinion anyways.
@@tinytownsoftware3837 So here is the thing. You say family is different because it's "family". In reality though, every person has their own group they belong to. At it's most basic level, it's family. going to the outer levels you see things like the larger family, the local community (village, neighborhood, etc.), the society, the country, and even at its most exterior level, the human race. There are other groups or 'tribes' an individual can belong to such as the sports club, political party, religion, and so on. People do stuff for free for their family, their religion, their political party or their local community because of this sense of belonging and not necessarily for profit as you mention. On the other hand, some people expect to make profit from their family, these people exist. In conclusion, people can have other incentives to provide services or goods to anyone aside from profits based on their personality. Stating that you have to make profits to do that, with the exception of family, is just false.
I live in a brick house in the US from 1901 and its still perfect!! Its just stunning- its a v average house from those times but the workmanship on the moldings, medallions the 1.5 ft skirtings/ baseboards the staircase (still original) - solid internal doors, the front doors so so solid and beautifully carved. Americans also made beautiful houses in the old days
I doubt your historic home has had zero renovations though. I mean this video is talking about how much wood degrades but that’s a majority of what you mention that’s still holding up
It’s hilarious hearing someone call “1901” the “old days” as a European. That’s barely 1 century old! Go to any European town and you’ll see houses built in 1500 and earlier.
@@lenn939 We recently bought a home built in 1882. My good friend from Poland told me " that's barely broken in". can't beat old growth wood either. way better than this crap they have nowadays.
My house was built in the 1950's and I've been having to get it weatherized slowly. I've actually had to re-frame some exterior walls because of dry rot.
I have worked in construction building wood frame houses. I care about quality and was disgusted by the work we were doing. I’m going to build my own house from concrete and use an insulating method that I am developing. My house will be durable, low maintenance, fireproof, waterproof, and extremely energy efficient.
You should see how Scandinavians or Swiss build timber houses and you'd realise that the problem is that American houses (broad generalisation, I know) are just built cheap and shoddy. Fire resistant? It's generally not the house that burns but what's in it - furniture, curtains etc. If a concrete house burns it'll be standing after a fire but the concrete is damaged as well and good luck getting rid of toxic fumes that will be off gassing for time to come if you rebuild and live in it. Highly energy efficient? You'll have to have good ventilation which requires maintenance.
@@chris-2496... No. The problem is with the consumer. Their desire to have a home that shows status. Most people can’t afford a house worthy of Instagram, that’s not made of wood.
My god!!!. Finally someone that understands what I’ve been trying to say. I’ve been to Asia in Cambodia and you could build a home with concrete walls 3000 square foot, for under 80k.
@@dickriggles942 Except if you ever actually owned a house instead of just parroting what you saw people say you'd understand that the house is insanely cheap. The HOUSE itself, alone, no other factors, is probably like 10 grand for a two story 4 bedroom house. You're not paying for the house, you're paying for the property it's built on and the labor to build it.
@@War450 A 2000 square foot house will need about 16,000 board feet of lumber at a current market cost of $600 per 1000 board feet, so you're looking at $9,600 in just lumber. That same house also needs 6,000 square feet of plywood at about $1.38 per square foot, so another $8,280 in plywood. You're at nearly $18,000 before you factor in any other materials.
@@War450 My only intent with my statement was to counter the statement that a house was only $10k of materials. I know that masonry is more expensive, regardless of how much more hardwearing it is.
My house was built in 1918. All masonry. We are the second owner. My grandfather bought it in early '70s, the only intervention he did was to build some concrete columns to reinforce the structure. The walls are made of mudbrick and "glued" together with mud, plastered with cement and spackling (the spackling layer was done something like 15 years ago). A novelty about it is that grandfather used to say that the bricks were made with the earth of the terrain, and I think it's true because it's slightly lower than the road. I think this house will last for another 100 years.
Repairing an old wood frame house and bringing all hvac, plumbing, electrical and insulation to modern code costs far more than building an all new home of equivalent square footage.
@@marthamryglod291 So, you have never done so. I just did a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom DUPLEX... that is 2 ENTIRE HOUSES, for less than $60,000. Includes new sheetrock/paint over old lathe and plaster. ALL new plumbing, electrical, insulation, solid wood doors, new carpet, new paint, new blinds. Windows had already been done. Wood siding below 5 ft replaced with brick/stone mix. Will eventually get rid of the wood siding next time it needs painting and replace with concrete siding. Foundation was stone/concrete. Still to go: Basement needs some waterproofing, HVAC added for dehumidifying, and roof will eventually need replacing but it has a 50 year thick shingle currently, so just about when I am about to die, it will need to be replaced with something more permanent. So, another $40k and it is a a DUPLEX that will be good for 100+ years. A duplex I bought for $120,000, and am currently renting(1 side) for $1600/month or $3200/month both sides. And taxes? ~ $2500/year. The entire duplex has already paid for itself and whoever buys it after I die, will also be making big time bucks.
@@marthamryglod291 Yes, except you'll never be required to bring an existing home completely up to new standards. For example, remodeling a kitchen can reuse pretty much everything as is. But, if adding in a new sink or moving the location then the new work would need to meet new code. If you add on an addition then only the new additional area needs to meet new code and the rest can remain as it is. This is what's call 'grandfathered in'.
It's funny, because in the UK, we complain how poorly built new builds are, but what we're really referring to is the internal walls not being brick, like they are with older houses. Then you look at American houses and the whole thing is made of wood! We really have nothing to complain about.
@@LuxRoyale yep, that can get destroyed by some tornado 😅 you'd think you'd want brick houses to withstand your crazy weather. I've got a 4 bed detached and it cost 415k 🤮
My wood frame house has withstood the last four hurricanes here in south Louisiana . The worst that happened was a few shingles blew off the roof, not even enough to turn in to the insurance . It is surrounded in brick though, like most modern homes. @@Mattnozz
It always blew my mind as a child when people punched through walls in americam movies
Same, i thought i could do the same but i faced the true reality
Lmao. Then I found out their walls aren’t made of bricks
And that's the key part. "In movies". 1/2" of gypsum is a tougher material than your knuckles.
When I lived in America as a young boy I would slam my head into the wall whenever I got mad. Then I visited India and I stopped immediately
The house I live in is about 110 years old and starting to fall apart lol. The walls are mainly old planks filled with horsehair and covered in plaster and I’m pretty sure the electrical and plumbing that was added later was diy😅 I have no idea how it’s still standing
The better question is, why do these flimsy houses cost so much?
You should see the price of property in Europe!
This economic works only for profit in every life aspect and nothing else. You better ask yourself why we tolerate this for years while we have alternative way of economic almost 100 years.
@@СкворцыПрилетели If you're referring to socialism there's a damn good reason why not.
Because they don’t use the metric system %30 of the cost is just off cuts and waste. Fact.
Land, and a horrifically unproductive residential construction industry.
I recall a quote something like "A German builds a home and thinks about how his grandchildren are going to live in it some day. An American builds a home and thinks about when he is going to sell it and move on to a bigger one."
Better or just bigger?
true. we have these people called "house flippers," essentially they buy a crappy home and then do some remodeling, then sell the house in a couple of years. my neighbors are flippers, they did a bunch of remodeling and construction on their house, and plan to sell it soon. its literally a business.
Yes, the "property ladder " is also a UK concept. That is less of a thing in Germany but not unheard of.
@@canavero4288 which is because most people think they are above living in these affordable homes. So someone comes around, buys it and does the legwork because most people want instant gratification. They want all the nice things right now without any of the responsibility or hassle then complain about a lack of affordable houses.
Its the deeply rooted mass consumerism that is the problem.
@Bob Watters Oh honey. In USA you find ways to get in more debt and to make the already rich even richer while everybody else gets more and more screwed. You are an oligarchy that's turning into a full on feudal society and patting yourself on the back for it. Meanwhile European are concentrated on making sure they have a comfortable and fair life full of opportunities- Sincerely an European who has their own home, zero debt, free healthcare and education, great public transit , 4 weeks paid vacation and parental leave . But hey don't me distract you from your flag waving my dear serf ;)
I’m in Kentucky and the housing market here over the last 7-8 years is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Homes that were bought for $130K in 2015 are now being sold for $590k. I’m talking about tiny, disgusting, poorly built 950 square foot shit boxes in quite mediocre neighborhoods. Then you’ve got Better, average sized homes in nicer neighborhoods that were $300K+ 10 years ago selling for $750k+ now. Wild times.
Home prices will come down eventually, but for now; get your money (as much as you can) out of the housing market and get into the financial markets or gold. The new mortgage rates are crazy, add to that the recession and the fact that mortgage guidelines are getting more difficult. Home prices will need to fall by a minimum of 40% (more like 50%) before the market normalizes.If you are in cross roads or need sincere advise on the best moves to take now its best you seek an independent advisor who knows about the financial markets.
The housing market has always had its ups and downs, but it's true that this time feels different. Having a portfolio manager will save you a lot in the market. My coach has helped me expand my portfolio by 200% over the past few months.
I will be happy getting assistance and glad to get the help of one, but just how can one spot a reputable one?
Rebecca Noblett Roberts, is respected in her field. I suggest delving deeper into her credentials, as she possesses experience and serves as a valuable resource.
She appears to be well-educated and well-read. I ran an online search on her name and came across her website; thank you for sharing.
as someone who has worked in the British building industry, the idea that a home would just be torn down after 30 years is horrifying to me.
It's not like the separate hot and cold taps, the always creaking floors and stairs, the paper-thin walls, the outward opening windows or that grim brick cladding on every house are so amazing.
@@sleptiq UK resident my taps are mixers and my home is 200 years old
The United States has allowed Rampant corruption to permeate through out the Entire Country! Rogue capitalism
has been eroding American culture since WW2! Example: Our Former disgraced Orange President!
@@kellibarnhouse6591 What the hell are you talking about. Trump has nothing to do with building codes. Sorry. Shitty houses are still going up. Can we now blame that your your senile, plaguring, socialist Biden? PS If you don't like our system feel free to move. Who needs you!
@@kellibarnhouse6591 Look into Biiden's family's wealth and how they got it and then get back to me.
I live in Scandinavia, where we also have wooden homes... and guess what? They are sturdy, reliable, and last for generations. It's not the building material as such, is the cheap solutions and the cost-cutting exercises they do in putting everything in place.
Its that whole thing about out of fast cheap and good quality you can only pick two, American houses are built fast and cheap.
Yeah I live in Massachusetts and my neighbors house was built in 1679 out of wood. Still there.
Yupp gotta build it good once and it’ll last. Make sure the plumbing doesn’t leak at all so the wood won’t rot. The roof and gutters throw water away from the foundation . Concrete well installed so water does not pool in the water too
Yes alot of houses aren’t made of good wood but instead of cardboard like frames
Same here in northern Germany. Many old barns were built from wood and are centuries old.
