American reacts to how GERMAN HOUSES are made! (WOW)
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to GERMAN HOUSES vs AMERICAN HOUSES (why German houses are built better)
Original video: • Building a House | par...
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As a child, I believed the people punching holes in walls on American television must be frighteningly strong. Turned out, they were merely tearing through paper walls...
Probably everyone fell for that.
@@steemlenn8797
No, I just thought "weird house"..
Same, I always wondered how they did it without tearing the skin and breaking every bone in their hand.
and I thought, looking at our walls: where would jerry live inside that. because it's just solid, whereas in a wall in such a cartoon, there were practically extra rooms (for jerrys side).
(do I need to say the name of the cartoon series? by todays standards, they show an awful lot of derogatory descriptions of people).
Every time i see those nuke test videos i think of my house (wich by US standards would be a bunker...) and think about how much damage it would do to everything not glas
German garden sheds are built like American houses. 😂
Same thought
The sheds on our property are built way sturdier than the average american house but not as sturdy as our house.
German here.
My garden shed is made from thick, solid sandstone bricks xD
I think in general American houses are little more than glorified garden sheds in Europe full stop. I am convinced that the children's story "The Three Little Pigs" is not a thing in the USA though it is a 19th century English tale🙂
That's a bit harsh. Not wrong though.
I live in the center of a German city in a house with 12 apartments. Lately one of my neighbors lit his apartment on fire, it completely burned down and he had to be rescued trough a windows by the fire department. After the fire was under control the house had to be checked by an ingeneer for its stability. The house was safe and only the stairways and one apartment had to be renewed. All other families could enter their apartments 16 hours after the fire started. The house is made of bricks and concrete.
...Aachen?
Herr the same. House from the 60s. Burned multiple times.
Is it a house from before 1930?
imagine houses nowadays especially with multiple apartments are made to withstand a fireclass F90 ( basically the structure needs to withstand constant fire for minimum 90 minutes without giving up) other public buildings have sometime f120 thats like 120 minutes without breaking.
@@endoplasmatischesretikulum4999 from 1990
The difference is, when a storm hits a house in Germany, maybe a little damage on the roof, when a storm hits a house in the USA, no house left 😂
Furthermore when in the US houses are on fire, all is left is a chimney (in colder areas). In Germany the houses are still there. They just need a renovation😅
Remember the fire in Hawaii a few months ago? People could have survived that staying at home in European houses. In Hawaii thousands of houses were grounded! Nothing left than their fences made of bricks!
You build cheap, you receive cheap quality!
@@Anno_Nymouse I fully agree 🤣👍🍺🍻🍺
With the storms you can get in America even our German houses would turn into projectiles quite quickly
so true
Sad but true.
It's funny to see how Ryan is amazed by the bricks the house is build while that looks totally normal to me, while I'm still the same way amazed when I see how houses in the US are build with these wooden empty walls.
I thought of it as thin even...
Most garden sheds and garages in Europe are built much more strongly than houses in the US. I always wondered why...
"Bricks"... Looks like Ytong to me...
@@cyberfux nah its actual brick, I've seen these things, still look thin.
@@cyberfux No, those are definitely clay bricks. I know them first hand here in Austria. 🇦🇹
14:17 "Hey we got some wood" - Germans: "relax its only temporarily for the concrete pouring"
I find it funny that you mentioned the 3 Little Pigs.
'Cause if you remember the story:
The stone house was the one that survived.
the wolf will blow his lung out at this house😄
Yes, that was his joke.
i liked the house of the 4th pig the most though, made out of wolf skulls and bones - it's not as sturdy as stone, but it sends a message.
@@williamrockwood5234
🤣🤣🤣☝️😈
Ede Wolf left the chat.
XD
Your commentary makes me wonder how American houses hold heavy furniture like sofas, pianos and bath tubs without letting them fall through to the first floor 😅
I guess that stuff is all on the first floor. No bathing upstairs!
@@steemlenn8797
No! Most bath tubs are upstairs!
The walls are flimsy, but the floors are ok-ish.
Remember "The money pit" starring Tom Hanks? ^^
The house should have sort of a frame, with certain beams being loadbearing and the gaps in between closed with a flimsy filler, just like the drywalls we put into stone/cement houses in Germany not being as sturdy as the loadbearing brick/cement walls the outside and most inside walls are made of.
It also depends where exactly you are placing your stuff upstairs.
The upstairs floor can carry more weight closer to the walls where a bathtub gets usually installed than in the middle of a room.
It's not that there weren't any accidents because of this - some time ago I learned about an incident when some people build a pool on a rooftop and the whole thing collapsed because people are stupid and water looks "light" so people are prone to forget that a liter of water weighs 1kg.
A cube of 1x1x1 meter in lengths contains already 1000 liters and therefore weighs a ton so imagine what this pool must have weighed..
But it doesn't need a pool - accidents occured due to aquariums in the past because already a rather small beginner aquarium of 125 liter can easily weigh 300 kilograms and there isn't a limit in size.
americans be like: why are you using bricks? germans be like: I'm building a house, not a shed
I couldn't imagine living in an American paper house
good side is if you got angry and punch a wall you dont gonna have any injuries 👍 In Europe you breake your Hand
They live in shoe boxes.
On the upside, they are easily rebuild when damaged...
@@edgyguy7084 yes, because they fall apart quickly and easy 🙃
@@endorphinchen its easier to rebuild it then it is to restore a brick house...
Americans living in tornado alley: "Alright lemme just build myself a cardboard box to live in." Germans with a regular family house: "CONCRETE, STEEL AND LASER MEASUREMENT!"
It's funny that you said "US living in tornado alley" considering that Germany is Europe's tornado and storm alley
@@AlphaHorst Well our "tornados" are mostly a joke compared to most in the US. And we don't even notice most storms otherwise than "Maybe I shouldn't go outside at the moment.". I think that was meant by @miirami5761 ...
@yksnidog our tornados arw no joke... we simply did not build as much inside the tornado area.
A tornado in an open field will cause next to no damage. The same tornado entering a street with houses on both sides will ripp off the roof, deform windows and flip cars.
Are you perhaps confusing tornados with hurricanes?
A tornado is a localised event, usually lasting a few minutes to a few hours at best.
A hurricane usually forms over water(but they can also form over flat lands like a tundra) and wanders, often for days, before becoming a true "hurricane". They can last days and even weeks.
They also cover a vast area.
@@AlphaHorst We have mostly less than 30 tornados per year over land (not hurricanes). At best 15 F2 or F2 plus.
In the US when they call it a real Tornado they mean F3 or more. F0 to F2 where mostly not even reported if not by chance at places where they are measured. That's the one thing I had in mind.
The other one is: 81 are reported per year if you take half of Texas (an area nearly the size of Germany) which has the lowest Tornado rate within the Tornado Alley.
So yes: Ours are a joke to them. You can't say it is the same without being disrespectful to 71 killed by tornados per year in the US while the "Jahrhundertsturm Wiebke" (="Storm of the century named ") killed 64 people in the press in 1990, while in reality 35, which was even a hurricane to us. And yes Wiebke was an Beaufort 12. I know. But it was an Fujita F3.
So sorry but I can't also go with your argument we don't build where they are. Hurricane for example found its way from the Atlantic/France to Prague in 1999 and also did it's damage in Germany. From Munich in the south to Dresden in the central east. So half of Germany was involved in 1999.
