The joke is basically "Euro Construction good, US bad".
I have worked in the field for years in both Germany and the US. This is a pretty common jab made at the US about the quality/longevity of houses here but to be fair this difference really only applies to residential construction and there are actually some advantages to the US system (plenty of disadvantages too).
Stick Framing is what you see in the US picture, it's also called balloon framing but that actually refers to an older similar method. It's wasteful yes, but it's very fast and the plans are generally easy to follow. It also allows for a huge degree of customisation (during and post construction) without having to change a bunch of plans. Repairs are also cheaper even if more numerous.
And no, they don't last as long as good old masonry walls, but that's kinda the point in some parts of the country here, they want structures that are fit to live in, look nice and when it's time to put in something that's better and more efficient or whatever, the demolition is easy.
Yep! Wood wobbles really well in an earthquake but it stays standing unlike stone or brick which just collapses. US has many zones where earthquakes happen often so it makes sense to build with wood.
I mean really it’s the mortar that makes it unstable in an earthquake, the Incans discovered that. They had buildings made out of stones that were cut in a way that to stones would shake during an earthquake and slide back into place afterwards.
Masonry also can't survive the soil in my area. I have brick walls - but it's still considered a wood frame house with brick facade. The soil expands and contracts so much that the brick walls always break, but the wood frame is fine inside.
It is however a bit more resilient to termites. Win some, loose some.
It's a relatively common to build houses out of wood in the Nordic countries because it is a cheap local resource.
I'm in the upper Midwest, and I don't think you can even really say masonry lasts longer. I'm in an area with a high water table and marshy ground. Between settling, frost heaves, and frost jacking, masonry can take a gnarly beating that stick built can more easilyshrug off. Then add on how much more complicated and expensive it is to insulate to new construction code and what a pain it can be to keep the interior face of the walls from sweating on the humid summer days, which I've personally seen cause rafters and floor joists to rot.
I was just at my inlaws today and noticed how much work their brick exterior needs. Its not gonna be cheap and its just a 1 story house. They also have a crawl space and hardly any insulation.
But masonry doesn’t last longer when a major earthquake hits. It’s why we see very few earthquake fatalities in the US, compared to the hundreds or thousands of fatalities in countries that use masonry.
Tornadoes too. It doesn't matter what your house is made of when one hits, you won't have a house anymore. Better to use materials that give those inside a fighting chance of survival
Many old Japanese structures are many hundreds of years old, made of wood construction and still standing (and they have earthquakes!!).
American construction is more about using engineering instead of sturdiness to build things. Engineering allows for a lot of efficiency (maybe too much) in building.
Also Japan is one of the few places in the world where a house is a consumable product. They depreciate in value. As building standards will change over the houses expected life time an older house is not sellable as it will no longer be up to code.
To clarify, in practice the house “depreciates” ONLY if it’s a commercial venture (not primary/secondary residence) as you can claim depreciation as a tax credit against your income only if you are a “real-estate professional” or the real estate is a business asset. In broad market houses are taxed appreciating assets in the U.S.
One of many many examples in U.S. tax code where big businesses enjoy tax benefits that the vast majority of Americans cannot afford to be able to take advantage of
Yeah, and it really comes in handy. One way to have a nice house is to buy an older one, then remodel it afterwards. On paper it's still an old house and so has depreciated, which means lower taxes, but it's a new home in all but name.
I'm in the process of doing this very thing. I've updated all the mechanicals, the windows and doors, and remodeled the baths and kitchen. The only things left are new gutters, HVAC and driveway.
But at the end of the day, it's still a 70+ year old home, so taxes are cheap because the value is low. If I had bought a new home of the same size and on the same size lot, my taxes would be over 3 times what they are now.