American houses are just movie sets!
no
Lmao
lol
One-time use
Figures as all the world is just a stage.
I am 63 years old and have moved once. I live in upstate NY and when I built my new home in 1984 which I designed myself, I built brick on a high tensile strength concrete foundation. This thing is a tank.
My dad did the same.
How did you designed it yourself?
@@h.h8766I can help you design one im an engineer in UK based in building of concrete houses and buildings
I'm building a 1 story with adobe brck on slab foundation. My walls will be 1 foot thick :)
@h.h8766 probably an architect, engineer or a contractor 🤷🏽♂️
We like to decorate things with wood here in Austria. We just don't usually build our houses out of it.
Me as a fellow Austrian, can only approve on what you just said. Aus welchem Bundesland kommst du, wenn ich fragen darf?
@@Kameliius Aus Wien. Und du?
@@CB0408 Schön, ich war am Montag und gestern erst in Wien. Meine Tante ist gerade von dort auf den Besuch zu uns gekommen. Ich lebe im nördlichsten Teil der Steiermark (Bruck-Mürzzuschlag), weniger wie 15km zur Grenze zu Niederösterreich weg
Same in India
@@thefancysquid671 All homes were built out of cinderblocks, concrete, and rebar where I grew up. Basically indestructible.
"its not just capitalism so dont click off yet!"
minutes later, "contractors knew they could make a killing to if they could build houses fast enough to keep up with demand" 🙄
and then competitive job markets that pretty much force people to move or else never advance in their field lmao. At every point I was like... so.... capitalism
Funniest thing is that we have capitalism outside of the US too, but we also have building codes and quality standards. Cardboard houses would simply never gain permission to be built in modern European countries.
@@johnlohier1008 well first of all ppl ARE homeless n unable to get into homes of any kind, not just the "ones they want" so idk what ur even tryna say. both low quality homes and homelessness exist already so how is it a pick one scenario?
n second ur sayin this like these codes n societal phenomena are natural n the only two choices possible. these are all man-made things... they can be unmade. theres no reason that ppl being housed in buildings that are sturdy is impossible or out of the question or not an option lmfao u've been trained to believe choices presented by ppl who hold power n capital are the only ones even materially possible but thats not the case.
@@Thomas-lk5cu how is that funny? i know that u dont mean humorous funny, but how exactly is that funny (in the way that u mean)? what makes it funny?
@@Thomas-lk5cu Also unions, which is probably the cause of lower turnover
"A building made of bricks has a higher probability of withstanding natural disasters."
One Little Pig has entered the chat.
Lol
I made the mistake of reading that to my kids without realizing my parents read me the PG version. It was super dark.
I wouldn't want to be in a brick house during an earthquake.
@@jamestucker8088 I wouldn't want to be anywhere near an earthquake...
@@jamestucker8088 I am pretty sure the builders will put effort to cement those brinks together instead of just dumping them together in a shape of a house.
Or perhaps we just have a different mental picture of how a brick house is constructed. There are some brick houses with metal reinforcements.
My parent bought the brick house I grew up in in 1957. It's undergone major renovation with a second floor being added on one wing, but it's still standing today.
most houses in my neighbourhood are brick houses from 1920/1930 and still standing. holland.
Houses from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were way bad just like todays houses American homes have been terrible for a 100 years nothing has changed
it wasnt made of brick... it was encased with brick...big difference... it was made with wood...brick is just the veneer... you must not be a man to not know this
We also don’t think of houses as inheritance. Children typically move out and own their own homes. So a home that is inherited will usually be sold.
But thats still better than building a shitty one which doesnt last for your life alone
Some places also don't have enough people for new development. My house is from 1953, and I don't think there's been a new housing project since the 70's. The population is staying the same, so the amount of people isn't going up.
@@Willybean08 Depends on the area, in my area there’s been a population boom lately.
If you have more than one child, that is true everywhere. If one of the siblings stays in the house, they have to purchase the share of the house inherited by the sibling(s) that does not.
tangogamma That's exactly what happens in most places though. The children inherit the family home, sell up and buy their own or move further up the property ladder. It seems insane to a European that a person would take out a mortgage and pay, potentially for decades, for an asset that depreciates and will need replacement by the time it's paid off. In Europe, we seen houses as a safe place to put our money, one that ultimately will return to us or our descendants more than we put in. The age of a property here is often immaterial, in fact older homes often do and a significant premium over a similarly sized brand new one.
Im from sweden and live in a pretty classic swedish house its made from wood and it is over 150 years and is still sturdy. Its not about being made out of wood its about being made out of thin walls with weak wood. Sweden is also one of the biggest exporters of wood so wood is very cheap in pretty much all the nordic countries.
true even here in the united states old houses are still standing i think those built before 1920s or 30 after that the wood treatment changed now is not good
@@jjuanmarin absolutely true. Many houses built during the 60s in particular went back to the old building formats, with better materials. My home is from that boom and is substantially better built than the ticky tacky subdivision houses around
Yeah when they made blanket statements about Europe in the video, I was wondering about Scandinavia. They should've used that as an example of good wood construction.
Note the difference ? Sweden is temperate-coastal to arctic-coastal. Here woodhouses is natural. USA ? subtropic-coastal to subtropic-continental. There loam bricks are natural. If you use wood in subtropical climate, you get firestorms or thermites, depending in the humidity. Other subtropical countries use loam. Also Mirror facades may be practical in London, but are a nightmare in Dubai. Americans and Arabs don't get architecture right.
70% of Finland's land mass is covered in wood. not having wood is a south European thing, maybe. Spain, Italy. though i think it's more because they have a hot climate, and stone that cools you is important there. not so in winter Scandinavia.
I think it is the profit incentive to just very quickly and cheaply build a big flashy house with 14 bedrooms and the climate does not need to be winterproof, you don't need a house that conserves energy, heating a house is cheap, oil is in abundance. it is the American philosophy of being big and quick, things changing fast. modern Chinese people would have the same thinking.
though I was surprised and puzzled about the Japanese houses being flimsy, too. I would've thought the opposite. 6:23 but the earth shakes is the main culprit.
if they never had earthquakes like Finland, then they would invest in comfort and longevity, I think.
-
though i must add that lately finnish construction crews have started to cut corners in the name of profits and on-site construction materials get water inside them, because they don't properly protect all the building materials 24/7 from water, snow, like they used to back in the old days, ruining it. it's a modern problem in both private and public sector building. modular houses that are built in dry condition inside factories are seen as more premium now, than on-site house construction in here, because the elements of nature don't have the chance to ruin the construction blocks.
who knows, maybe underground building becomes in vogue, because of climate change as in fires, hurricanes, extreme weather.
I never understood how they decided flimsy houses are the way to go in a place where tornadoes are so frequent
Tornadoes will destroy just about everything in their path, regardless of what it's made of. At that point, you want cheap rather than expensive
@@haroldsandahl6408 the walls should withstand this. The roof depends more on the construction, but the tornado alleys would we far slimmer
Easy to rip up, quicker to rebuild.
Also easier to dig someone out of a pile of wood than a pile of brick.
@@louiseogden1296 and burn faster to save on cremation costs after death due to a house fire...
Tornado alley is where we Americans put the mobile homes trailer parks. Honey, the house fell Off the blocks again.
My family recently relocated to a new state, and had a house built from scratch that we moved into early last year. Literally, we've been having issues since we moved in. The floors started peeling up, the tile grout started chipping, the walls are crooked, there are electrical issues, two of the fans have been broken since being installed, doorknobs are beginning to fall apart... the house was not cheap, so it's truly angering. My parents wanted this to be their retirement home, but they are so angry that they wish to move again.
I've noticed that besides the poor quality materials, builders just don't care. They want to build fast, and move on! :(
Moving won't help. I've lived in 4 different houses in 35 years in the USA. All of them were shoddily built.
The houses I lived in were always older, but well built. But when a whole lot of homes are done in a short time by one company, it is simply the company building with cheap materials and lousy construction so they can make a large quick profit.
@Sylphienne It should, but they took as long as they wanted to
@@lizh1988 ruclips.net/video/8xIwmHZLQT0/видео.html How Homes in Iceland are Different than the USA. Can an American build homes according to Icelandic Homes specifications?
It's shocking how the US seems to have completely ignored the three little pigs tale
Every kid knows that the brick house is literally the only one that survives
this comment deserves at least a thousand likes !
yet they decide to pay a life time morgadges for a piece of paper house.
and yet we've many houses over 100 years old made of wood still standing.
@@TedSchoenling tell that to any hurricane/storm/natural disaster
@@TedSchoenling Yes because then they know how to build with real wood and not with 'modern' cheap materials.. Other thing is will they stand next 200years?😂
Imagine living in cardboard houses
This post was made by cement and mortar house gang
Oh they are starting to do that now. The frame is wood, the siding is polyvinyl (aka plastic) the trim is not wood it’s cardboard now, the shutters on the exterior are plastic and glued onto the homes (this is why when you drive through 10 year old neighborhoods shutters are randomly missing), the floors are LVP or plastic planks, the tubs and sinks are plastic moulds they plop in etc.
Don’t forget timber frame.
Oh yeah! Concrete gang ftw!
I'm in 😉👌
I live in Florida and will never live in a plywood house. They build those things so cheaply it’s laughable,
My family's house in Spain has been around for 100 years and it looks brand new.
The construction is made of granite blocks and steel.
Good for you, rich jerk
Arlen Burgin Yes, us foreigners and minorities who do not live in shanty towns and refuse to turn our countries into Haiti, Afghanistan and Soweto look-alikes, like you want us all to live perpetually so, are rich jerks, nothing bigoted, hateful, intolerant, supremacist, imperialist, racist and xenophobic. NAILED IT! 👌🏻
Tras de ladrón, bufón.
@@arlenburgin2392 whats rich about a house? wood is only used in europe for caravans or trailer homes
@@ballisticmissl7919 look how many people actually own their homes outright instead of being slaves to rent and mortgages. They're not rich
@@arlenburgin2392 look at the fact that there are still plenty of people who do in fact own a house and that people can establish themselves once they are old enough. they may have bought it before the crisis or could have had it passed down. also, in spain the housing crisis isnt as big an issue as the uk. no need to be so rude when you dont know half the story
My home was build 1564. It has a 80-90cm thick outer wall made from stone and dirt, its like a vertical bunker, in summer when its outside like 32-35C it holds the temperature of like 20-25C over the hole day like in a basement of a normal home. My family lives here since
the end of the 1800s.
😮
what country do you live in
@@henna.soleil His about page says Switzerland
My childhood home was a converted stone barn built around 1720 and it's walls are over 2 foot thick with no cavity, 2 foot for a barn that stored hay. Although unfortunately it's not great with regulating temperature, however that is probably as much to do with the fact that the conversion happened in the 1980s as it does to do with it being a barn.