So what you think of is a german "Windhose" while talking about an tornado. But that's most times just a vortex of wind which walks down the street and has some sand or leaves in it. And yes this can damage a german roof a bit. A Tornado is when you see the neighbors cow circling around and a dog is not fast enough to escape. Let's say it is a bit of another scope...
😂😂😂😂😂
Funny anecdote... a relative of mine emigrated to Florida. There he built himself a house using German brick construction. All the neighbors laughed at him for going to such lengths. Then Kathrina came along... while he had some damage to his roof (to be fair, over 1/3 of the shingles had to be replaced) and a window was broken, all the houses in the neighborhood were flattened. 🤷♂️
that's so sad...
I mean, yeah! I'm still wondering why a country with so many extreme weather conditions (tornados, hurricanes etc) is still building houses with literal cardboard
@@ecenbtI think, because it is much cheaper and faster. And most of them must have insurance
Also this is a reason why in US everyone has air conditioner while in Europe is not that common, cuz bricks do a good job stopping the heat to get in or out, so European houses are much more efficient in terms of having an appropriate temperature inside. As example on Germany with possible -20 degrees in winter is quite important have those thick walls in order to not lose the home's heat.
it also means you can heat only the bath/bedrooms and leave the kitchen to get warm when in use only.
also, once the doors close you've got significantly less noise.
Kurz um wir bauen am besten 🤷🏼♂️💪🏼
@@glenngrabow7816 aber wahrscheinlich auch am teuersten :-/
Much too expensive Here. It didnt even have a cellar... I think if you have a Million for a house, you retire and live in a 100k house happy though
I cant remember when we had -20 degrees here (near Dortmund). But yes brick walls are great to keep temperature comfortable.
Fun fact: Here in Germany, we don't walk on these concrete floors. We add a layer off acoustic insulation, than add another layer of finer rebar on top of that, along with floor heating usually these days, this is then poured in another 40mm (about 5/3 inch) of concrete, and on top of that we put wooden flooring or something. You would usually have to use heavy machinery or weaponry to go through a ceiling. However older houses often have wooden ceilings. These are made out of wooden beams 8 inches high and 4 inches wide (200mm x 100mm), one beam every half meter (3/2 feet); Flooring is then made out of wood at least 25mm or 1 inch thick, also from the underside it will be clad in wood and then be filled with clay.
Fun story: At the house of my mother in law I helped installing the doors for the shower. What they didnt tell me before was, that they had put their extra hardened floor tiles at the wall cuz they had leftovers. Since cutting was out of the line (the tiles where already in place) we had to drill through them... took us 2 days and 100€ worth of drill heads (extra hardened ones which are next best to diamond heads) and yes we used the inteded drilling speeds etc. We even had to work with 2 heads so that one could cool off while the other was in use xD
@@manuelvo1798 at some point I would have switched to a Duschvorhang^^
@@adrianfriedrich5622 Me 2 I guess, but it wasnt my house 😅
If you have floor heating you shouldn't add wood on top as it drastically reduces the efficiency. Best would be ceramic tiles or a thin layer of linoleum.
@@David_randomnumber No use going into too many details here...
I once actually had a tornado hit my village (in germany) and it went straight past a couple houses about 300ft away from my home and at 5am or so I could feel my bed shake a bit. That was the moment it passed by the other houses and the only damage that was caused was a couple roof tiles missing and one neighbour had a garden shed that was lifted out of his garden and thrown into his neighbours garden xD so literally just relocate the garden shed. But no houses were completly destroyed or even missing. The tornado even passed through a nearby forest and for comparison, it destroyed a lot of trees in the way that were all like an average 40cm (1'4") thick, it ripped clean through them but the houses just stood there like nothing has happened.
I read about that tornado! Ofc i dont wish to be hit by a tornado but i kinda wished i was at that part of germany Xd since i never saw a tornado before only on videos from stormchasers lol
@@Mapleshade... I didn't saw it either, that was the most action that I witnessed in my life. It's so damn quiet out here, nothing ever happens.
We do have houses made from plastic in Europe.... for kids to play 😂
... and the funny thing is. They're all designed and molded like an American house.
@@royvankan2723 Lego is a model for a propper German house.
5:13 that's why we don't get tornados often. They are afraid of our solid houses. 😂
and trailer parks attract tornadoes. everybody knows that.
Well, there's something else to it. Germans, Brits and Italians managed to "tame" Tornadoes and use them in their air forces. Gotta have some balls to do so! XD
actually germany has the most tornados in whole europe iirc.
Tornado in the US: "HAHAHA I GO WROOOOM!
Tornado in Germany: "Ouch! Hit my nose on another brick wall!"
trailer parks attract tornadoes. Everybody knows that.
Ryan zu zusehen ist immer so, als würde man ein Kind dabei beobachten, wie es die Welt entdeckt 😊
Und es gibt ja auch manchmal Tornados in Deutschland xD Er meinte ja es gäbe keine. Unser Haus hat nen Tornado abbekommen und es hat den Garten hart getroffen und paar Ziegel das wars xD. Wen er das wüsste ... xD
ich, eine Holländerin lebe seit 40 jahr in Tirol, bin zufällig bei RUclips auf Ryan getroffen...und habe mir dann einiges angeschaut...und du hast genau das geschrieben was ich dabei dacht! 😂 nicht böse, aber es ist so herrlich zum anschauen!
wenn er unser über 100 jahr altes haus sehen würde...oder die fotos von der renovierung...ich glaub da würde er gar nicht mehr ausm staunen heraus kommen, denn die wände sind 50 bis 60 cm dick! auch die innenwände!!
@@annemoritz578geht ja teilweise auch bis zu 1 meter
Swede here.
I have a college who where on a three year contract in US. While he lived there he made a hole in the garage from comming too close with the grass trimmer. It was just a few mm of plastic.
Blows my mind!
There's several scenes from American movies/shows where someone just punches a hole in the wall. If you punch a wall in Europe, you need a surgeon, not a handyman^^
@@hannahl.4494you would need a handman to fix your hand
I jus l
I’m Italian and am used to very sturdy brick buildings with thick walls ( usually) and good finishing ( like insulated windows and thick doors etc).
Many of the Romans ‘ constructions in bricks , just saying , survived more than 2.000 years! So every time I traveled to USA I was always surprised at the poor standard of their buildings, even in affluent neighborhoods.
The surprise on Ryan’s expression and his explanations regarding how American houses are built give me a better understanding why I had those impressions!
the remains of Romans can also be seen in Germany. Giant aquaducts like from the Eifel to Cologne, after nearly 2 millennia it's still there.
Ma che stai a di' che qua è tutto abusivo? 🤣
@@valeriogerardi9358 prima di tutto non dappertutto c’è abusivismo… secondo si parlava dei materiali e della qualità delle costruzioni non di problemi burocratici…. Magari capire l’argomento prima di rispondere potrebbe evitare risposte non pertinenti
@@valeriogerardi9358 prima di tutto l’abusivismo non è diffuso ovunque… secondo si parlava di metodo e materiali da costruzione non di problemi burocratici… un consiglio : prima di rispondere sarebbe utile capire l’argomento per evitare risposte non pertinenti
Well, many Roman buildings even exceed modern European build quality as they knew how to create everlasting, indestructible concrete, knowledge that has been lost.
I live in Switzerland in the city of Basel, the oldest house still inhabited today was built in 1269. In the same street there are a dozen more houses that were built before the 1300s, and further up there are a few that were built around the 1400s Most of them are inhabited or used as small shops.