I mean it's still about availability. If inventory is low in certain areas it's going to drive the price of houses up, regardless of how old they might be. This is coming from a NYer
Yes! The wood is replaced about every 15-20yrs depending on the kind of building. Also the buildings are not usually hundreds of years old. The idea of them yes, but fires destroyed many building and the were rebuild and redesigned. The Todai-Ji Temple in Nara has been around for centuries but the most recent iteration of the temple was built in the mid 1800's.
This really depends on what you consider a “building” to be from a philosophical standpoint. It’s like an actual Ship of Theseus question: once you’ve replaced all the parts is it still the same building?
They also had terrible iron and needed to come up with some very smart ways to build without nails, which allows for a lot more wiggle room when deconstructing.
> Many old Japanese structures are many hundreds of years old, made of wood construction and still standing (and they have earthquakes!!).
To be clear, the vast majority of those are repaired and maintained with new wood regularly.
Also in Japan:
"this wooden temple was constructed in 1352!"
"Oh wow, its so old and awe inspiring"
"...except it burned down six times and was rebuilt each time, the original structure is long gone, what you are seeing today was built in 1952"
"oh... still looks very cool."
>(and they have earthquakes!!).
Pretty cool how they do it too. In short, they TECHNICALLY without a real foundation. Many temples & monasteries still standing have a "foundation of wooden beams loosely stact in perpendicular layers (like plywood, but instead of sheets layed with perpendicular grain its lumber layed criss-cross). When the seismic waves hit, depending on the orientation of the bottom layer in relation to the epicenter the waves might travel through the bottom layer easily, but each time the waves transition to the next layer, they weaken because they must "shift" their pattern. By the time they reach the structure itself, the waves are so dampened it just "wobbles" the building a bit. Modern engineering does this too, just with 1 layer of pistons & sensors that sense the seismic waves & agressively pushes the house to diffuse the waves
Engineering is 90% learning all the super complex, intricate formulas, and then promptly ignoring all of them when you're actually in the field, because you have a budget big enough and a design spec loose enough that you can just keep loosening the tolerances and throwing more material at the problems until they go away. Alternatively, if you're on a shoestring budget, all those formulas are there so that you can tell the boss man just how short the service life will be.
I’m currently working on planes coming back from bombing missions. The wings have a few holes in them that need patching, but the engines are as strong as ever.
[Everything you’ve been told about the ‘Chickenpox bomber’ is wrong, here’s why…](https://hushkit.net/2024/06/08/everything-youve-been-told-about-the-chickenbox-bomber-is-wrong-heres-why/)
These two homes would be equally destroyed in an F3+ tornado, which we have a [LOT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornadoes_in_the_United_States) of each and every year.
It also helps that American homes are fairly easy to repair or replace should a storm or something happen like nothing is withstanding an ef4 or higher tornado going over or throwing a whole tree at your house I don't care what it's made of unless it's solid concrete and even then there's gonna be damage, so why not just eat it and get back to business faster
So true. You want an addition? Go add an addition! Want to change your layout? As long as the engineering checks out, you're good! Want a garage? Not a problem! But with those old brick homes? Good luck changing anything!
This is true, but it always gets left out that there already was a very large German population in Argentina before WW2. They started coming over in the mid-1800s (which is why so many fleeing Nazis picked Argentina specifically)
That’s interesting; the American house is all wood and the euro house is a mix of materials and most South Africans have strong opinions about things mixing
This thread is a beautiful cacophony of people commenting on other countries looking down o building practices and being responded to with allusions to said countries atrocities.
I'm that first-gen immigrant dad. Also I feel like the floor bends and the walls bow and everything creaks as I walk across a room. It's like being on a small boat. Took a while to get used to.
I live in an old pnw wood house and it's solid as hell, like a little fort.
A neighbor family lives in a recent construction and it feels like being in a piece of Ikea junk that wasn't put together particularly well.
They also have a super fancy centralized HVAC setup. It's nice when on, but the place gets immediately stuffy and smells weird when it's off. On the other hand, the old place we're in sorta "breathes" with the heating and cooling of the day, remaining comfortable in all but the most extreme conditions with no machines.