Meanwhile in Germany I can't even drill a hole in the ceiling with a freaking hammer drill.
Local laws stop you from that?
@@bl00dkillz no it's that our house aren't made out of wood, we actually "build" them, we don't just assemble
@@bl00dkillz No the reinforced concrete ceiling stopped me. Building a house like a bunker has some downsides. Don't get me wrong, I like the way our houses are build, its just a bit annoying at times.
@@xxthemasterx3407 Meanwhile houses in Switzerland also have bunkers* (not all,, they are only mandated in Zurich as I recall, and not in every house)
@@xxthemasterx3407 Get a better drill lol. Or see if there's a local(ish) shop that'll let you rent something like a Hilti TE 30 for a day.
"homes built from bricks are less likely to be destroyed due to natural disasters"... Who'd have thought?!
They learn nothing from The Three Little Pigs story.
@@baikia777 Unless one pig uses double brick, it will blow down. Moral of the story, it's a nursery rhyme, not an engineers report.
Not me. A double brick house is a brick house, a brick veneer house looks like a brick house, but has non structural bricks on a wood frame. It blows down, shakes down and burns down just as easily. Most houses have an exterior veneer. Not structural.
Unless the expected natural disaster is an earthquake. It's very expensive to insure brickwork where I live. My wood frame home suffered no damage in a recent 5.7 quake.
@@georgehill5919 The brick home in the video is brick veneer over a wood frame. I've yet to see an actual brick structure home in our region.
It's incredible that in a third world country like mine we have homes made out of cement, bricks and iron, while they have those weak houses. My house is standing for 37 years and it doesn't have a single scratch. It tripled its size over my lifetime.
What country are you in?
@@s.n.9485 in North Korea ))
My house in PA was built in 1945 and its still standing and in perfect condition
Concrete is a lot harder to build with in the United States than you think because of the seasonal climate And geological activity.
Southeast Asian countries are also using concrete for building houses and that results lasting for decades, even to next generation. But well considering the storms, it just make sense to build something stronger. Also it is harder for families to get new home anyways, so houses are pretty much a lifetime investment and can be transferred to their kids or relative, if not sold.
As someone who has spent their entire life in Massachusetts and has carpenters in her immediate family, I can say there are many homes around here that have been standing 100+ years and much more. The home I grew up in was a 1925 build, built by the family who sold it to my parents. They still live in it. What I’m observing is that many of the older homes *can* have problems that need maintenance, but are often reliable. The newer builds are awful and need so much more maintenance. The newer homes fly up in a matter of days, while the houses built “way back then” were constructed with care.
History has a way of filtering the worst of the older buildings. Many older homes that had problems were fixed while others were just torn down. When you see new houses, you see the best and worst of what today's builders can do.
@@pcno2832 While that bias may be true, it's also true that most new homes are built with young trees, soft woods and short shelf life products like caulk to fill the gaps. The old homes had old growth trees, often hard woods, that will take a lot more before they rot and fall down. My house was built in 1928 and you can see cost cutting from the great depression that, while obviously inferior to some houses made during that time period, is still way better than some of the building techniques employed today.
There is no more quality workmanship.
As a professional firefighter/emt-p from the Northeast I can tell you for a fact and you might not like to hear it but carpenters are getting lazy and material costs are going up and the quality is going down. There's a huge difference in the construction quality from a house or building built in 1925 compared to one built post 2000
@@Unknown_Ooh they haven't gotten lazy. They're bosses just want to maximize profit
Being in the building industry for almost 30 years, I've always joked that a cheap track house has the same building methods and materials used as the 2 million dollar mansion on the hill. Only difference is the finish materials like used like sinks, siding, etc. You still get the same framing, insulation, roof, plumbing and electrical job which is cheap and fast!
and thats what sucks
As someone who’s worked on affordable housing & luxury homes - the plumbing, mechanical & electrical change ALOT based on budget. And luxury homes clients can afford to pay the better construction workers & contractors who know what they’re doing
@Yo Boo ~ Soooo you've supposedly been *_"...in the building industry for almost 30 years..."_* but you don't know that those cheap houses you refer to are *tract* houses---not "track".
A track is what you cycle down, or what the train drives on.
@@be5952 might've been an accident lol
I believe you meant a tract house, not one built too close to a railroad track.
Lived in German housing and US housing... Just the quality of the windows in German houses would astound most Americans (if they can appreciate it), not to mention much stricter laws concerning noise made urban living in Germany doable.
Laws never make anything better. in fact the building codes we have in the United States result in worse materials being used to build homes because the government doesn't know a goddamn thing about construction
It still pisses me off that other countries don't get the necessity of "kipp". This is such an awesome yet basic feature of a window. Every window should have it.
geman houses are ugly tho
@@arikalamari19 what? Modern german houses and modern american houses look exactly the same lol
Stanley Trask That’s what you are conditioned to think as an American, with an easily corrupted government and political leadership on all levels. This is not true in most other developed countries, where building code is written to protect home owners, not builders and big landlords.
Here in Sweden for example building code is strictly enforced, and it is a good thing because even though bad contractors still exist of course (but can be held liable for shoddy work), the code sets a high minimum standard and houses need to be built to withstand the most powerful storms and adverse weather, heavy snow cover on roofs, earthquakes (even though they are almost nonexistent), extremes in temperature (both high and very low) and they have to last a century or more with normal maintenance. They are well insulated to keep the heat in in the winters and out in the summers without excessive costs for heating or cooling. Three-pane insulating windows have been standard since the 90s. They keep weather and sound out and help lower the energy consumption of the building. Even inner walls are insulated for sound proofing and to reduce heat transfer. Plumbing, heating and electricity is also built to rigorous standards.
I can guarantee you would be pleasantly surprised with the quality, comfort and low operating costs of our buildings if you visited.
I used to watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition and the houses being built were hilarious. How do you think they built in 3 days? Because its like a childrens playset.
Also extreme makeover home edition used really shoddy workmanship
Like here they use pile drivers and actually, ya know, attached the house to the ground 🤣
😂😂😂🤞🏾
I believe that the head carpenter on this show was trained as a set carpenter in hollywood, most of these TV home improvement shows are similar, they get the job done in time to get the show aired. Real world isn't like that, you need plans, permits, inspection, wait for stuff, changes of all kinds, and all kinds of aholes, especially customers. That why it takes forever.
no, because they plan that show very well and use tons of guys.
Here in Scandinavia the old houses that we have are made out of wood but its really sturdy. Our home is at least 100 years old but because of the thiccc high quality wood its expected to exist for a long time. And because Scandinavia has always been a huge export of wood it results in wood being fairly cheap.
Her in America our home was built in 1882. Friends often want to mock us for buying and old home and living within our budget. I rather have a strong sturdy well built home under our budget than some half ass new home to impress our friends on Facebook
It's because you do not have tornadoes or the wet, humid weather termites love.
@@LuxRoyale norway has a lot of rain bro, even in summer the mirrors on the cars fog up, humidity is really high. Also it has a lot of sea so on the places near the sea the air is salty as well
The weight of wet snow on your roof…. @@LuxRoyale
big difference between old growth wood and new tree farm growth wood.
My Opa is German, so when our house was built in Connecticut in 1949, they used a combination of concrete, brick, and steel for the foundation. It is a little harder to rennovate in terms of tearing down walls for more updated open concepts, but the house still lools glorious to this day. We save so much on a/c, and pest control.
I know this might sound creepy and that's not the intention, i'm just architecture mad, but i'd really love to see what it looks like!
no proof needed that your Opa is German, with that name
@@Thomas-bs4tv
Pfützenreuter could easily be an Austrian.
@@tygattyche2545 or swiss too, but all these countries are germanic
Your last name is goated for real💯
American houses go for quantity (i.e. space) over quality. It's all about "who has the biggest house". As a result, most middle class homes end up being big, but of low quality. Thin walls, cheap carpet floors, squeaky non-sealed windows, plastic bath tub, no tiles in the bathroom, etc.
Houses in Europe and other parts of the world are smaller, but of much better quality.
Well in the house my mum lives in it was shitty made, but the buildings them self and in the area where its builts was built a bit over 20 years ago and the builders cut corners during construction. Since last year she had her home and neighbours had visitors that should not be there (rats).
Live in Denmark btw. Not all European homes are made in better quality. Even my small apartment is not the greatest, but I at least have something of my own.
Far better to have a home custom built, so you can have it made of plywood or something better than drywall
American quality is no different than Chinese quality
mcmansions!
Your "information" is about 70 years out of date, pal.
7:46 “Hi new neighbor. I’m gonna be building a new home next to you.”
“Okay. Just try to keep the construction noise down.”
“Oh don’t worry. It’s a pre built modular home. Just gotta get a crane and dangle it precariously above your house for a bit.”
Why would that have to be the case? My dad moved houses for a living; they never needed to do that.
@@kristavaillancourt6313 just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist .
You're dad strawberries doesn't mean jack in overall market.
Hell, those modulars are sometimes built better than framed on site homes. (Many I've seen have 2x6 or 2x8 exterior walls.)
@@IntelCoreI77700K also the quality is higher since the conditions are always the same for pre built homes. It's a win-win.
If you get a chance always get extra insulation in your homes interior walls not just exterior.
Sound is gone , walls feel solid, temperature stays constant inside no matter what the temp is Outside
Sound is not gone because of the doors. Need to upgrade the doors too
Absolutely but realistically to increase the R value the thickness of the studs needs to be increased. The difference between a 2x4, 2x6, 2x10 studs
Yup, this. I can even attest to using cellulose insulation over fiberglass since it's more dense and does a better job at sound attenuation. A further added measure is dense packing cellulose in the interior walls. I did this as part of my sound attenuation measures for my bedroom in my 2018 built home and it made a great difference.
No. That is a terrible idea. Other than for the sound. HVAC systems are designed to allow air flow in between rooms. What matters is the thermal envelope that separates the interior from the exterior. Properly built homes have transfer grilles that allow air exchange between interior rooms and that pretty well defeats the purpose of insulation in interior walls. If you want sound protection there are better ways to do that than standard insulation.
Cavity wall insulation is the biggest scam of the past 20 years.
Wooden framed houses do not have to be flimsy and can last for centuries. I live in a timber framed cottage in Normandy. The timbers are made of oak. It is at least 400 years old.
Well yeah, Our Merican homes are from wood full of preservatives straight from lowes....Beat that!
Yeah, it's oak, I think the wood we use, is fir, soft wood. The problem, is you can't get the type of wood now. Remember, you can't rebuild the Notre Dame, because the wood is no longer available.