I mean Swiss Houses are beasts. I dunno anyone that does construction as rediculously expensive as we do. I'd really wanna see Americans react to our construction.
funny how a lot of inhabitated houses in the EU are older than the USA :D
to be fair: while we do build solid houses, the methods have changed a lot. They had no steel concrete and laser measurements in the 13th century.
And also, survivor bias: over 99% of the 13th century houses were STILL destroyed.
now u know why we in germany say: "your houses in the us are made of paper"
At least our houses don't fly around the country when there's a bit of wind😂
@@torstengschwendtner9531 They also don't fly around if there is a lot of wind.
@@steemlenn8797they also don't fly around when hit by a tornado...
my garden shed is build sturdier than an american house
Must feel like camping all year long, living in an american house.
It's often overlooked that buying a house - or building it for this matter - is a very different matter in the US and in Germany.
In the US, a house usually is purchased for a certain phase in life.
In Germany, it's built as a forever home and to be passed down to coming generations.
@@Relex_92 especially the rich people that benefit off the 50% or so peopl that can't afford a house ...
I don't believe that to be actually true.
You hear a lot about moving around, but only from certain professions like "Army families".
Meanwhile Muricans also whine all the time about losing value from e g. Zoning changes as their houses were bought as long term investments or inheritance wealth...
Feels like one of those movie clichés for vast shares of the population.
Our house is from 1894 and my friends live in a house vom 1452 (50 years before Americe was discovered) which has a basement from 1110.
So yes, for generations.
We are renovating hubby’s grandparents house too and we’re pretty sure one of our daughters will want to keep it too. So really made to last for generations.
@@dirk_walter They really should have waited a year more to build that basement!
In Germany, more people rent appartments than buying of building a house. For most middle class people, building a house is a "once in a lifetime" experience.
The German style is: building for eternity. There is more investment in insulation because the price for energy is enormous. In addition the roof has clay bricks. They are more stable and flexible during storm and hard rain. The inside walls are made by bricks for sound insulation and static stability. Therefore you have to plan the wiring, heat and water supply near perfection because you have to open the brick wall fore changing some stuff. At the end it is more economical, quieter and solid. Like I said: German style...
We build houses in a similar way in the UK. We use blocks and then bricks on the outside with a thermal insulation in between.
We don't have crawl spaces under our houses.
The " slab" is called the FOUNDATIONS. Everything gets built on top of it.
You can't use PLASTIC to clad a house in the UK !! It's a fire hazard !
That's another common method in Germany as well. I prefer it, because you don't damage the insulation when you drill a hole in the wall.
@@PotsdamSenior in Denmark it's not uncommon to add another layer of drywall for the inside, especially for rentals, because it makes it cheap and easy to allow tenants to hang stuff on the walls.. easy to repair or replace.
Common in germany?
Whoa its the old method😂
Only the insulation material was air.
"Verklinkern" is older than my grandpa was. Most of the northgerman houses are build so.
@@Dennis-Hinz Sure! A method being old doesn't mean it's not common!
Depends on the plastic, in Germany we have that as well, its fireproof plastic.
Some people like me however just put metal there...
14:15 - "Hey, we got some wood"
Sorry to disappoint you - that's only temporary, to keep the concrete in shape.
At the German city that I was born in, there was a tornado a couple of years back. I have never heard of tornados in Germany before. Thick trees were unrooted, glass broken in some places and the roof tiles were swept off a few roofs but the buildings structure was mostly unharmed.
"I have never heard of tornados in Germany"
Germany is Europes Tornado Alley, category 3 isn't uncommon. It just, that a tornado (Windhose etc) normally only causes damage as you describe, with upper end being damaged walls from vehicles picked up by the wind. As such, it isn'T that newsworth compares to the same tornado in the US ripping through Toothpick-ville.
I'm always amazed at the shitty houses in America 😂
@@ogkendrick6392 Because you are superficial. Their houses are three times larger than a European one, and it would cost three times as much to build as brick. In the USA, building space is not as much of a problem as in Europe.
@@erosgritti5171 Blablabla big dollhouse dunkeyballs ahh build quality
Kiel?
Because Ryan was amazed at the reinforced concrete ceilings: in Austria (and I assume most of Europe) the are minimum loads per square meter that the floor needs to be able to hold. In Austria that's 500 kg/m2
Edit: and yes, houses in Europe are built to last
Its normal for us but its severe weather that makes it necessary to build very tough overhere in Europe.
In the Alps you have avalages, rockslides and lots of snow, and here at the coast ( Northsea ) heavy huricane like storms and heavy rains are a thing.
A typical US wooden frame house would be crusched in Austria and water/sand blasted to pieces at the coastline of Europe.
@@obelic71 I've been in many cat4+ hurricanes in a wooden house. I have my doubts about your extreme generalization. The only damage this house ever took was the garbage can falling over outside.
@@KonglomeratYT In another comment you said, that you lived your whole life in a brick house in NYC 🤔
@@obelic71 there are arguments for cheap constructions though. For example if you live in the tornado alley. European style houses would also be destroyed but much more expensive to rebuild
@@KonglomeratYT Hurricanes and Typhoons are a different type of severe weather. (Several times experienced them on a ship and oil platform)
In Europe we have due to the English channel and Baltic sea a funnel/ supercharger effect on heavy storms/hurricanes comming from the Atlantic.
The Northsea is the most violent stretch of waterway because of this.
The pulsing intermediate windgusts who can come from different directions under a minute, those are the killer.
It slowly beats every sort of construction to pieces.
When a hole/ crack is formed in a construction and the wind gets hold on it even a heavy concrete structures will fail.
The light builds like Sheds, gardenhouses, holiday homes are the one who colapse the first.
The scandanavian type of wooden construction is a mix.
Sturdy thick wooden planks (like a log cabin) as walls with thick wooden shingle or fired brick tiled roof.
My German cousins have told me that after the WW II the new German government made a law that all new buildings had to be made out of sturdy non-flammable materials, such as concrete or concrete blocks and steel. Wood can be used in the interior but all exterior materials had to be non-flammable. During the war entire cities were destroyed by bombs. The new government believed that if another major war were to ever occur, the destruction would be minimized and any damage would be less costly and easier to repair. If someone insists on building a house out of wood, there is a lot of red-tape and expense involved, and can take years to get the permits and permission to build. When I visited relatives nearly 8 years ago, we watched a new development being constructed. All of the beams were steel. No wood.
You have to look at it this way, there were fires in Germany, especially in the Middle Ages, that destroyed entire cities, which is why there were ever stricter rules for building houses
The total steel frame roof made it on our house voluntarily and for storm protection.
2:19 "are they building a house or a fricking castle?"
When I was a child I once asked my dad why no adult would build a blaket castle on their own, his answer: "Unser Haus ist aus Stein und Holz, also ist es auch iegendwie ein Schloss für Erwachsene." Still warms my heart to today
My home is my castle!
@@__christopher__ Wie heißt das doch bei den Amis immer? My home is my kassler!
That's a nice story to remember ☀️
We actually get tornadoes, but we also get "Fallböen" which are basically a huge amount of air falling from a rather high layer in our atmosphere at full speed. Those can cut down entire forests and American houses easily and also bring hailstorms with them, and we need our houses to be this sturdy to survive them. Also, we love our privacy and peace.
In fact Germany has dozens of tornadoes every year. Klingt komisch, ist aber so.
(They are less strong so it's seldom if something gets destroyed)
@@steemlenn8797 True
@@steemlenn8797 Wasn't it just a year ago that there was this big tornado around Paderborn?