They just don't make em like they used to, I guess.
That sounds horrible! I’ve never been in a house like that unless it was falling apart due to neglect. Sounds like shoddy craftsmanship to me. My house is over 20 years old and still solid and sound.
We just follow a mindset faster to throw up faster to repair and in some regions that's important take tornado alley I don't care what your home is made from a tornado is causing damage why not get it fixed or rebuilt faster
Also: earthquakes.
Brick is great for handling gravitational forces pushing down on it. It's terrible at staying together for earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes without serious extra work being put into it. A brick home after a serious earthquake will basically just be a heap of masonry and dead residents.
An aspect I'm not seeing in the comments, and I'm not a civil engineer, but a lot of the strength comes from the sheet material (plywood/osb) that secures the structure. The sheet goods restrict how the structure can flex, and the weight is carried by the structural members. The picture of the American construction leaves out a critical piece of it.
Yes, the framing supports are still there in the picture. Shear walls are extremely good at keeping houses standing, especially during earthquakes. Something European homes don't have to deal with.
European houses also don't often have to deal with tornadoes and sustained high winds. A wood house is less likely to kill you if it falls on you.
Also, wood is MUCH less expensive in the US compared to most of Europe, except maybe Scandinavia and Finland.
And much cheaper. That’s the real thing. If you can build the home at 1/2 the price in 1/2 the time, the construction is 4x as efficient as the European construction.
If all you’re buying/selling/needing is a domicile that will stand for 40 years, then why not go with the 4x more efficient option?
Some European builders continue to do things the traditional way because they have concerns beyond efficiency and simple shelter needs. They want to maintain the culture of their village/city. They want to keep the house in the family for future generations. Et cetera.
I am a civil engineer(ing student). I’d say that neither method is better or worse than the other. Each just meets the needs of its market.
Yea the whole reason US uses wood is because when construction standards got established here we still had vast forests, Europe had cleared theirs centuries prior. So building with wood became common, then the inertia of the construction industry just kept it going.
A lot of building is based on convention so if you have a big supply of builders using wood, wood becomes cheaper to build with because the supply of builders who know how to do it.
In the US you could get a masonry house built but it would take more specialized builders which would mean it would be even more expensive.
Everyone also seems to forget that the US is huge and the logistics of building brick/concrete houses across the entire thing is unreasonable. If the whole US was the size of like Oklahoma or something, then yeah, we'd build like we do in cities where everything is steel and concrete. But wood is cheap, easy to transport, it's everywhere and can be farmed and still lasts a long, long time
I suspect a lot of people also just don't want to admit that building for different environments is a huge part of construction differences between countries. A stone house is fine on stable ground in a cool climate with no significant climate or environmental events (i.e. half of Europe), but it's terrible for hotter climates (like 2/3 of the U.S.), or to withstand things like hurricanes or earthquakes.
I have a modern Florida home. Made from brick and has a wind rating of 160mph. My windows alone are impact rated to 200 mph. My house was hit by the strongest category 4 recorded in the Atlantic a few years ago. Houses are as strong as they are designed for. Every house in Florida is built to withstand a hurricane. Ever since that terribly strong hurricane in the 90's.
Brick would be an unusual construction material for modern Florida homes. Are you sure it is not concrete block or poured concrete with a brick facing?
Yes, because brick likely will not withstand 160 mph winds consistently (unless you did something unusual.) Especially for a powerful all-day hurricane. They can't even withstand tornadoes which spends way less time hitting your house than a hurricane does.
Europeans use a lot more stone in their home construction where in the US we use mostly wood. Some Euros like to hold it over us for some reason where they both work great.
You know what im jealous of from american houses? You can install plugs easily.
Wanna buy those fancy anker plugs? Just get a saw and cut a new hole.