@@slewone4905 Well maybe....but traditional pegged oak-framed buildings are still being built here in the Pays d'Auge in Normandy. The same techniques as when our house was built. In fact just a few years ago a local firm who build such houses did come and replace a couple of major timbers in our home. Using thick oak beams (over a foot square) and using the exact same methods as in the past. Also, in the UK there are firms who will build you a traditional 'half-timbered' house either bespoke or in kit form.
@@lechatel timber frame (post&beam) what you're referring to and stick built (how they're mostly built in USA) are different technologies.
@@chris-2496 Yeah, I know that. I was actually making the same point. It isn't the fact a house is made of 'timber' that is the problem regarding longevity....it is WHAT the timber is, and HOW it is constructed.
lol, houses that last 30 years max? When I grew up, we lived in houses build like in the 18th century... and those weren't even "the old ones" under monument protection. Go for bricks, it's worth it.
It's illegal for me to build a brick house as they don't do well in earthquakes.
@@absentheartandmind i live in indonesia my brick home can withstand earthquake and storm just fine
@@absentheartandmind that isn’t even true😂
Just saying, I like in a 100-year-old wooden house in the US...still in pretty good shape! (Not saying that all houses are like this, just putting it out there...)
@@supersillysilence2349 there are plenty good strong wood houses that are really old,
My dad works in property management and despises the prevalence of wood framing in residential construction. He refers to it as “toothpick construction.” He’s from the West Indies and still prefers the cinder block construction that’s more common there. And I don’t blame him. Those houses are designed to hold up against hurricane force winds. My grandparents’ home was built in 1969-70 and is still in pretty good condition. It may need another roof replacement, but the structure is solid!
I use the term “toothpick construction” constantly, but usually refer to these blocky apartment or mixed use buildings that have been springing up like weeds near me. I’m in the state of New Jersey, and constantly old ex-industrial sites are demolished and replaced with these. Almost all new housing near me is wooden framed apartments. As McMansions aren’t selling, the materials are used for what I sub McMainStreet. (Seems McWallStreet has a heavy hand). There is also a five-floor limit for wooden construction, which makes the developers build extremely “blocky” and rectangular toothpick framed buildings which are angular and usually fill out entire blocks. Max out profits by going as cheap as possible for construction while using the entire land parcels, then rent gouging.
In my opinion almost all of them look chintzy and horrible. I would never live in one of those, let alone the fire risks of displacing 500 people instead of 5 in case of fire. They have been controversial in the way they alter towns to look mass-produced. There have been several fires involving them, but most of those have happened at unoccupied complexes under construction. But sadly with all the corruption where I live I don’t expect things to change until an occupied building is destroyed by fire and people die. For now I will vote with my wallet.
I grew up in south florida and cinderblock is what almost all the houses were made of (30 years ago). Now I see the new construction houses aren't.
One of the problems is shitty wood
@@ecoRfan Here in the UK, especially inner city areas a lot of the old industrial buildings are repurposed as apartments. They tend to consider them as part of the history of the city so they keep as much as they can where they can while still making it a practical, functional structure. I guess it helps that a lot of these older buildings are listed too which makes it harder to just knock them down.
I was born in a stick house in Wisconsin 70 years ago. It is still habitable and standing next to Yerkes Observatory. This nonsense about wooden stick houses being weak is silly.
I think that the main problem is that most new houses are built by developers who are only interested in making these structures as cheaply as possible, because once they have built it and sold it, it is the new owner's problem, not theirs. I also believe that politicians are bribed to weaken standards and go along with this. By the way in Spain the developers do the same thing with ultra-thin and cheap walls with no noise or thermal insulation. It is only in the last few years that they have gotten a bit better about this.
that's why people should not buy homes from "developers" , they can literary build better and cheaper house and be in charge
You don’t know what your talking about, while big developers can make questionable design decisions and install cheaper finishes, they are structurally built the same way as pretty much every new wood framed house in the US. The vast majority of houses follow the local building codes to the T and don’t spend extra time or expense on making the house stronger.
BINGO BINGO BINGO BINGO BINGO
Yes, that's exactly it, time and time again. Home buyers seem so blind to that sort of scam.
Edit: But thirty years? No.
politicians are not briden to weaken the standards, this isn't some weirdo 3rd world country. There isn't a problem with any building codes here, the presenter was desperate to assert that but, its nonsense.
When we watch home improvement shows on TV we are constantly shocked by the lousy quality of and lack of insulation in the houses people live in in the US. Yet the houses are ridiculously expensive.
When i watch those US Home Improvement Shows i am always shocked when the Thermo Camera comes out. and Windows are deep blue. Like ... WTF .... then i learned you guys dont use double glass Windows.
@@kaitan4160 Yes we do...we use double and triple pain windows all the time..... I swear, the comments on this video are almost all 100% nonsense.
For any house built in the last 50 years the windows are double pane insulated as required by the building codes nearly everywhere.
house quality has little to do with housing market. Location is a much much bigger factor
@@Seagaltalk
Who in his right mind pays a fortune to live in a shed with a view.
Nice to see our Amsterdam canal house, 30 seconds in (the small one in the middle)!
But though it indeed has been standing for about 500 years, we actually do hear the neighbors climbing their stairs through the shared single-brick wall...
When I stayed in a hotel in the center of Amsterdam, I could hear everything going on outside like there was no wall there and the single-glass window did nothing for wind isolation. I had a really hard time there, being used to sturdy central European houses with 40cm+ walls.
I was gonna ask if it's tilted but I realized that it's next to a canal, so the wooden fundaments must not be rotting.
cries in miljonair ;-)
When we lived in the US (we are French), we saw a few houses being built in our neighborhood and boy it seemed they were done in no time! Felt crazy to us how little time was needed for construction to be complete.
Yeah most people just assume price and think quality, oh no no no. They don't expect you to be able to pay for it in full either because nobody usually gets that far lol. Usually with interest over the years the price that you'll pay will be much higher than what it was when you started.
I mean what they define as a house we call a cottage. It’s not somewhere you live, but a cheap weekend getaway where you keep your fishing equipment etc.
most houses in europe are being build in like months. complete residentials are being build in like months. why? because everything is pre fabricated.
Fabienne, part of the reason is they hired very poorly skilled people. They also rely too heavily on pneumatic nail guns. The click click you hear is the nail gun. The migrant workers don't care one bit about quality, just getting their paycheck and going home. The quality is so bad that some of these homes WILL need to be remodeled because they will develop issues. I walked through a home that was under construction and it will NOT pass a tornado inspection. The beams attaching the roof to the main structure were NOT done correctly. They clearly used a nail gun with the air pressure set to maximum pressure. The nails actually damaged the wooden beam but failed to join the two pieces. I was able to shake the beams. The house is a ticking time bomb. If it's still lived in, I KNOW the owner spent thousands on a roof repair. It is not going to hold up in a hail storm.
@@largol33t1 Hate to break it to you but almost all houses in the US that were built in the 80’s until now would never pass a tornado inspection.
I’ve always thought US buildings seemed super flimsy, I live in the UK and most things are made out of brick and plaster, walls definitely aren’t soundproof and you can hear people and your terraced neighbors occasionally, but it’s never that serious. When I first heard US buildings are mostly wooden I was shocked, it seemed so risky and easy to break.
Easy to break?! They’re not made out of match sticks!
Here in the Boston area, both masonry and wood houses are built to the same wind-load standard, about 100-110 MPH, which is the same range they use in most of the UK. But a brick house will be more resistant against flying objects like storm debris and, if you live in a bad neighborhood, bullets.
@@pcno2832 This is not to attack the quality of wood. For me it's not just about the houses being sturdy. It is also about the fact that there is quite a large amount of videos of people stumbling heavily into drywall and it just breaking and I like my walls hole free.
Easy they aren’t that easy to break you aren’t punching trough the outside of a wall
@@NaesGalaxy You might be, I'm not.
I'm just gonna plug the book "Strong Towns" for anyone interested. It goes into explaining why the American suburban boom happened and why its dependence on constant economic growth has put American cities into impossible debts.
good stuff
+
👏 We just had the author speak in our town
Speaking of Strong Towns, you guys might wanna watch the RUclips channel "Not Just Bikes"
@@Mirsab yeah, I think we're all caught up in similar RUclips algorithms, lol. It was "Not Just Bikes" that spurred me to reading Strong Towns.
Living in FL, most homes are center block construction (outer walls). Lately, I’m seeing more and more wood structures being built. Personally, I think that isn’t the best idea due to Hurricanes.
Reinforced, shotcrete, dome houses seem to be doing quite well in hurricane & tornado regions across the country.
We've been through 3 hurricanes in our wood house in South Florida. Very very minor damage.
As a European, I didn't know you meant Florida with the FL. I thought at first you were talking about Finland^^
A block structure with rebar and solid poured concrete grout, like we build them in the PNW, is 1000 times stronger than wood could ever be, and would hold up to a hurricane/tornato, no problem. The building codes in FL allow block structures to be built with out any grout, and very little if any rebar, which is insane in this day and age, when we know how unsafe that is, and it should be illegal everywhere, let alone where hurricanes are common. Everyone knows a block is just a container to put concrete and steel in.
I have made a living earthquake proofing old cmu buildings, or tearing them down and building them right.
@@klubstompers compared to living in a wood structure. Concrete block structures suck. Sound is terrible. Cold hard floors. Wood homes make it through hurricanes too.
It amazed me the time I saw a picture after a hurricane in America - where there was one house left standing after the hurricane had passed. It belonged to a European couple that build it with EU regulation standards... 🤷🏼♀️
Yes but the Americans who lost their homes are out buying jetskis and White Claw with the insurance payout, and don't have to do that last sink full of dishes.
Oh yeah I’d much rather have my house destroyed and my belongings lost 🙄
I've seen a few stories like that, but nothing was said about EU standards. Some of them just had stucco siding and more metal bracing where the wood was joined. The codes vary widely in the USA, but FL and the Gulf coast have some of the strongest standards (for post 1992 construction) in the world.
You liar! You made this up. A European couple did not build a home that was the only survivor after a hurricane. THERE ARE NO "HURRICANE REGULATIONS [or] STANDARDS" IN EUROPE. European homes are not even subjected to hurricanes. NEVER. Hurricanes don't happen in Finland, England, Germany, France, Italy, or anywhere on this continent. Further, Florida housing codes around wind and coastal flooding protections are some of the most strict and best designed in the world. You want to know why only a few houses were left standing on Galveston Beach after Hurricane Ike in 2008, well it is because those owners paid a lot of money to build a better more resiliant design on stilts. The homes that washed away did so because the builders of those homes were allowed to get away with building a weaker less expensive home in an area where they knew, or should have known, that these homes were not going to survive a moderate hurricane in the near future. The builders, home owners, politicians, and others all looked the other way betting on they probably wouldn't be held accountable when the hurricane hit. After all, the federal income tax supported National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) would probably pay for most of the damage when it does occur. Probably. Maybe? But hopefully not for much longer.