My town is pretty safe but sure that one crossed news.
@@MegaManNeo yup. I live in the Paderborn area and there was massive damage due to the tornado in Paderborn and Lippstadt, it was scary.
A "windhose" is not a tornado ;-)
As a construction site leader in Germany seeing this house made is like a regular ,imagine they have way harder bricks "Kalksandstein" KS Quadro for example , they are like 498 x 240 x 498 mm and weigh around 100 kg / Brick ,also there are houses made out of concrete with Rebar, i would love to see his reaction on this type of construction. Usually houses in Europe are made to last.
I live in a 240 year old stone house with walls 3 ft thick, its foundation is on bedrock. Just had the original stone roof replaced with a welsh slate one so it is good for a few more centuries :) We feel privileged to be part of this house's history and life (I live in Scotland)
Sounds like a castle. 🙂
240 years old by Italian standards, it is a modern house
@@erosgritti5171😅
Most of the older houses in germany have a cellar too.
I wouldn't accept a house without a cellar
A cellar is very expensiv to build according to my father.
Most modern ones as well. But that depends on where you built, the ground must make that possible.
@@lunamorgenstern9107depends on the ground. The more rocky it is the more expensive it gets, my house has one but it was necessary to get a Demolition Master in because my house is built directly on and into granite... Well no wind in the world is blowing my house away...
Most houses across Europe have cellars
LOL, people here (and not only the Americans) are acting as if this was some unique German style. The whole of Europe builds houses from proper materials.
The funny thing is that in the past Americans argued among other things that their "houses" are much more affordable due to cheaper materials used. But nowdays the same cardboard hovels sell in California for almost a million bucks.
Houses in Germany and Austria usually musy be build to be energy efficient (we even give Energy ratings for buildings), must resist temperatures between -40 to +100°C and windspeeds up to 200hm/h. If those conditions are not met, you get problems with the regulators
We are living in a house that was built 200 yrs ago. Solid rock foundation, all brick and mortar for the exterior walls, wood beams and straw-clay fillings 'Fachwerk' for the interior walls. The wooden roof construction is 90% still the original beams. House got hit by a heavy storm last year, lost a few tiles in the roofing. Got them replaced and slotted back in. Repair took about an hour.
You do need a metric ton of WiFi Repeaters to get a signal across though. :)
Feeling you, living in a house built 500 yrs ago. The same case. You only have WiFi in adjacent room to the router.
In Germany they don't build houses out of matches like in the USA. The prices for these are not even half of those in the USA.
The whole point of thermal insulation is not needing AC and only requiring some low-energy heating. I live in Slovakia, our newly built houses usually have brick walls about 16 inches thick PLUS additional thermal insulation around the walls at least another 8 inches thick (quite often whole 16 inches). Energy-efficient windows present another important element of house-insulation (both thermal and sound as a nice side-effect as well).
Though at some point that introduces new challenges. Passive houses are basically airtight, which requires some kind of ventilation to not suffocate and prevent molding, while exchanging as less heat with the outside as possible.
@@D4BASCHTyeah, and ventilation systems can have about 90% heat recovery, so they're a lot better than having to open a window...
@@D4BASCHT I am facing this exact issue in Germany. The apartment is very well insulated, so I have to open the windows often to keep the humidity under 52%.
@@D4BASCHT Heat exchanging ventilation and air recirculation has been a thing for decades.
It's almost standard already in newly built low energy buildings in France.
@@Soken50 Yes, it’s neither an issue. I just wanted to say that it makes other things more complicated. It only becomes an issue for old houses who get their insulation improved, since you either need per room ventilation and drill multiple holes into the exterior wall or slit up the walls and put pipes into them to retrofit central ventilation.
I love your fascination with our German houses, but I have to note that the house shown in the video is just a "basic model". Most German houses have basements and are even more stable. In Germany there are construction engineers who statically calculate whether the house has been designed to be stable enough. After the calculations, the plan of the house goes to the building authority where the house is checked for hundreds of laws and only when everything is approved can the house be built. (Verifying the legality of the house can take several years. ) During construction, the house is inspected by the "building authority". Those were just a few facts... I hope this helps. Warm greetings from Germany🖐 (I really like your videos. They really helping me to improve my English knowledge.)
Yes, if you want a custom home, it can be expensive and take a long time to get approved. However, these complex approval procedures only apply to houses that are specifically built as individual copies. Most of the homes that are built are series homes that you choose from a catalog and have built. This eliminates the need for complex testing because the house series has already been tested and approved. It is only checked whether the specifications of the construction plans and statics are adhered to during construction.
Those are not German houses, popular technology everywhere in continental Europe apart of Scandinavia and UK
@@era3477 I never ruled out that this procedure is similar in other countries. So I can't understand why they feel so "attacked" now. This was just a report for those who don't know this from their home country.
@@era3477 Yes, exactly, you can't just refer to this construction method to Germany, in principle it applies to the whole of Europe that, apart from Scandinavia, stone construction was predominantly used. The materials that were regionally available were used. In rocky areas, limestone, sandstone, volcanic stone or granite stones were used. In areas without rocks, people took clay and to bake hard bricks in kilns. It was also logical that wood was used for building in northern Scandinavia. There were enough of them. But when I see a Scandinavian durable wooden house, there are huge differences to a US wooden house made of lightweight construction. My partner lives in Germany in a wooden house settlement that was built around 1900 by Finns for German Navy employees. These houses are still as strong and healthy as they were 120 years ago. The same applies to Swedish and Norwegian wooden houses, some of which are 200 or 300 years old. In principle, you cannot say that wooden houses are worse than stone houses. It depends on how you build them.
Hello, let me tell you this, I come from Poland and the same system is used in my country, usually to build a building such as a house. As in the video, it will take up to 30 days to reach the so-called closed, unfinished state, which means higher workloads, do the electrical, plumbing inside, etc., average, such a time construction of a building, i.e. up to three months from ready for occupancy
and the costs are roughly around $300,000, it would cost to build such a building, maybe a little more if you want extras
it is known that in each European country the wages are different, so each country also has different prices for building a building - for example, in Germany, building such a building is about EUR 1 million
Pozdrawiam😉
A german house without a basement? That's really not typical.
The house in the video is an "El Cheapo" variant - without a cellar and a set up roof with no additional rooms there. A cellar would add at about +25 percent to the costs and is also made of a concrete bottom plate - and stone walls in most cases. If not concrete too. *These* people there will have little to no internal storage rooms as with a cellar (for heating, freezer, installation, sauna, air-raid bunker etc.). All will have to fit in the appartment(s). And no "dry space" for the washing under the roof. Moooh !
I live in a similar house (rented). We have a big garage instead of the cellar. Since we have a heatpump outside it doesn’t take up any space.
Yeah, agreed. This is actually a below-average variant for a family home in Germany. My grandparents' house (on my mother's side) actually had an additional insulating outer wall of bricks, but I'm not sure anymore which material it was. It also had a huge cellar with several rooms (for storage aswell as for the central heating system and for a hobby room with another smaller room attached for drying clothes during bad weather). So there are definitely more expensive versions of family homes out there.
Sorry they didn't build a cellar for you to imprison some girls from the neighborhood.
Cellars were built to store food and keep it cool. Nowerdays we have fridges and supermarkets, so nobody needs to build that expensive shit unless you really need a swimming pool every time there's heavy rain.
Drying your clothes under the roof is also a very stupid idea. There's a way better place for it called "outside".