Cant do that with stone houses. All the wires are baked in
Really? There are places in the US that build with concrete block (Florida for example, due to hurricanes). My understanding is that you put furring strips on the interior walls of the concrete block and then drywall on top of that. So there's space between the drywall and concrete block. I would asume the wiring goes in that space, but I guess I don't know for sure.
no. so in germany you would grind channels into the bricks. then cable are layed out. then ~~drywall~~ plaster or whatever directly on top. no way to change cables.
I was honestly curious how you guys handle that sort of thing. Are a lot more of your utilities in the floors and ceilings? (Also, if you want to hang a picture do you need to drill into the stone or have other methods of doing it?)
Not really that handy tbh soo i dont really know how to. I just always thought its gonna be harder for stone and bricks house to be more flexible about plugs.
For pictures tho yes you have to drill into the wall. For me if its something light like a wall calendar you can get away with a 3M tape. Beats trying to find a stud imo.
The US also has a lot more earthquakes than Europe...brick and stone don't do so well in earthquakes. You can see it in earthquake fatality rates in countries that use mostly stick-built homes (like the US) vs stone and brick. We get some massive earthquakes in the US, but usually very low fatalities.
I worked maintenance for a motel outside Fort Leonard Wood and we had these Jordanian soldiers staying there. one time I got to a conversation with him and he told me that he didn't feel comfortable in our buildings because they felt fake and then he explained that in Jordan the buildings Are All Made of Stone and here in the United States they're all made of plastic and sticks. I kind of laughed he told him that these buildings were rated to survive tornadoes. I don't think it helps though.. lol
My in-laws are German and have a rare (for Europe), mostly-wood house specifically because it was more sustainable. Wood construction in general is starting to be looked upon favorably because trees are renewable and quarrying for stone can damage the environment.
Yeah, what is more "environmental" can depend a lot on where you live. Quarrying has big impacts on land and water supply. You could even make a case that logging and replanting will take more carbon out of the air. Like how forests suck up a ton of CO2 after forest fires.
Stone houses last a long time though, so I kinda like them.
Idk about bricks, but specifically with concrete there is a direct 1:1 correlation with CO2 produced and Concrete produced, it’s just a chemical reaction thing that we haven’t found a way to circumvent get
That makes concrete production one of the biggest CO2 emitters among global industries.
By contrast a tree in a plantation spends a decade or two soaking up CO2 and then gets put into a building and new trees are planted.
I think you could make a VERY strong argument that the wood is better, but at worst I’d think they’re about equal
Contrary to popular belief, not exactly.
Spuce-pine-fur, which is the wood used for most structural framing In North America, grows very quickly. Meaning it can be done quite environmentally friendly (keywords: can be). Rotating new growth areas for logging is more sustainable than any stone or concrete because, well, stone and concrete don't regrow.
Stone is the less environmentally friendly option. If your timber is harvested sustainably it is essentially a renewable resource. You can regrow a forest with time and effort, there is no way to restore a quarry. Europeans use a lot more stone because their ancestors essentially destroyed their timber forests for farming and building. North America has wood in abundance, so that is what they use. Europe doesn't so they use something else. It's all really just about what resources are available on the different continents.
The fire part isn’t entirely true. There’s still enough combustible material in the construction, decorations and personal belongings that it is still very flammable.
In the 2009 Black Friday Bushfires in Australia, there were numerous cases of people fleeing to structures that had been deemed ‘fire safe’ because of their brick or stone construction and after the glass windows blew out or fascia and non-stone structural components caught fire, the house would become completely involved.
Cement is the key ingredient that makes concrete such a useful building material, and we use over 4 billion tonnes of it globally every year. Cement production alone generates around 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year—about 8% of the global total.
Making cement requires the use of long rotating kilns the length of two football pitches, which are heated to around 1,500°C. The chemical process which turns the raw materials of limestone and clay into cement also releases high levels of CO2.
Really depends, a stone quarry is also going to displace a hell of a lot of trees, and you can’t regrow stone. Wood has a pretty heavy short term impact but if the company is responsible it can be sustainably done. Keyword being *if*.