Hahahahha....nice...
Over the last couple years I've been seeing 3-400 unit apartment buildings pop up everywhere using prefab wooden stud walls. I don't expect these to last long either.
Wood does not mean a poor building material! In Norway almost all houses are made of Wood. They are sturdy and keeps the heat inside.
Yuuh, but remember that firstly us ski hippies don't need to worry as much about wood burning down, pests etc, secondly house renovation like, is a thing and thirdly iirc a lot of new wooden houses are modular and the rest... not really mass produced balloonframedly lol.
I lived in a wooden house from 1908 for half of my life and it got renovated and upgraded in 1995 and later in 2007-9 when it's value had dropped to the price of a new Nissan Leaf due to being legit in shit condition. Wood can last long but only if you build and treat it to last.
Paint protects the wall, we Norwegians like to build our house, its just cheaper than buying a brick house. You wouldnt know the difference anyway if i wanted to let my wall look like bricks or stones
Did you look @3:44. They are using toothpicks! Most houses here are from brick in Belgium. They are amongst the strongest build in the world. Even the wooden ones cost just as much and use massive framing. We use 7/18 or even 8/23cm here for our roofs. That's >3 by 9"... With proper maintenance our new houses can last a thousand year. Look at Bruges, and that are just some ancient techniques...
She does say this at about 3:40...
Yeah what type of wood? Here is made of pine
I remember when taking German classes we talked about this and that American homes are called "Matchbox" homes
The new ones. Mine was built in 1947 with brick. Still standing, even through all the tropical storms
Depends. Sure some houses here are built with plastic and cardboard, but some wooden houses can take a beating. And wooden houses are better for winter.
@@angelgjr1999 Then why my Banished game insist me to build home out of rock instead of wood to better at keeping warm when it's winter?
@bill ted All of them. You can punch through the walls.
@bill ted Yup almost broke my wrist once.
Honestly, as an American myself, I've always held so much more appreciation for well-built older houses. I lived in the suburb of a town that's been around since 1851 for most of my childhood, and the brick historic district was always so much prettier and looked sturdier from the outside, even though they were physically smaller. The suburbs were wrought with tract housing and the houses were huge, yes, but they lacked individuality and there were always accidents regarding the build of these residences. I've always wished I could live somewhere like Europe to have a house that was beautiful and functional.
Yeah, newer "brick" houses are usually just junky facades or just use ugly, cheap bricks now with no character.
If if there's "character", it's painted on.
1851 is old for you??? LOL muricans! You should take a trip to Europe where many people still live in Medieval houses built in the 14th - 15th century! And the way they were designed, these constructions will still be around for a thousand years!
Thats called Arizona
I remember online once is one comment section, a heated debate between an american and european and given how crazy comments sections are, anyway, the european typed "My kitchen table is older than your country"
@@joefriday8607 I'd like a well built house, better than just wood frame and drywall, but also one with double glazed modern windows, central heating, and that was actually built with plumbing and wiring already in mind.
I’m Mexican and live about a 3 hour drive from the US border. Around 30 years ago it was really appealing traveling over there for vacations or shopping, so we did frequently. There were many things I admired during those visits but the flimsy houses were very unsettling for me
That is only that area. In some places the homes are built to last longer. My American home is 125 years old.
The house I grew up in was wood, in Michigan, still standing probably around 90 years or more.
In another state now, the house is 125 years old. The homes not built well were built for profit only.
Lol, have you ever even seen a house in Mexico? Your average house is literally built out of cardboard, for those few who are even lucky enough to have a house
@@willcareyHomelessness is worse in American cities
That's absurd, you cross over from the US to Mexico and you are literally entering a 3rd world nation on par with Somalia or other poverty stricken countries in Africa . That's why we have about 20 million Mexicans that left Mexico and come here illegally . @@701delbronx8
Wood is an excellent material when used correctly. Cheap is cheap whether brick, wood or plywood.
Absolutely correct. But when you need to sell something with the profit, ecology, economy of construction materials or common sense doesnot matter. Matter only big money.
Finally a decent comment...
Very true. If you use thick, dry wood and don't skimp on assembly and insulation, that house is going to last longer than a typical brick/concrete house.
This should be the most upvoted comment. It's not the building material that is the issue here...
The are a lot of fires in US
In the UK we have these mad things called Bricks
Pretty much all European homes are made of stone or bricks
Wattle and daub was/is better than this cr*p
Did you watch the video? lmao
In earthquake areas like California both brick and concrete are not ideal since they can crack/break with even a minor tremor.
@@LearnAboutFlow California houses are not brick but brick veneer big difference.
If only the price reflected the life expectancy of the house, it wouldn't be a problem.
It does, the shorter the life expectancy, the lower the price. A house built in he same location, with the same square footage, but with with more durable materials, would cost more.
@@fordhouse8b Exactly. The same as with clothes. Because everything is so cheap all the time we aren't used to payig more for things that will eventually be cheaper in the long term.
@@fordhouse8b that's only true if you look at the price for building the house. If you keep in mind, that brick/concrete houses last much longer it will be WAY cheeper in the long run. Moreover, the annual price for maintenance is lower.
But as the video said, we in Europe see a house as a long time investment and expect to live in it for years. Once we sell it, we can expect to earn something because the value has risen (unless one sells during a financial crisis of course)
@@mkpetersen1607 Price and long term cost are different things. As is return on investment. As you alluded to, the cyclical nature of the economy factors into how much your house is worth when you do sell it, but even with that, real estate is generally a good long term investment in the US.
idk man, people buy (finance) $90-100k cars all the time looking to hold on to them for 5 years.
It's totally understandable, but as a small correction (on a now older video, I know); Light timber framing is extensively used in Europe. For example the vast majority of new build houses in the UK and Ireland in large housing developments (we call the large, completely or mostly single use zoned housing developments 'housing estates' here rather than suburbs) are built in that manner. Even many new build houses on private plots outside of developments also use the same construction method. Generally only the exterior walls will be brick or some other material. This is done here for the same reasons as in the US, to reduce cost. This method is used not only in houses, but also in apartment buildings and elsewhere. The building's exterior walls and some internal walls will be constructed of concrete or similar material but most of the internal walls in the apartments (or shop units etc) will be constructed of the same light timber frames with light drywall outer skin (we call drywall 'plasterboard' over here). This has been the case for many decades now. I believe this is also the case in many other European countries, though that's an assumption on my part. So here, in homes and apartments we have the same issues with poor insulation and lack of sound dampening. Although older homes still exist that use heavier materials, it's pretty rare to see new private homes built using those methods. It's largely become a choice only really available to the very wealthy, unless one is happy to buy an old home, which generally comes with a lot of other issues over here.
As a British person, this is an interesting twist. We're always hearing about one of the obstacles to reaching net-zero carbon emissions is the fact that our housing stock is so old (even by European standards). Older homes can also be drafty, and sometimes difficult to retrofit with things like solar panels and heat pumps. But this video also presents the problems with some types of newer home as well.
A very interesting perspective!
Keeping existing buildings is the greenest option and they can be made more energy efficient using much less resources and cost than rebuilding new. Concrete and the steel needed to reinforce it is incredibly dirty and has a huge carbon footprint.
Wood is the greenest building material and when done right, as the video proves, can last for centuries. Unfortunately right now, building codes don't require it done right.
In the event that installing solar panels isn't possible in the short term, there's always solar farms to invest in. I just switched my power grid provider to a solar source far away in some other county.
The video seem to exagerarte a bit about the lifetime of an american home. At lest in the New England area, there are a large amount of homes that surpass 100yrs. Mine is a wood frame with 68 yrs. But as you said, older homes tend to be leaky, inefficient and hard to retrofit. There are, however, many new constructions that are made very cheaply and do not last long.
The only real thing holding back the greenification of those old homes is space for insulation.
Without which a heat pump becomes unviable.
I believe most UK homes are build like ours in the Netherlands. Brick or concrete structural inside face, air/insulation gap, brick outside face.
As you can't increase the air/insulation gap, extra insulation has to either go on the outside (preferable but then you lose the pretty brick). Or on the inside, which means losing interior space (and a tad more challenging in managing moisture).
And the average UK home is tiny enough as is!
Its insane that there are many buildings built in England when wolves still roamed the land and we spoke Anglo-Saxon that are holding up better than modern American homes made less than 70 years ago.
an old house in America is a house older than 50 years. An old house in England is one above the 300 years. There's villages older than the US lmao.
@@valerianaranjocruz25 There are many homes 100 plus years old in USA. All over the country in every state still being lived in.
Confirmation bias: You see the old homes that survived for hundreds of years, and not the many that fell down.
Anglo saxon houses were built of wood and replaced frequently. There are exactly zero Anglo Saxon houses in existance today. In fact even finding out where they were built is incredibly difficult.
@@floofy5529 Also, most "old" houses are not really that old, lol.
After moving into a brick apartment building for the first time, i was DELIGHTED to not hear my neighbors walk around and not feel the building shake in the wind
Shake? They really Shake or you just say so? I am from Eastern Europe, here everything is concrete I never saw other type of housing :/
@@reyrey6295 yea, i live in a windy area and our 2 story wooden townhouse would shake in the wind all the time. They were built in probably around the 60's-70's
Dip Nitty wow! I would get scared, but its probably normal for you and nothing can really happen i hope
@@dipnitty8184 holy shit :D all houses here are from concrete and few walls brick and concrete and when we have low huricane wind you cant even hear it in the house. Thats insane ahahaha
Haha I moved into a 1910s duplex brick apartment building, but it had HUGE (beautiful) windows so I could hear everything outside 🤷🏻♀️😭😂 Also, we could hear the first floor and the basement through this weird HVAC shaft/closet. It kept in heat pretty well though!
I live in the midwest in United States and our cities and small towns are actually pretty old, and its a lot of skilled trades people that dont move. So we often have 100-150 year old wooden houses made of logs or large timbers that are constantly upgraded or repaired. So I think this is more of a suburb or west coast thing more than a whole US thing.
As someone from the UK, this is fascinating. I'd wondered why they had such cheap low maintenance homes for ages
I think the US was simply built in a frenzied hurry. I'm rebuilding my grandfather's barn, a Sears kit barn from the 1930's, and it's amazing it's still standing! The metal roof helped, but everything was done so fast and sloppily, as were most other homes and barns of that era. Then mobile homes came out, even flimsier! I wish we had your construction standards.😉
@@chuckkottke .
Construction standards aren't always followed properly. I live in a building from newly built on the coast of Mid Wales.
30 years later a minor hurricane did so much damage, it was easier to demolish it than patch it up.