"You guy's don't even get tornados right?" Yes we do, not as common as in US and not as big but since global warming it's more common. Also earthquakes in south Germany, you get special requirements when you build there. And we have flooding all over the country. And don't forget the wildfire's. But i think the main reason we build with bricks is for better temprature control. When i was a kid in the 90's we had sometimes below -20°C and 50cm snow in just a day, and in summer about 30°C are common so it's just cheaper in long term i think when you don't need to active heat or cool your house. And they last for ever if they don't get hit by a bomb.
The reason why the AI script constantly uses "it" is probably because they machine-translated a German script...
"It starts at the corners" for example seems like a very direct translation of "Es beginnt an den Ecken" or something similar. Which still is awkward phrasing but it's not uncommon to indirectly refer to a process in German as the subject by using the third person singular neuter "es", literally "it"...
If you get your hands on any serious teaching book or instructions how to build anything technical, that phrase "Es beginnt ...", like a bad written fantasy script ... you should demand your money back!:) And immediately inform the responsible craft guild should impose a contractual penalty and immediately throw the grammar offender out of the association. Why an A.I. does translate things the way they do is because there IS NO INTELLIGENCE at all. They probably(that word is even a hint, hehe) mix and hallucinate every kind of mismatched and unrelated information from their stolen sources into the result, we where witnesses of. So there is a high chance that the wording is really PART of some fairy tale or fantasy story. Shouldn't this be a warning sign? A really big red one warning sign!
In fact, those minutes we watched are a completely wasted time. We have to go through every single point and fact check that ... or just be stoopid as always and believe the nonsense that will hurt us later, when we make decisions based on our wrong understanding and half-knowledge, for example if someone decides to built a house and has this misinformation here as a background, transported by a non expert watching a video(!) and a effing A.I!. Of course that is unrealistic. Even the stupidest under us have to consult an expert and go through approval processes when building a house (fingers crossed! hehe).
@@dieSpinntObviously for technical manuals that isn't appropriate xD But I wouldn't be surprised if a professional wrote a RUclips video script like that
@@dieSpinntIch glaube, Ihre Ansprüche an dieses Video sind etwas zu hoch.
This construction method also answers the question why most houses in this regions don't come with airconditioning. The interior of these bunker houses remain cool for most of the summer.
Depends on the duration of heating days and the insulation of windows. Many people only invest for simple window insulation. When you have a heat period for a week and temperatures are even high at night, it's pretty warm inside.
I guess, we Germans and also majority of Europeans are building such houses to avoid fire scenarios like back in 14th till 20th century, when half of towns were destroyed by fires.
Just have a look how fires in Hawaii a few months ago erased some towns, because every single house ignited pretty fast and spread the fire to the next house.
Imagine these numbers in the past (lower population).
Bremen 1041 - majority of historic city destroyed
Vienna 1276 - 2/3 of town destroyed
Munich 1327 - 1/3 of town destroyed
Berlin (Center) 1378 & 1380 - majority destroyed
Einbeck 1540 - whole town erased
Arnstadt 1581 - 378 buildings destroyed
Madgeburg 1631 - 1500 buildings destroyed
Aachen 1656 - 4664 buildings destroyed
London 1666 - 13000 houses/87 churches destroyed
Oldenburg 1676 - just a few buildings left
And this is just till 17th century with larger town. Who knows how many more villages were destroyed by fire without being documented.
As long as you aren't running any electronic like computers but only for small rooms. I sadly don't have an extra room for my computer at the moment.
A little anecdote about my parents' house, which was shaken by a sudden and short earthquake in the 1990s: The roof, almost 200 tons of double concrete shingles, oak beams and insulation materials, flew vertically up some inches and fell perfectly back in place. Except a huge booming and shaking and of course terrified inhabitants, no damage happened to the structure🙂
Tornados are extremely rare in Germany, but not actually nonexistent - one went through a couple of smaller towns near me a few years back. It actually mostly de-shingled some roofs and wrecked fences and stuff. Some buildings were damaged by falling trees and there were a lot of broken windows from airborne debris, but all in all, the towns were left standing.
Well, a house in Germany costs around 2 times what a house costs in the US.
But even that is a scam to ask so much for a house made of toothpicks, cardboard and (plastic!?!) paneling!!
To call them "Houses" in the U.S. is a joke ! 😂😂
Punshing into a wall in Germany, when being frustrated or angry, is not the best idea :D
Not all German houses are built from pre-insulated bricks like that, in fact they seem to be quite a new kind of brick.
Our multi-family house (cellar, 2 regular stories and 1 story in the attic with sloped ceilings) was built in 1990 with “perforated” bricks (YTON).
Most houses today are still built with similar bricks and then heavily insulated outside.
Some inside walls are made out of drywall, mostly remodeled rooms and rooms below the attic.
Yes, construction methods are constantly changing as new building materials are constantly being invented. What has remained the same, however is, that the houses are still stone houses. My house, for example, dates back to the 1960s. The outer walls are made of sand-lime brick, which is clad on the outside with a layer of fired red bricks. There is rock wool insulation between the inner and outer parts of the different layers. The interior walls consist exclusively of plastered sand-lime brick. From the 1970s/80s onwards, sand-lime brick was often replaced by expanded concrete blocks (Yton), as this enabled faster and more cost-effective construction. However, I doubt that Yton houses will last as long as sand-lime brick houses.
Yton"Porenbeton" is a brigg with a lit of airbubbles in it. So it has a good insulatiin an compare to the clay brigg it can absorbe moisture.
The inside wall are mostly from "Kalksandstein" it is much heavier to insulate agains sound...and it is more concrete, so tge wall can be thinner
Der Punkt ist doch aber das in Deutschland üblicherwe mit Stein gebaut wird und in USA mit Holz und Pappe 😅 ist doch egal welche Art von Steinen.
these hollow briks are pretty much the norm for most type of normal houses for 1to 4 familys.
for bigger constructions u would use steel and concreate.
and some older buildings u can see full briks.
we also have ready houses. whole rooms,Walls will be delievered in one piece. So you can have a whole house in 3 days. inside the Walls Are made of Rigips, Pflaster of Paris...and when you knock hard on such a wall, there is hole in.
My house, built in 2005, has a full basement! The floor slab (156m²) in the basement is made of steel-reinforced solid concrete. The thickness is between 25-30cm. In the area of the chimney, the foundation was reinforced to support the weight of the double chimney (height from the base plate 12m). I built the outside walls in the basement with 36cm thick concrete blocks! The masonry is plastered inside and out! The outer wall, if it is underground, was coated with a sealant and additionally covered with studded mats to protect against moisture. The room height in the basement is 280cm because I wanted to have a hobby workshop, a guest room and a bathroom with a toilet! The rest is a storage room, a utility room, a technical room with heating and a tank room. Cold protection insulation was laid between the concrete slab and the screed.
The ground floor was built with 40cm thick Poroton stones (honeycomb clay stones)! These stones have good insulation and moisture diffusion properties! The room height is identical to the basement. The false ceilings are made of 20cm thick reinforced concrete. A combined impact sound and cold protection insulation was installed between the concrete ceiling and screed. The attic has the same ceiling height and is fully usable in the dormer area. The knee height for the roof beams is 130cm. The stage above the attic has a ceiling height of 225cm and could be used as additional living space by extending the dormer window. The roof beams are completely boarded and have 18cm thick insulation. The roof was covered with heavy concrete tiles. The shell construction and interior work were carried out entirely by the family (my father was a master bricklayer)! The electrical work was planned and carried out by my father-in-law, for example 1,800m of empty pipe was installed in the ceilings and walls to meet current and future requirements. The house is heated with a combined thermal solar-oil central heating. In addition, the heating system is supported by a tiled stove on each floor. Two of the tiled stove wood burner inserts are directly integrated into the central heating system using a water pocket.