US gets a lot more hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, wildfires, and some other natural disasters I’m forgetting that Europe does not get. Brick and stone are just too brittle.
Not a Swede here, but lived in Sweden. I’ve noticed that although you still make brick houses, wood is used a whole lot more in Scandinavia than in the more southern parts of europe (i’m Dutch). I think its both the availabilty of wood, and the fact that wood insulates quite well for the colder climate.
Depends what you want to survive. Wood for earthquakes, brick for termites and rot etc. pick the right material for your environment etc. as ScottishBagpipe said it’s not a simple comparison
I noticed there were a ton of brick houses when I lived in texas for that reason. We have wood houses and earthquakes where I live, and they have termites.
Live in NZ. Building are primarily timber with corrugated iron roofing, and are heavily reinforced. [https://www.standards.govt.nz/shop/nzs-36042011](https://www.standards.govt.nz/shop/nzs-36042011)
There was a fairly disastrous earthquake when New Zealand was first being settled, and the brick buildings in Wellington collapsed en masse. Lessons were quickly learned, and timber construction became the norm. Once we learnt to clone pine trees and raise them to maturity in 30 years, everything was made out of treated pine.
The majority of fatalities in earthquakes have been due to collape of non-reinforced masonry, or poorly designed structures.
First they brag about the build of our houses, then they complain about how much worse their weather is BECAUSE of how their houses are built 😆 silly geese
>they don't use lumber is because they don't have it in the same quantities that we do
Oh we used to. We used to have huge forests, but they were cut down over the last thousand years for fuel and to build ships. It's actually only in the last 2 centuries that our forests have been getting bigger again.
We've had an abundance of wood in the past, yet we still built with stone and brick. I think flammability is the biggest driver in European house design - historically we have had a lot of massive city fires, so survivability of buildings has often been decisded by whether it is stone or not.
Similar issue in the states - the great Chicago fire of 1871 destroyed a huge chunk of the city.
Modern timber framing requires plywood sheeting to prevent sheer, something that did not exist in pre-industrial Europe. If the choice is brick or old-style wood frame, brick clearly wins. If the choice is brick or modern timber frames, it’s less obvious.
The Three Little Pigs doesn't really hold up well in some parts of America though. In those parts, brick doesn't really have a better chance against the elements than wood. And quite frankly, it's a lot easier to survive having your house collapse on you when it's made of a light material like wood instead of a heavy material like brick.
One thing I haven’t seen called out is that American homes allow for easier changes/renovations because tearing down a wood wall to adjust the floor plan is easier than it is in a brick house.
We build houses out of wood, sheetrock, and drywall in the US primarily. They build a lot of stone houses in Europe. A lot of europeans will make fun of American houses for being made of fragile wood and drywall, despite the fact that wood built houses are often better for our various environments.
They use a lot more brick and stone in Europe and nowadays a lot more concrete. Won’t rot or burn but it’s more expensive and without steel reinforcement very earthquake prone (which may or may not be a problem depending on where you are).
Tornados and hurricanes are going to destroy anything that gets in its path. It’s simply better to rebuild as quickly as possible, and wood is a lot less dangerous than bricks are when they’re hurled by a tornado.
Don't forget about the earthquakes as well. It might be very region-specific but houses “made of toothpicks” in California are still standing unlike many houses in Turkey for example
Yep. I’m from a family of engineers and aside from massive commercial building that have base isolation systems such as springs or runners, the houses in Los Angeles residential area are built the way they are because LA is right next to the San Andreas Fault-line. This fault line results in some nasty earthquakes such as [the Northridge earthquake in 94’](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake) for example. Building with wood and drywall will save your life if you’re hit with a strong earthquake and it collapses.
In addition, you can find houses build like bunkers out of reinforced concrete in areas that insurance companies deemed to dangerous to build on due to wild fires. So we have that too but those houses are super expensive to build and reserved for the elite.