A few more wall ties might have prevented the brick cladding from being blown off, I had bricks all over my balcony.
@@chuckkottke A lot of British cities were build extremely fast too during the Industrial Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of homes were built in rows (we call them terraced, I believe they're called row houses in the US) so the workers could live close by to the factories, as a result towns sprang up around larger cities that were rather compact and easy to walk places because public transport wasn't really a thing back then outside of the bigger cities where it was largely warehousing, logistics and administration rather than actual manufacturing. Despite these being built rather fast and in VAST numbers, there are still millions of these homes standing today. Very few of them have a square corner or consistently sized door way but they were sturdy and simple to maintain. They were literally built as they went with no real plans, which is why they're not all standardised. After the war large flats/apartment blocks seemed to be the new thing, but that seems to have failed pretty much everywhere they went with such things (though oddly not in the Soviet style concrete slabs, they thrived far more than our attempts in the west at high density housing).
@@caesar7734 A British house that will still be standing in 200 years while your cheap American house is falling apart after 20 without a LOT of maintenance?
@@TalesOfWar most american houses dont really need that much maintenance. I live in west texas where we get severe thunder storms, large hail, and semifrequent tornadoes. Worst thing that happened to us was a minor roof leak caused by hail and wind, but it took maybe a day to repair everything including the water damaged sheetrock.
Quite interesting! I live in the Philippines. While most informal and lower income families do build their homes basically exactly like this, we decided to build what would be termed a "proper" home. Foundation pylons were pounded into the bedrock, foundations were poured concrete, and the walls were made of reinforced concrete. Fireproofed firewalls shield the house from fires from neighboring houses on either side. The ground floor was raised 4 feet off the street to defend from flooding, and the second floor main living area was raised an additional 20 feet from that for further defense. The electrical mains connected on the third floor and the first floor system was made separate so it could be turned off completely in case the flood exceeded 5 feet.
I'll be the first to say that it's not a particularly handsome home. It's basically a concrete box. But it's proof against many hazards and it's very defensible.
When the Philippines has better homes than literally any state in America.
exactly!! My house in the philippines has been up for more than 40 years now. The outer part of the house is concrete and the falls inside are wood. There are also traditional spanish houses made in wood in my city that has been up for more than 100 years too!!!
Concrete Pouring is used for modular homes and office/industrial estate in europe as well. But most houses are built brick by brick.
@@dundee248 Council homes use concrete here typically.
very interesting... and smart way to build
When I compare our Finnish wooden house built in early 50's and american houses of the same period our house is like a 100 more sturdy. We often joke about how american houses are made of cardboard.
Not the ones built in the 50s they are solid.
haha in germany we have the same joke,
houses made of cardboard
I'm from Denmark and we have that same joke about USA
It is not only the flimsy building I abhor, it is a lack of safety. Many row/town houses don't have fire-resisting walls. So when one house burns others will follow. Here in Germany it is law to built them, if your houses stand together or are near to each other. I've seen it live. A house in a town I visited was burning, the first in a long row of brickhouses. It burnt several hours and the heat was intense. It was a big one with at least 4 floors. It could not be saved, so the fire brigades just tried to control it and cooled the other houses. When the house was cold (several days later) it was teared down (bricks were burned out, so they were not solid enough). The next house had next to no damage and we could see the fire-resisting wall.
After this I looked at youtube for reports of fires in the US, and low and behold, fires often spread to several houses, sometimes even the whole street. With the materials they are built they go up like a match. Not a nice image.
Same cardboard jokes in Norway too, and we live mostly in wooden houses.
I am from Germany and We just renovated a decommissioned cattle farm build in the 50's. Besides updating the technical systems like heating and kitchen appliances and adding sufficient insulation, the house along with the barn and everything needed very little overall work, cutting down costs dramatically.
I was trying to explain what "flimsy" meant to this fella from Cameroon one time, all I could come up with was "unstable". He said, "Ahh, so you say your girlfriend, she is *flimsy*.
Shit was too funny
Shit's universal m8.
This is getting likes so fast
did you try the word "shoddy", or "sleazy"?
Do they have a concept of not durable in Cameroon?
No, Cameroons people are not stupid, just an honest question about their language or culture.
I can't imagine it's a word in any English textbooks for those learning English as a second language.
My home was built in 1862. Living in an older home has a couple of drawbacks (no closets!) but let me tell you this brick house is mighty mighty. This thing is STURDY. I think we are the home's 4th owner, in 160 YEARS! That's how rarely people were selling their homes. The house I grew up in was built of wood in the 1920s. My parents bought it in 1953 and my mother still lives there - that's almost 70 years. It is a great house. My brother tells me that when the house gets sold, it will be a tear down. My quaint little hometown has become very posh and our plenty-big-enough house is not the McMansion that the new young professionals want. I have been in these McMansions and they are as flimsy as hell, but HUGE with ludicrous features. They will never put up a new house on the property of my parents' home that will be as well built or have half the charm. It's just be another cookie cutter job on steroids. But anyway, this video is making me very glad that I am a homeowner.
These new McMansions are poorly constructed money pits. I would *never* buy a new build. They age terribly and instead of eventually looking quaint, charming, or classic, look dated and ugly and things will usually start going wrong fast. The house I grew up in was built in 1926. My mom has been there 50 years. My house was built in 1930 and all original. Mine is only the second family to live here. It didn’t have up-to-code heaters when I moved in (they’re unusable but some are ornate brass and others glazed in porcelain so of course I left them) and no one had ever installed modern phone jacks. It still had a bell 🔔 in a box on the wall dated 1928 from the days when the ringer was in the box, not the telephone ☎️ and the phones had cloth-covered cords and could not be unplugged. No one had painted over the inlaid doors, woodwork, and built-ins, and the pegged oak floors were still in excellent condition. The kitchen has floor-to-ceiling tile. I couldn’t pass it up! I love how builders back then incorporated quality materials, beautiful craftsmanship, and well-thought-out floor plans and design in even the most modest homes, like mine.
You’ll be spending less on repairs on your 160-year-old house than someone will on a house built in 2011.
In Ireland quality of construction in the 1990’s and 2000’s wasn’t the best. We also have our own McMansions called MuckMansions.
@@hereforit2347 I can’t stand the practice of gutting the interiors of period houses. Things like antique furniture and solid doors and walls make house fires safer. Antique furniture was built to last as is furniture made traditionally.
@@oscarosullivan4513: Me either. 🙁
This is a thing I have been wondering about a lot. Watching wood-frame buildings built in the USA one has to worry about the wind, and mostly about water rot and mould. Recently I had seen a home repair show where a house had to be completely torn down the cause of single open window and rot spread trough walls and a frame after the abandonment of just one and a half year.
I saw this a lot when I worked in real estate. There were a lot of crappy people trying to hide the fact the house had mold because there's always more & it's terrible for your health. US homes need temperature regulation & ventilation to maintain usability.
I had to have the front of my new house replaced after 4 or 5 years because the stone veneer was put on wrong & resulted in rain getting into the wall & rotting it.
Yup mold is terrible and almost impossible not to avoid unless you keep air circulation everywhere ... but if you open your window for air circulation, well, that just leads to mold ... so ...
Not all wood frame buildings, just poorly built balloon, and really all platform framing, timber frame is great and lasts centuries, post and beam is also good but not as good. Balloon framing can be done well but really it all depends on the materials, for it to last it needs to be real solid wood, not junk plywood and particleboard.
Wind isn't really a problem until you're getting into like tornado or hurricane wind speeds. That speed can occasionally show up in normal (non-vortex) wind on occasion but generally if that happens more often than "rarely", they probably reinforce the roofs.
Water rot and mold are definitely both huge problems, as are insects like termites. There are treatments that can be used to protect against all of that, but they usually have to be installed as part of the construction and not really something you can retrofit onto a poorly-built house (things like plastic linings within the walls, building with wood that's been treated with insect repellant, etc).
None of that lasts forever either of course so its only going to extend the duration of your house for a decade or two, certainly not forever. And obviously doing all that extra work is more expensive so there's an economic incentive to avoid it whenever local regulations don't require it - especially for developers that build an entire subdivision at once and nobody's really going to ever see the inside of the walls by the time you go to sell it. As long as the house you build holds up long enough to escape warranty claims, its far more beneficial to put the money towards fancy flooring and bathrooms and other surface level visible stuff.
As I'm sure you can guess, that leads to a lot of "brand new" homes that are giant piles of crap with a pretty paint job. The only real solution is to implement building codes, but Americans are always loathe to implement new laws that interfere with the "free market" (notably something that doesn't exist in this case since true free market capitalism relies on all parties having perfect knowledge of the transaction they're making, the exact thing we don't have in this case). But even when you do have decent building codes in place, getting them enforced is a whole other can of worms. Inspection offices tend to be just as underfunded and understaffed as everything else in government in our eternal drive for lower and lower taxes. So inspections are often half-assed and easy to get around by clever-yet-slimy builders.
But hey I guess 2008 half solved our problem and 2020/2021 is looking to be on the road to solving a lot of the other half: when everybody's house has been foreclosed and bought up by massive national rental organizations, nobody has to worry about them getting run down! The new army of renters aren't going to pay for repairs, and the new army of corporate land lords are going to avoid them as well until everything's condemned and nobody can afford to build new houses! Capitalism!
I grew up in West Yorkshire in an area where the great majority of older buildings are made of stone. The house we lived in was part of a terrace of weavers' cottages, with huge upstairs windows to let light in and reinforced upstairs floors to take the weight of a big loom. The houses were over 100 years old then and are still occupied. Stone buildings are common in many areas of the UK where suitable rock is found, in this case a good hard sandstone.
The USA also has a huge commercial forestry industry. In the South there are literally acres of cultivated pine tree forests, grown in neat rows and heavily fertilized and harvested for lumber in 10 to 15 years.
That sounds unpleasant, but I'd much rather have that then what they're doing here in BC - destroying what remains of forests that are thousands of years old.
@@finnk1289 Here in the USA, old barns built more than one hundred years ago are salvaged for their valuable wood, cut from ancient trees that grew slowly.
@Bob Watters that's good.
@@finnk1289 Also in the US for every Tree cut down for industry it is Law to plant one in its place, it has been that way since the 40's. Some businesses have taken the practice a step farther by planting 2 trees for each tree they cut.
I saw those forests while i was in the Tx - Luisiana area.
Remote working and outrageous energy costs are forcing a huge shift in the housing market, so people will be more inclined to stay in one place longer and improve what they have.
I think it's the opposite. With jobs less tied to a specific location, people are free to move elsewhere without also having to change jobs. Also, there are fewer in-person events and activities, so there is less of a reason to stay in a location for social purposes.
Witness how many people are moving from California and New York to Texas and Florida.