I have to say that the high construction costs have made these dimensions almost impossible. Even back then, this was only possible with the active support of the family. I was fortunate to have some professionals among friends and family. In the Swabian house-building region, this was not uncommon at the time. Unfortunately, a lot has changed here in the last few years. New houses are mostly prefabricated houses produced by the industry, which are also completely assembled by assembly companies. Fewer and fewer young people have the courage and technical skills to carry out such projects. The new houses are increasingly being built without basements and smaller, depending on the financial and personal effort! The basementless buildings can be recognized after a few years by the amount of additional storage sheds that have been built around the house.
greetings from Germany, Our house has been standing since 1915 and even survived an unexploded bomb attack during the Second World War
The forgot the cellar! Basically every house i jor friends) owned had a cellar under the whole house, made out of concrete. It’s needed for all the stuff you don’t want to clutter up your home, the heating and the obligatory small workshop to repair things 😁
well, in northern germanys coastregion there are rarley basements because the ground is to soft and to wet. So its a regional thing.
@@hegamona2864 depends. I‘m quite often in the north, last time in horumersiel as an example, and there was a basement (in fact even a studio basement) there. Cheaper houses (and in regions with very wet ground) obviously don’t have cellars, but i think most houses in Germany hav3 them…
uh, horumersiel, my region. sure, we have basements there, rarley. but they are often a trouble. right now im in the black forest and ive never seen a house without a basement, while up north its more common. Guess it depents on the one who commisioned the house. @@erebostd
@@erebostd older houses yes. Newer ones use them less than before since a basement in the wet ground is more expensive to build than just having the same space in 1st floor and 2nd floor. Safety regulations to prevent water damage are really expensive. I still want one. If I ever in my life get enough money to buy one. Not too likely with nowadays prices and salary. Working in the natural science department.
I can only dream of having working conditions like the deutsche bahn train drivers. I work more for less salary and have to do overwork a lot more frequently than the lowest level of train divers there. At least I'm already far above average on salary in my company where we create newest technology genetically modified immune system cells to treat cancer.
No longer the norm. The house I live in has a garage instead. As for heating: the heat pump is outside anyway.
Building with hollow blocks is practically the standard in Germany, but prefabricated wooden components have been established for years, especially for single-family houses and, for example, house extensions such as additional floors.
There are various companies that specialize in creating absolutely precisely fitting individual elements that are then literally puzzled together. Very special filling material is often used that is blown into holes in the walls and creates extremely good insulation. This makes the entire construction relatively light but also very stable, so that the lower house structure is subjected to less strain, especially when adding more storeys. Maybe you can also find good video material to explain it.
I'm in germany now and I'm trying to figure out how to build a German style house back home. I love my floor heating, roladens, windows, and doors that can't be kicked in. Also no looking for studs when hanging tvs. I just hang it.
You can find a video of a T4 Tornado going through a Czech village here on youtube, the only damage done is to some roofs being lifted off and windows shattering from debris.
The more modern houses can even survive a Tree being thrown at them by a Tornado, as they are made from rebar concrete and modern insulation, you could drive a train into them and they´d still be standing mostly.
We do have Tornadoes here in germany as well, but they rarely do extensive damage and don´t get as big as compared to America, due to terrain and the way we build.
In the Netherlands the construction is fairly similar with the exception that in the west we first have to drill large concrete poles in the ground so the houses don’t sink in the marshy/clay/peat soil. The average length of these poles is 5-10 meters (16-32ft) but can be over 30m long, before they hit a solid sand layer.
U heeft paalfundering , in België wordt dit gebruikt als men op een kleibodem bouwt , in onze streek hebben we zowel een klei als zand ondergrond , ik heb het geluk dat ik in een duinenregio zit en mijn huis enkel een ringfundering benodigd van 70 cm tot een meter.
@@sergevereecke680 Klopt, we noemen ze hier heipalen. In België ook?
M’n huidige huis staat ook op duinzand, maar m’n vorige huis amper 10 km verderop stond op klei grond en had heipalen van 11 meter.
@@sergevereecke680 Dank DEEPL dat ik je beter heb kunnen begrijpen: You have pile foundation , in Belgium this is used when building on a clay soil , in our region we have both clay and sand soil , I am fortunate to be in a dune region and my house only requires a ring foundation from 70 cm to a meter.
@@anouk6644 Dank DEEPL dat ik je beter kon begrijpen - zoals je zei: True, we call them piles here. In Belgium too?
My current house is also on dune sand, but my previous house barely 10 km away was on clay soil and had piles of 11 meters.
I'd like to add this: In the 1980s in Idar-Oberstein/Germany, I was shown a building built over a swamp for which a kind of hemispherical concrete basin had to be poured under the foundation before a building permit could be issued. I think that this added a high percentage to the actual construction costs.
The other exception is that we put a ton of conduits and junction boxes for the electrical installation, ventilation ducts and sewage pipes on the concrete floor in between the rebar before they pour it.
That's why germans are always stunned when they see in american movies that people shoot through the walls of houses...
Wir alle kennen die Videos wo jemand mit der Faust ein Loch in ein Gipskarton " Wand" kloppt.
Das kann man gerne mal hier probieren.Alles gute bei der Heilung, der Gebrochenen Knochen.
😂😂😂
Bei einem alten Fachwerkhaus mit lehmwänden gibt es nur blutige Knöchel nach einem ordentlichen Schlag
@@deathtrooper7760 Tooooll 🤦♀
An average ceiling for a 10m x 10m house weighs around 50 tons ;) there are 2 of them, the floor slab itself weighs another around 60 tons and the masonry + plaster + roof 100 tons. So a normal small German house weighs about 250 tons ^^
The fact that americans call plywood, plastic and some screws with a roof on it a 'house' baffled me when I found out as a teen. Brickhouses are build to withstand decades and even centuries and only need some new roofing and Windows after some time. I understand that americans build their 'houses'like this because it's cheaper to rebuild this way BUT even if tornados aren't frequent and usual in germany they CAN happen and after one his a smaller City, only the room and windows had some damage. In america the whole house would be GONE
12:58 Here in germany there is a norm for everything. For example, there might be a bathroom on the upper floor and it might have a bathtub which usually holds 170 litres of water. Ad the person in the tub and the weight of the tub itself and you see why that concrete ceiling must be able to support a weight of 500kg/m2.
We live in a former farmhouse in Germany that was originally build in 1806. Okay -- modernized several times, energetically upgraded, but still -- 2 1/2 feet of brick walls indeed a build to last. And while we rarely have tornados (but increasingly so) we do have the occasional hurricane grade winter storm. Usually we merely loose a few roof shingles (heavy duty clay thingsthat weigh about 10 lbs each) during one of those.
Nein, wir haben auch heute keine Tornados oder Hurrikane. Das ist eine ganz andere Liga.(Nicht alles glauben, was die linksgrünen Journalisten so labern.)