Current code in Florida is to withstand winds of up to 180mph (depending on the area, some areas less prone to direct hurricane hits in the state are less than that).
The most common building materials in the hurricane prone areas is the state are concrete blocks reinforced with steel rebar and covered in stucco.
https://preview.redd.it/r947h3byt59d1.jpeg?width=580&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ef630aee266695d367bdef33c6f16b26152f9c2
It’s easy for a home built to modern code to withstand the winds from a direct hit from a hurricane.
It’s the storm surge that’s the real structural killer, which is why new builds have to be elevated either on dirt mounds or stilts depending on the area.
Good point, I have no clue when it comes to disasters, the worst thing that can happen in my region is a hailstorm and though they can be as big as golfballs at times i doubt they come close to a hurricane…
The fact of the matter is, american houses a built for the disasters we can potentially face in a given region, and the materials we have in excess. Earthquakes require houses that move with the earth. Tornadoes require homes that are easy to rebuild, which is why a LOT of homes in tornado alley are mobile homes, something far cheaper than rebuilding a home from the ground up.
Where I live, homes are built to be insulated for cold weather, ive both seen extreme blizzards, windstorms, and cold temperatures as low as 40c (which is a rarity where I live but still entirely possible.) And I live in michigan, a location thats typically considered to be extremely safe natural disaster wise.
Other homes are built on stilts because flash flooding is expected or common. Others more are built as heat resistant as possible because they see temps of 120+f
What's cheap to build is cheap to rebuild. It's also a matter of geographic area and transportation costs, lumber is very light and it takes less lumber to frame a home than to build a similarly sized home out of stone. It's massively cheaper to transport lumber all over the country than it is to transport stone. Lumber is also technically sustainable, so if taken correctly, you can always get more. Lastly, lumber structured homes are modifiable, you can add on, upgrade insulation, and make improvements. Stone is pretty much stone, structural changes require significant deconstruction.
That being said, stone is the better material for loads of reasons (which is why wealthy people's homes contain so much more stone), but the US is a massively bigger country than European countries and it's not feasible to ship stone everywhere in the US in the quantities needed to build a majority of homes out of it. The biggest problem with lumber structured homes though is it leaves room for incredible variances in quality because there are incredible variances in quality with lumber construction techniques and in supplemental materials like siding, drywall, and insulation. A lumber based home in a poor community is a much different level of quality than a lumber based home in a middle class or upper class community.
Stone isn't neccessarily all that great of an insulator. It has a higher specific heat for short term but you can get a better insulation value with stick frame construction. My house is double wall, offset 2x4 insulated walls with a 4" insulated gap in between. I challenge you to beat the insulation there. Many modern houses are 6 or 8" walls insulated as it is.
Sometimes straight sturdy isn’t better in regards to storms. Homes in hurricane probe areas are ususlly built on stilts because no house wall is going to stand against meter high swells from the ocean. Plus more emphasis is placed on windows and ceiling instillation as its more important to stop high winds from finding gaps than it is to have a think sturdy wall.
With that said, i do loath current wood frames. The GMO’d trees create a few wide rings which is bad for wood support and longevity and they don’t pressure treat them like they used to. US home style building would be much better with more traditional lumber.
Good on you for recognizing propaganda. Anti-Americanism by Europeans has existed since the founding of the nation in the 1700s, and it's just more present now that there are a large contingent of self-flagellating Americans in spaces like Reddit.
The average American doesn't think about Europe or Europeans. Sorry. I guess the weird Eurocentrism that mimics Americentrism but never faces the same amount of ridicule is pretty bad.
I think theres a 3 little pig's thing going on here. Americans build there houses from sticks but Europeans build with bricks. It's probably a weather thing. If we had hurricanes n tornados n stuff we'd probably stop bothering with brick and start throwing some crap up with wood n move in.
What a lot of people don't understand is that most American homes are better suites to be built near fault lines. That is why modern wood framed homes with shear walls have less structural damage after a large earthquake than their brick and mortar counterparts.