@@haxney Facts state otherwise, as the real estate markets in those areas you cite are skyrocketing and often reaching record levels, something that would not be true if your theory were correct.
The majority of people want the stability and potential financial gains of owning property. And a lot of people have kids, and endlessly moving around is not good for children as psychological studies of military families proves.
I think so too.
Well thingäk about how much money gets spent in commercial real estate and when it's getting used your are freeing a huge amount of money that's going to be spent at hole in stead
Texas is the fastest growing state because so many Californians and Californian businesses are moving there, they already were because of taxes and laws before the pandemic and now 36 percent increase. In Manhattan, vacant apartments tripled and office buildings are empty, that would not make their value go up.
Housing in those areas is so expensive and is where the wealthiest people and companies are, people are there for work. Now that they could work from anywhere, or have lost their jobs, why or even how would they stay. When this is over maybe people will settle but there is much less reason for people to live in urban areas like that and many are moving.
Cheddar: "It's not capitalism, so sit tight and listen!
Cheddar: "Okay, comfy? So, it's capitalism."
😅
Then proceeds to say shit like "if Americans decide to move houses less often, things might change"
and
"This would be a problem if Americans didn't move that much"...
Never acknowledging that Americans move houses BECAUSE of their absolute dogshit cheap houses.
She literally stated that America has far more forest to use than Europe, which led to wooden structures becoming prominent. Balloon framing was capitalism yes, but it stuck around because of the housing boom, and the surplus of trees.
@@ChrisSalgado_ Yes, all of those are economical, therefore capitalistic factors. Which I'm not making a comment on capitalism, just how they said it wasn't;t just capitalism, and then listed all capitalistic reasons as to why.
@@ChrisSalgado_ housing boom and surplus of trees still sounds like capitalism to be.
My American home was built in 1926. Local hand made brick, field stone foundation, with lime mortar. Very hard to find brick masons in America who understand how to use the proper mortars. And when you do it’s insanely expensive. That and my cracking plaster are my biggest complaints but I’d prefer this over a post war ramshackle with asbestos and rotting young timber.
How comes it is insanely expensive in the US but apparantly just expensive in Europe ? In Belgium, there are almost no wooden houses, unless maybe in the open air museum in Bokrijk. Still, houses are far less expensive here than in many places in the US. But more expensive of course than in Detroit.
My 200 year old apartment in Switzerland is just perfect.
Lots of dead people and body fluids everywhere
this is about homes, not apartments.....lol
good for you.
@@EbikeAdventuresSD instead of talking bs u should try to clean up the organ and blood stains from shootings on ur good ol’ american cardboard
I am originally from Zurich I agree 110% with you. Living in California I realized that the buildings are very poor made no interior walls isolation poor pluming etc... fast build and fast breaking down.
My parents house was built in the 50’s and I feel like a strong breeze can blow it over
its probably not just a feeling.
@@mrn234 😂
If it was from the 50s, chances are it's a Sears home, and it's stronger than any Toll Brothers McMansion of today....
My moms was built in the 70’s and it’s looking like it’ll fall apart too
Il live in an 18'th century house. It feels very safe.
I call these 'caravan homes' because that's what their flimsiness reminds me of. I hate the idea of homes being disposable.
They're not really, people just don't bother to fix roofs and plumbing until it's too late so the water ruins the wood. My house is 70 years old and I'm in the process of spending tens of thousands of dollars fixing the house including damage from carpenter ants because the last owner rented it out and didn't bother to fix anything
Asbestos that was extensively used when many of these homes were built can also make it difficult to fix these places
They’re pretty disposable. And in tornado alley they’re just as disposable as the people living in them
Disposable houses are one thing. How about the disposable family?
When we devalue the reason to even own a house, what's the point? It's no wonder things seem to be crumbling all around us. This ideal of bigger is better isn't always the case. If society could only grasp the notion that a strong foundation built with strong family values would have better outcome, than we'd see a change in how we value life.
it is made of cardboard and sticks
My house was built in the 1940's...back when almost every man had tools and a little built of construction knowledge. That means anytime someone does some kind of renovations they usually find some nightmare wiring/plumbing from the first owner. My house is solid, but was a nightmare to remodel and i wish i would have just demo'd it and started from scratch
There are so many homes I have been in, in America that if you close the front door with any amount of force, it'll shake the entire home. You'll feel the shaking on the other side of the home...
But they "look" nice. Hahaha.
My old house was like that 😕
LOL. It's like when entering an american house anymore can become Superman by punching holes in the walls or tearing down the entire place by slamming the door.
Um, I get that too, and I live in a concrete block house, although my interior walls are wood.
I'm from Switzerland and live in our family home built in 1810 !
With each generation we improved/expanded/modernised it, but its core structure has been there for 211 years now.
Wow
There’s cracks in my ceiling and this house is less than five years old
Plaster has cracked on drying or walls shifting?
the real question is who can you blame this on?
@Nolan Is Innocent many cracks, not just one. The ceiling in a part of our house actually fell down, because some of the 2x6 support beams split in half!
Worked for a builder, reasons this happens . A) the once fresh and not totally dry wood used to build the house has dried and slightly shrank. Causing trusses to heave (if there's no floor above the cracked ceiling you speak of). B) do live where winter sees below freezing? Humidity or dry air can cause wood to swell and shrink without humidity control of some sort. C) where the walls meet the foundation they make not have been packed with non shrink grout causing settlement but that would normally show on an exterior crack.
@@FACTOTUM_55 From an European POV: just unbelievable
With Japan: it’s also the constantly updating earthquake safety regulations. Older houses tend to be cheaper in Japan because their more dangerous because they’re not up to modern code.
I’d say that up here in Northern Europe wooden houses are really common, at least in Sweden. Probably due to large part of our land being forests. My own house is over 100 years old and the framing is wood. Depending on your source, construction and maintenance wood is actually a really great material. Remember that our temperatures drop significantly and back in the day most people lived in small wooden houses in the country side with only the stove to heat the family.
There would be more American houses over 100 years old, if there were Americans around 100 years ago. One can find American houses over 100 year old in the downtown areas of the city but as the populations were much smaller this percentage of the housing stock is much smaller. Why did the percentage of Americans grow? It was Europeans moving to America 100 years ago that grew the size of American cities because housing (and other material goods) were less expensive more affordable.
Build a house out of solid steel.
Especially in hurricane zones. Of course they would rust though.
time to grab gallons and gallons of some INOX cream so that thing aint gonna rust in decades
you have any idea how terrible that would be in the summer?
I think Andrew knows exactly what it would be like. Check out his channel.
Was thinking of Andrew exactly. This is how it’s done
meanwhile in europe, i bought a 35year old house last year and i am pretty sure i'll pass it on to one of my kids.
What country?
Germany, last time the house was extended was in 1810 (after a big city wide fire), otherwise parts of it were originally built at around 1650
I grew up in a European house that was centuries old and it was still in a much better shape than the crap I had to live in in UT and ID.
This video is pretty full of shit. Lots of 100+ year old houses in the US. Wooden buildings can be well built or poorly built just like any other material.
@@awsomevideoperson yes but it's about balloon framing, not wood in particular. wood (when used correctly) is a really good building material and the video also states that. the video ltrly acknowledged older buildings made of wood.
It's simple: it's to make demolishing easier when they need to expand the highway to 100 lanes and build a new stroad.
Thank god im from europe. In my life i have never moved and my house is over 100, like most houses on my street. Within the next few years we're renovating the attic!
This is a sorta silly video. Mainly comparing cities and old homes to modern US construction. My house is wood, it's over 100 years old. Same with my brothers, his whole neighborhood is from the late 1800's and there are a lot of places like that. in the northeast US.
The US has a lot of sh(tty homes, but it depends upon the region and when it was built. Basically any home here is of the disposable type if it's not taken care of. I've toured some foreclosed homes that are ready to be torn down after 30 years, but that's becasue someone let the roof leak and mice completely infest the place till the ceilings collapsed. The homes being torn down that are still liveable and good are being torn down because the property is worth more with a "new" house on it... this disgusts me most of the time, pricing out new home buyers and destroying old property that actually had a "soul" and unique charm, unlike new boxy plastic sided homes.
lol im in america, my house was built in the 1960s and its literally falling apart. mold everywhere, the vents are bad, the sealing on the doors/windows is broken, the floorboards creak and are rotting, its awful. these houses are made like toothpicks.
@@volvo09 To be fair the more i learn about the US the more convinced i become that the northeast of the US is the most European part of the US and implicitly the most sane part of the US.
@@RoScFan
You're welcome, We Dutch know how to build things !
@@RoScFan It was built when the Europeans still ruled the colonies and the early settlers were European. Even the early years after the revolution and European migrations, the States still retained European qualities since those aren't gonna disappear overnight and the whole "American" culture hasn't set in completely yet.
Other countries: use brick, cement and hollow block for walls
USA: uses dry wall
Most Detroit homes are made out of bricks. The only problem is, it’s Detroit
Drywall isn't structural
The southwest uses brick, concrete and hollow blocks. The northeast and parts of the midwest that experiences brutal winters uses brick. PNW and other areas in the south where trees are plentiful use wood. Dry wall isn't structural.
@@Damian-mi8di It isn't structural but it is used as a wall.
@@Damian-mi8di Yes, I'm embarrassed for the people who make comments like that. They clearly don't know how homes are actually built in the USA.
“It’s not capitalism”
“the job market incentivizes these houses”
>it’s actually capitalism
It's not directly capitalism because of the attitude many people have of houses, that they see them as disposable. Because they see them as disposable they feel free to just move and leave.
Symptom is capitalism, but causation isn't. Causation is attitude of US homeowners.
No it isn't. The job market is a reflection of the people's preferences. Americans are all about their careers. If they wanted to settle, the job market would allow for it. But, as it is, only weirdos don't want to move every six years for the pay increase.
@@venomtailOG If America was socialist, the bureau of housing maintenance would automatically schedule every new home for demolition in 30 years, since it is clearly what the majority of Americans want. The few of us Americans that actually care about our houses and maintain them properly would be wasting our time.
@@lonesnark But the American people already by choice choose to tear down houses after 30 years. What's the difference if this choice was done by some bereau?
It's entirely a cultural thing and not an economical. Nothing to do with capitalism or socialism
@@venomtailOG under capitalism, at least those that want to build and maintain their houses long term have that option.
When I visited the UK I was shocked at how tiny the homes they live in are , And nobody has a yard!
bro visited a small neighborhood people have big yards to but not in the neighborhood that are made for space and to fit as many noobs in a living space
I grew up in a house from 1730 in Sweden. When I studied on thw West coast of the US I stayed in some houses built within the last 20 years thst had more leaks and gaps than my old barn. And then I saw new houses beung built out of wood frames. My friend thought I was joking when I asked "you still build with wood here?"