As a european, I always wondered why americans continue building wooden shacks where there are tornadoes. Having cities wiped off the map each time a tornado pass by, seems not the good way to do things to me. (sorry for the bad english, I do my best)
Hello german dude here =D Just so you know how far german house-building has come... My dad added 4 rooms to our house when i was a child about 23 years ago, with some old army friends who became masons. The addition to the house has been certified to survive a crash from a small airplane. And there is pretty much no spots in a german-build house you cant park a heavy duty pickup without causing damage to the stability of the house.
triple-negative? Difficult, difficult 🤔
But you could also park an pickup in the upper floors, if you could get it there 😂
We generally prefer to have a full basement. Building a house on a concrete slab without a basement is chosen for financial reasons only. There is no crawl space underneath. All the plumbing and electrical connections are in the soil under the slab and penetrate through the slab into the house (when there's a basement, the generally enter it through the wall). The underground installation is designed to keep functional without maintenance for the lifetime of the house, which easily is 200 years. It has to be designed that way because you can't get down there and repair it.
A brick house is able to withstand tornados without collapsing. There will be a lot of damage especially to the roof, but the masonry and concrete will sustain the tornado almost undamaged. It's easier to repair than to start from scratch.
A huge advantage of these thick, hollow bricks is, they offer perfect insulation. The house needs no additional wall insulation.
The reinforced concrete ceilings are very strong. For example, you can place a fish tank up to 450 liters (100 US gallons) wherever you want.
Not every German house is designed that way. There are different styles of wooden construction too. From almost American style wooden framing to solid(!) wooden walls. Wooden houses usually have wooden ceilings. The so called Fertighaus (ready built house) uses wooden framing too. It comes in large, factory-made parts that barely fit on a truck and gets assembled by crane within a day or two. Almost everything needed is pre-installed in the parts, you can move in as soon as the crane finished work.
There are hybrid designs too, with outer walls in stone masonry and internal walls made from lightweight wooden framing and wooden ceilings. You can get what you want as long as it's structurely sound and fits the energy efficiency requirements.
In France, american houses are illegal to build. They don't have all the fire security measures.
Aside of that you are not allowed to build houses with "very low thermic insulation".
When I went to the US, I was afraid to break the walls by just pushing on them. You don't have that fear in european houses as they are built correctly!
And no our houses are not made to survive nuclear attack, just more than 20 years...
Houses here are hell expensive
Btw.. we have Tornados in Germany... think they are a little smaller, than in the US usually... but as our houses are build like this and you also have integrated blinds on the windows. During "a storm" we just go inside and close the blinds... most of the time nothing happens... rarely a few tiles from the roof are blown off - that's it.
a well insulated Home (thick walls triple layer Windows,...) not only keeps noise out... but also in. May it playing Children, loud singing or a Couples private time.... a good insulation filters alot of Noise.
Wenn Sie in so einem Haus mal gelebt haben, wollen Sie nie wieder was Anderes. Geräusche von außen sind, selbst bei einer stark frequentierten Straße, sehr leise und kaum wahrzunehmen. Innen bieten die Wände die Möglichkeit, das Haus stabil und sturmfest zu machen, und um Sachen auf der Wand aufzuhängen, muss man zwar schauen, dass man keine elektrische Leitung oder ein Wasserrohr beschädigt, aber ansonsten kann man Überall was Schweres aufhängen. Dazu ist der Schall zwischen den Zimmern sehr gut isoliert. Und ja, wenn bei uns mal ein Sturm weht, dann ist sehr häufig nur das Dach beschädigt, wenn überhaupt. Das hängt vom Gewicht der Dachziegel und der Konstruktion des Daches ab. Vom Sicherheitsaspekt her gesehen, wären Stein-Häuser für euch empfehlenswerter in manchen Gegenden. Überall da wo Schießereien zwischen Banden, oder Nachbarn, die sich nicht leiden können, stattfinden können, wäre so ein Haus sinnvoller. Bei uns hier brauchen wir keine Angst haben, dass wen draußen jemand herumballert, eine Kugel eventuell durch die Wand gehen könnte. Und ja auch hier in Deutschland kommt man an Waffen und Munition ran, wenn man es möchte, nur nicht legal, aber es geht. Ich habe jetzt zwar ein wenig ausgeholt aber letztendlich spart diese Bauweise den Bewohnern bares Geld. Die Heizkosten sind sehr niedrig, und auf wenn das komisch klingt, im Sommer braucht man die Klimaanlage weniger, da eine gute Isolation in beide Richtungen wirkt. Im Winter bleibt es warm und im Sommer, dauert sehr lang bis die Außentemperaturen das Innere des Hauses aufwärmen. Grüße aus Deutschland. :)
Places like California or whole of Japan are prone to earthquakes, thus timber framing makes a lot of sense. To accomplish concrete or brick house with similar resistance gets expensive really quickly since you need dampers.
I live in a house in France that is built in 1964 and the wall are in stone (calcite block or in french "pierre de taille") and the interior walls are build with concrete blocks with a mortar between them and 3 cm of plaster on top of it. My outside wall (wall that you can see from outside the house) have a thickness of 55 cm and inside support wall have width of 25 and non support wall have a width of 12 cm. and I got concrete floor even with the attic floor then we have wood just for the roof and tiles made of cooked clay or slate tiles in some aera in Europe.(more on the mountainous area). In term of prices we can have a good house around 175 000 € to 350 000 € for 100 m² (1076 sq.ft) to 250 m² (2690 sq.ft) but price can be lower or higher depending on the location where you want to live. And other point is fire, when our houses burn you still have the skeleton of the house (what you can see on the video so to rebuild it it is much faster you have only the roof and the wall to re-done not the all house.
In Germany we don't frequently get tornadoes but we do get very strong winds that are called Orkan. Those can rip out trees and cause general mayhem, so buildings still need to be sturdy.
Whole Europe is built like that. Houses can last hundreds of years.
In Germany we put plaster and antimycotic paint on inside walls, or wallpaper, and whitewash over brickwork in cellars. Usually, the concrete of the floor is covered by either a wooden plank floor on top or by wall to wall carpets glued to the concrete... or in cheaper apartments, floor screed is used. In kitchens and bathrooms, screed or stone floor tiles are common, with glazed ceramic tiles on the walls in places you expect a lot of water platter from showering or moisture from cooking.
Germans do not consider many American houses to be "real houses".
A "full" German house has a full-size cellar, then the ground floor and then one upper floor. Above that we build the roof, often in such a way that there is usable storage space beneath it OR the potential for further livable space.
Houses with only one floor we call a Bungalow (yes, the American word) and it is considered a second rate home, chosen mostly for economic reasons.
At the core Germans build a house for the family, we love to think that we will die of old age in this house we build and that our Family will live in this house for the next 2-3 centuries...
We know that this is unlikely but still we build for that.
i don't agree with bungalows being "second rate homes". many people love the 60s/70s style of bungalows. where I'm from in the south, the bungalows are often located in the nicer neighborhoods on hillsides. for me personally, it is my dream to have a hillside bungalow, not a standard new single family home. i would never spend money on the style of house in this video, but i am saving for a bungalow down payment.
@@chegu613
That is fair and well.
How we build our houses is a question of resources, culture and environment.
I once heard a German who lives in the US say, that Germans build the sturdier houses but American ones are more aesthetic...
You mention the three little pigs tale, at the beginning.
American houses are built like the second pig, European houses are built like the third. The tale is clear on which one is sturdier. The brick itself also helps with the insulation, which is why we rarely need AC in most places.
Although I'm not german, I would like to point out that this is the more modern house building. A century ago, they would be using actual stone, almost 50cm thick, for the outer walls in certain places.