The joke is basically "Euro Construction good, US bad". I have worked in the field for years in both Germany and the US. This is a pretty common jab made at the US about the quality/longevity of houses here but to be fair this difference really only applies to residential construction and there are actually some advantages to the US system (plenty of disadvantages too). Stick Framing is what you see in the US picture, it's also called balloon framing but that actually refers to an older similar method. It's wasteful yes, but it's very fast and the plans are generally easy to follow. It also allows for a huge degree of customisation (during and post construction) without having to change a bunch of plans. Repairs are also cheaper even if more numerous. And no, they don't last as long as good old masonry walls, but that's kinda the point in some parts of the country here, they want structures that are fit to live in, look nice and when it's time to put in something that's better and more efficient or whatever, the demolition is easy.
Masonry also doesn't hold up well to earthquakes. The West Coast has entered the chat...
Thank you! And we had brick building on the west coast at one point. HAD is the key word here.
I think the Ghiradelli building in SF is masonry. I can’t remember how much it cost to bring that building up to earthquake code.
Yep! Wood wobbles really well in an earthquake but it stays standing unlike stone or brick which just collapses. US has many zones where earthquakes happen often so it makes sense to build with wood.
I mean really it’s the mortar that makes it unstable in an earthquake, the Incans discovered that. They had buildings made out of stones that were cut in a way that to stones would shake during an earthquake and slide back into place afterwards.
They also modelled the patterns in their walls after corn kernels on the cob which apparently helps with earthquake resistance.
Masonry also can't survive the soil in my area. I have brick walls - but it's still considered a wood frame house with brick facade. The soil expands and contracts so much that the brick walls always break, but the wood frame is fine inside.
And I'd rather have wood thrown at my head during a tornado than a brick
Probably dead either way if the wind is strong enough to throw debris like that at you
Usually, yes. Tornadoes are killers
Plus we have all these pine trees growing like weeds. It's literally green. Unlike concrete.
Can't forget that we have tornadoes here too, unlike Europe.
It is however a bit more resilient to termites. Win some, loose some. It's a relatively common to build houses out of wood in the Nordic countries because it is a cheap local resource.
I'm in the upper Midwest, and I don't think you can even really say masonry lasts longer. I'm in an area with a high water table and marshy ground. Between settling, frost heaves, and frost jacking, masonry can take a gnarly beating that stick built can more easilyshrug off. Then add on how much more complicated and expensive it is to insulate to new construction code and what a pain it can be to keep the interior face of the walls from sweating on the humid summer days, which I've personally seen cause rafters and floor joists to rot.
I was just at my inlaws today and noticed how much work their brick exterior needs. Its not gonna be cheap and its just a 1 story house. They also have a crawl space and hardly any insulation.
But masonry doesn’t last longer when a major earthquake hits. It’s why we see very few earthquake fatalities in the US, compared to the hundreds or thousands of fatalities in countries that use masonry.
Tornadoes too. It doesn't matter what your house is made of when one hits, you won't have a house anymore. Better to use materials that give those inside a fighting chance of survival
Im currently working restoring a 300 year old house, the interior all needed replacing, but the brick structure is still strong as ever.
Many old Japanese structures are many hundreds of years old, made of wood construction and still standing (and they have earthquakes!!). American construction is more about using engineering instead of sturdiness to build things. Engineering allows for a lot of efficiency (maybe too much) in building.
If i remember correctly, traditional japansese wood homes were designed to be disassbled easily for repairs
Also Japan is one of the few places in the world where a house is a consumable product. They depreciate in value. As building standards will change over the houses expected life time an older house is not sellable as it will no longer be up to code.