Nah, most one family houses in Sweden are built out of of wood, and it has always been like that. Older buildings out of timber, newer ones out of wood frames and panels, like in the US. The main difference to US is that we have much stricter building regulations.
Actually new buildings are almost all prefabricated indoors in factories, and assembled outdoors. The wall segments are complete with wiring, insulation and paint.
when will they learn? smh
Watching this from my family’s 300 year old home in Germany 🧐 (it’s built out of wood and straw btw)
My family has lived on the same plot of land for about 800 years 😅
Not to forget that there are buildings in Europe that are around 1500 years old (Saint-Germain d'Auxerre / France, the oldest part of the building before 448-> The original burial chapel of Germanus von Auxerre was expanded into an abbey in Carolingian times. )
As a privately used living space, the "Korbisch-Haus" from the 13th century is considered to be the oldest constantly inhabited building in Germany.
And of course you can also maintain wooden houses:
"In the small open-air museum of Eidsborg in western Telemark there is a real gem with the Vindlausloftet. The inconspicuous building is in all probability the oldest wooden house in Europe. According to the latest dendrochronological dating, it was built around the year 1170. For comparison, House Nideröst comes from Switzerland Canton Schwyz, which was previously considered the oldest, from 1176. The oldest wooden house in Sweden was built in 1229. " [www.norwegenservice.net/europas-aeltestes-holzhaus]
Don't you guys move out and get your own house? You live with your parents and siblings all in one house? That sounds horrible
@@nicholasfu5937 we have a separate smaller apartment in the house that my grandparents moved into once my parents took over the farm and moved into the main house. So we have two separate households and I guess once one of my siblings takes over my parents will either move there or somewhere else. So we do move out and get our own houses, the farm and the house on it has just been passed down to one child every generation and that’s how the same plot of land has been in the family for that long 😅
This is why I love old Victorian homes like the one I grew up in. American homes built in the 1800s are so much different than the ones today.
If you live in a warm area, cockroaches in old Victorian homes can be unbearable.
@Lil PUMP How nice. Try Sydney.
I'm french and I live in a house whose oldest archive is from 1712, it is made of stone with walls 1 meter wide in some places, my parents renovated it and of course does not let the sound pass through the wall. The old house where I lived was a house built by my father, in brick, of the same style with large wall. In 300 years it will still be there, that's for sure.
"The answer is not capitalism..."
The whole video; "It's capitalism."
Which is ridiculous. Capitalism isn't the enemy.
@@mjt1517 illiberal democracy is.
@@mjt1517 man youre down bad
You needn’t be capitalist to be a cheap ass. It just pays more to be a cheap ass when you’re capitalist. Bonus: it’s crazy fast.
Yep
“The problem isn’t just capitalism” then goes on to explain the profit incentives of flimsy homes.
Exactly. People need to stop conflating Capitalism with profit. Profit has been a concept since the dawn of man. Without the promise of profit, there is no incentive for someone to provide a service or a good for someone else.
@@tinytownsoftware3837 That's why I don't feed my kids unless I profit from them.
@@screenshotted Oh for fuck's sake. Family is different. I'm talking about providing services and goods for free for strangers. But thank you for your worthless opinion anyways.
@@tinytownsoftware3837 So here is the thing. You say family is different because it's "family". In reality though, every person has their own group they belong to. At it's most basic level, it's family. going to the outer levels you see things like the larger family, the local community (village, neighborhood, etc.), the society, the country, and even at its most exterior level, the human race. There are other groups or 'tribes' an individual can belong to such as the sports club, political party, religion, and so on. People do stuff for free for their family, their religion, their political party or their local community because of this sense of belonging and not necessarily for profit as you mention. On the other hand, some people expect to make profit from their family, these people exist. In conclusion, people can have other incentives to provide services or goods to anyone aside from profits based on their personality. Stating that you have to make profits to do that, with the exception of family, is just false.
@@tinytownsoftware3837 “wOrThlEss OpInION” 🤦🏽♂️ that’s the most girly thing you could say. What a cringe fest
I live in a brick house in the US from 1901 and its still perfect!! Its just stunning- its a v average house from those times but the workmanship on the moldings, medallions the 1.5 ft skirtings/ baseboards the staircase (still original) - solid internal doors, the front doors so so solid and beautifully carved. Americans also made beautiful houses in the old days
I bet all your electric wiring is f-ed up! Almost a guarantee! Haha
I doubt your historic home has had zero renovations though. I mean this video is talking about how much wood degrades but that’s a majority of what you mention that’s still holding up
It's all planned obsolescence :(
It’s hilarious hearing someone call “1901” the “old days” as a European. That’s barely 1 century old! Go to any European town and you’ll see houses built in 1500 and earlier.
@@lenn939 We recently bought a home built in 1882. My good friend from Poland told me " that's barely broken in". can't beat old growth wood either. way better than this crap they have nowadays.
My house was built in the 1950's and I've been having to get it weatherized slowly. I've actually had to re-frame some exterior walls because of dry rot.
I have worked in construction building wood frame houses. I care about quality and was disgusted by the work we were doing. I’m going to build my own house from concrete and use an insulating method that I am developing. My house will be durable, low maintenance, fireproof, waterproof, and extremely energy efficient.
That’s the way to go!
That should definitely help prevent regular maintenance such as hvac servicing, plumbing repairs, roof issues, landscaping, clogged gutters, etc...
You should see how Scandinavians or Swiss build timber houses and you'd realise that the problem is that American houses (broad generalisation, I know) are just built cheap and shoddy.
Fire resistant? It's generally not the house that burns but what's in it - furniture, curtains etc. If a concrete house burns it'll be standing after a fire but the concrete is damaged as well and good luck getting rid of toxic fumes that will be off gassing for time to come if you rebuild and live in it.
Highly energy efficient? You'll have to have good ventilation which requires maintenance.
@@chris-2496... No. The problem is with the consumer. Their desire to have a home that shows status. Most people can’t afford a house worthy of Instagram, that’s not made of wood.
You should look up a guy who goes by “1000yearhouse.” His team builds some of the only decent quality new houses I’ve seen.
America: let's build load bearing walls out of cardboard!
Japan: hold my paper doors and straw floors!
How dare you insult American quality!!
@@Emphasis213 , LOL! :-)!
In the USA load bearing walls are not built out of cardboard. 🙄
@@CheeseBae You ever heard of LVL beams? They're made out of veneer, basically like cardboard glued together.
@@herbsewell4995 The only veneer-built beams in my house were built to be veneer, i.e., fake for imitation opulence.
My god!!!. Finally someone that understands what I’ve been trying to say.
I’ve been to Asia in Cambodia and you could build a home with concrete walls 3000 square foot, for under 80k.
Because contractors are scammers in the US. Their goal is to keep pumping prices higher, probably because banks are throwing loans at people.
@@dickriggles942 Except if you ever actually owned a house instead of just parroting what you saw people say you'd understand that the house is insanely cheap. The HOUSE itself, alone, no other factors, is probably like 10 grand for a two story 4 bedroom house. You're not paying for the house, you're paying for the property it's built on and the labor to build it.
@@War450 A 2000 square foot house will need about 16,000 board feet of lumber at a current market cost of $600 per 1000 board feet, so you're looking at $9,600 in just lumber. That same house also needs 6,000 square feet of plywood at about $1.38 per square foot, so another $8,280 in plywood. You're at nearly $18,000 before you factor in any other materials.
@@shadowtheimpure Now compare that to a 2000 square foot house made out of brick. Wood has always been cheaper, it's why it's used.
@@War450 My only intent with my statement was to counter the statement that a house was only $10k of materials. I know that masonry is more expensive, regardless of how much more hardwearing it is.
My house was built in 1918. All masonry. We are the second owner. My grandfather bought it in early '70s, the only intervention he did was to build some concrete columns to reinforce the structure. The walls are made of mudbrick and "glued" together with mud, plastered with cement and spackling (the spackling layer was done something like 15 years ago). A novelty about it is that grandfather used to say that the bricks were made with the earth of the terrain, and I think it's true because it's slightly lower than the road. I think this house will last for another 100 years.
My house is 425 years old! Made of stone in Belgium
i lived in belgium. thats not super common.
You have ghosts
Wow! 😍 or ... wait... does that explain your user name?
Just kidding... I envy you!
Now that is some good bones!
Stone is the best.
"It's easier to rip it down and rebuild than pay for maintenance in the US." Exaggerating a bit on this one to try to prove a point
No kidding. NO one rips down housing and replaces. Population is expanding. Eventually this might happen.
Yeah, this video is a joke.
Repairing an old wood frame house and bringing all hvac, plumbing, electrical and insulation to modern code costs far more than building an all new home of equivalent square footage.
@@marthamryglod291 So, you have never done so. I just did a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom DUPLEX... that is 2 ENTIRE HOUSES, for less than $60,000. Includes new sheetrock/paint over old lathe and plaster. ALL new plumbing, electrical, insulation, solid wood doors, new carpet, new paint, new blinds. Windows had already been done. Wood siding below 5 ft replaced with brick/stone mix. Will eventually get rid of the wood siding next time it needs painting and replace with concrete siding. Foundation was stone/concrete. Still to go: Basement needs some waterproofing, HVAC added for dehumidifying, and roof will eventually need replacing but it has a 50 year thick shingle currently, so just about when I am about to die, it will need to be replaced with something more permanent. So, another $40k and it is a a DUPLEX that will be good for 100+ years. A duplex I bought for $120,000, and am currently renting(1 side) for $1600/month or $3200/month both sides. And taxes? ~ $2500/year. The entire duplex has already paid for itself and whoever buys it after I die, will also be making big time bucks.
@@marthamryglod291 Yes, except you'll never be required to bring an existing home completely up to new standards. For example, remodeling a kitchen can reuse pretty much everything as is. But, if adding in a new sink or moving the location then the new work would need to meet new code. If you add on an addition then only the new additional area needs to meet new code and the rest can remain as it is. This is what's call 'grandfathered in'.
It’s mind blowing watching the American home renovation shows their standards and methods are so weird.
It's funny, because in the UK, we complain how poorly built new builds are, but what we're really referring to is the internal walls not being brick, like they are with older houses.
Then you look at American houses and the whole thing is made of wood! We really have nothing to complain about.
Yep, enjoy your tiny houses. I'll keep living in my 4 bedroom I got for 260k.
@@LuxRoyale yep, that can get destroyed by some tornado 😅 you'd think you'd want brick houses to withstand your crazy weather.
I've got a 4 bed detached and it cost 415k 🤮
My wood frame house has withstood the last four hurricanes here in south Louisiana . The worst that happened was a few shingles blew off the roof, not even enough to turn in to the insurance . It is surrounded in brick though, like most modern homes. @@Mattnozz