And yet, our brick houses are not invincible. I lived in an area prone to flooding a while back, and every now and I remember once that a house had a large hole in one of its external walls because the flood went through it (insurance and the townspeople generosity helped getting that family back on their feet).
I find it really exciting to see a video like this from an American perspective. I often find your houses so beautiful, especially the Victorian ones. I miss the outward coziness of many of our "modern" houses.
Oh yes, depending on the location (city, neighbourhood), a German single-family house with a bit of land (500 - 700 square metres) can easily cost 500,000 Euros.
In Central Europe you dont even start without serious quantities of reinforced concrete... and the house in video is rather "lightly built"...
A strong enough tornado can cause severe structural damage even to a house made from stone. They are a lot less likely to occur in Germany than the USA, but we still have around 45 tornadoes each year. Every few years we also experience tornadoes here, which cause considerable damage. Not so long ago, a tornado crossed the area I live in and ripped a stone farmhouse apart like a 3 year old throwing a tantrum in his lego city...
and the Swiss build a cellar and in such a way that it can also be used as a bunker to provide protection in the event of war, with extra-reinforced walls and doors
Here in germany construction work is forbidden at nighttime. Yes, you can get a special exception if it is an important construction like rails or other community stuff, but regular you are not allowed to make construction noise between 10 pm and 8 am. It's called Nachtruhe, so the regular workers can sleep well and not be tyred the next work day. For us germans, american houses are only big garden sheds. Yes it's expensive to build like this, but it lasts at least 5 decades, and it's hard for insects or rats to build a nest somewhere in the house. IF you want, you can have wooden floors on that concrete. You have similar builds in US. Boston and Chicago for example.
US building tradition (outside crowded cities) apparently never went past the "let's settle down here, and put up a makeshift shelter until we have time to build a proper home" stage.
It's one of the reasons why there's less home owners in Germany than in the US: Building is extremely costly and there's thousands of laws and normatives to be obeyed. A house is not just regarded a personal asset but also a part of public structure. That means that there has to be guaranteed safety, for the users as well as bypassers, traffic protection, environmental protection, and, as latest development, protection of climate from building to a prospective demolition. The laws have become so hard that building is nearly unaffordable for the majority of Germans.
In Italy, an indipendent house like that can costs from 300k to 1M euros, depending on the luxury of the neighborhood and the distance from the connections to the center of the city (underground, bus stations, train stations)
You cannot find an house like that in the city, only in suburbs
Even after listening to the story of the Three Little Pigs, the Americans still built their houses out of sticks.
"now it can start with the masonry"
The video isnt referring to the workers at "it", its just a very literal translation of the German script it assume.
The phrase would probably be "Nun kann es mit dem Mauerwerk losgehen", literally "now it can start with the masonry", but more accurately "now the masonry can get started".
My mother and my stepfather are living in an old german farmer house...the brick is 50 cm thick...in 2 rooms they have 18 grad Celsius constantly if we have over 30 grad Celsius outside in summer! So they dont need a cooling system😊..and yes it would survive a tornado...only the roof will be damaged!this is the reason why german houses are much more expensive than American houses...because they were build for eternity not for one generation only...
Today in Europe there are also houses built similar to american style. They are the cheapest on the market, but good energy effective houses. Each type has some pros/cons.
The brick house in europe would survive weak tornado, but the strong tornado (i mean 5) most probably not. Good thing is brics will never be damaged by termits and other wood damaging bugs, mold etc.
Also, I am wondering why americans still use only wood, drywalls, etc, while they have so many shooting on the streets. Even pistol bullet will go through that paperwall so easy, will go through several houses till it stops.
If you think that's a castle, then you should look how Greek houses are made. Have in mind that Greece (and I'm pretty sure Italy and other Mediterranean countries as well) has no tornados but a lot of seismic activity instead, so the buildings are constructed able to endure earthquakes of high magnitude. The concrete and iron underground foundation alone can be almost as deep as the height of the whole building sometimes. My house is made in the late '50s and has concrete pillars 50cm X 50cm all around that start 3,5 m underground, and a ceiling 40 cm thick, so during the 1999 Athens earthquake of 5,9 R the only damage I had was two books that had fallen down from the bookshelf.
This! I was so confused by the lack of appropriate foundations. A house getting built here in Portugal starts with a deep hole to lay the foundations.
Well, you know - our houses don't fall down at the first wind. And stupid people would simply break their hands when trying to punch a hole in the wall. Which reminds me - I'd love to make a movie where the stereotypical US drunk former cop breaks his hand all the time when trying to punch German walls.
I am a construction worker in one croatian island.Most of the time we build houses in reinforced concrete.The amount of steel in the construction is incredible.Those houses are literally a bomb shelters
A regular german house like that weights around 150t, sometimes more, so around 330k pounds, sometimes more
I watched a US house renovating show once, where the team decided to just tear down and rebuild the entire house instead of fixing it up. At first, I was amazed they would go to such lengths.
And then they showed how the house was built and I was like "that can't be real" when it was just a bunch of wooden beams screwed together with drywall slapped on top. Our garden sheds are built more stable than that! Absolutely insane to me. Imagine investing in an actual brick and mortar and concrete house in the US - you'd never have to worry about a tornado again.
Edit: "It really is like a castle" - My man, I think you underestimate how THICK castle walls are! The outer walls of your average medieval castle are over three feet thick!
I'm an building engineer, from what i've seen the biggest difference is that european buildings have to be built for lasting (before having to intervene to renew it) for as long as the building lifespan (70-125 years) with little maintanance. American houses in the other hand are made to be the biggest possible with the cheapest price possible and usually last around half of the lifespan they should (american norms establish 60-70 years)
Our houses allow us to heat em with the amount of energie others need for their fridges. We also can (due to the inner walls are also made of bricks) heat one room to 23°C and the other to 16°C, saving a huge amount of energie because no one needs 23° in a storage room and no one wants to take a shower in 16°. When a storm hits us we could stay relaxed in our living room and let it pass by, we don't have to hide in the cellar and pray. When a fire brakes out most of the time the houses can be renovated and due to BRANDSCHUTZBESTIMMUNGEN the fire would not spread that fast. We say 'you build a house for your kids, not for you' because they last up to 50 years without much renovation and can last up to more than 100 years with good care. When the neighbour is mowing the lawn we can go to sleep without ear protection when we had night shift + sex without your kids hearing you all the time in full volume. Oh and yes, to refer to the 'they are built for war!': when my door is locked, it's locked! That means you need a bulldozer to harraz me, no matter who you are.
yup our house is decently insulated, to the point where just the waste heat from the fridge (a taller one) is enough to heat the entire kitchen.
Prices in Rome.
An 80 square meters apartment (like 3 rooms + bathroom + kitchen) in 4 floors building (that can contain 8 to 16 apartments) can costs from 100k to 500k euros, depending on the luxury of the neighborhood (even 1M in the very very high center location where only super VIP live)
An indipendent house usually costs from x1.5 to x2 of an apartment of the same square meter value with a garden included
How to build a house. Important: start with the cellar first! Lay the foundation, then lay the basement floor (concrete), Erect walls on top of the basement floor. Put a concrete floor on top. Don't forget to leave some space for the staircase. Erect walls on top of the floor, and so on. Add a roof. Seal the base from water. Insulate the exterior walls, cellar and roof. Add windows. Then add electricity, water, heating. Do the nitty-gritty. Done!
I guess you americans can easily replace a house after a tornado because it most likely costs less. Plus wooden houses are be built a little more of renewable materials if done right.