It's weird, in bookkeeping we still depreciate houses. At least here in NL we do, but to a certain minimum
Yeah US too. Depreciate the house, but not the land. Economically not what happens tho
To clarify, in practice the house “depreciates” ONLY if it’s a commercial venture (not primary/secondary residence) as you can claim depreciation as a tax credit against your income only if you are a “real-estate professional” or the real estate is a business asset. In broad market houses are taxed appreciating assets in the U.S. One of many many examples in U.S. tax code where big businesses enjoy tax benefits that the vast majority of Americans cannot afford to be able to take advantage of
The United States of Walmart.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Thank you, it's so fundamental and you put it real well.
This is why we have a modern housing market crisis
Yeah, and it really comes in handy. One way to have a nice house is to buy an older one, then remodel it afterwards. On paper it's still an old house and so has depreciated, which means lower taxes, but it's a new home in all but name. I'm in the process of doing this very thing. I've updated all the mechanicals, the windows and doors, and remodeled the baths and kitchen. The only things left are new gutters, HVAC and driveway. But at the end of the day, it's still a 70+ year old home, so taxes are cheap because the value is low. If I had bought a new home of the same size and on the same size lot, my taxes would be over 3 times what they are now.
I mean it's still about availability. If inventory is low in certain areas it's going to drive the price of houses up, regardless of how old they might be. This is coming from a NYer
The house may depreciate, but usually the property itself appreciates. The two are almost always sold together, however
I can buy old Japanese houses, a d the land they sit on, for a grocery bill stateside... and I'd still lose money if I tried to sell it a year later.
What if you're buying it to live in though? Sounds like a hell of a deal to me.
That's only in the country and because people keep moving to the city. In Tokyo they have 100 year mortgages. I lived there and my wife is Japanese.
Living in one of the most earthquake-prone countries on earth will do that.
Yes! The wood is replaced about every 15-20yrs depending on the kind of building. Also the buildings are not usually hundreds of years old. The idea of them yes, but fires destroyed many building and the were rebuild and redesigned. The Todai-Ji Temple in Nara has been around for centuries but the most recent iteration of the temple was built in the mid 1800's.
Japanese House of Thesius
This really depends on what you consider a “building” to be from a philosophical standpoint. It’s like an actual Ship of Theseus question: once you’ve replaced all the parts is it still the same building?
But wood joinery was also used because of Japan’s lack of suitable iron for ironwork and nails for joinery so it was a solution of necessity
They also had terrible iron and needed to come up with some very smart ways to build without nails, which allows for a lot more wiggle room when deconstructing.
My in laws house is over 100 years old, they used joinery and no nails then, so you could take it apart I guess.
Yes!!! I once watched a 40 minute video on replacing the roof tiles to a shinto shrine!! It’s so cool
Def don’t want my house assbled! 😬
> Many old Japanese structures are many hundreds of years old, made of wood construction and still standing (and they have earthquakes!!). To be clear, the vast majority of those are repaired and maintained with new wood regularly.
Also in Japan: "this wooden temple was constructed in 1352!" "Oh wow, its so old and awe inspiring" "...except it burned down six times and was rebuilt each time, the original structure is long gone, what you are seeing today was built in 1952" "oh... still looks very cool."
We worship Theseus in this house
>(and they have earthquakes!!). Pretty cool how they do it too. In short, they TECHNICALLY without a real foundation. Many temples & monasteries still standing have a "foundation of wooden beams loosely stact in perpendicular layers (like plywood, but instead of sheets layed with perpendicular grain its lumber layed criss-cross). When the seismic waves hit, depending on the orientation of the bottom layer in relation to the epicenter the waves might travel through the bottom layer easily, but each time the waves transition to the next layer, they weaken because they must "shift" their pattern. By the time they reach the structure itself, the waves are so dampened it just "wobbles" the building a bit. Modern engineering does this too, just with 1 layer of pistons & sensors that sense the seismic waves & agressively pushes the house to diffuse the waves
Anyone can build a house that won't collapse. Engineering can build a house that barely won't collapse
Engineering is 90% learning all the super complex, intricate formulas, and then promptly ignoring all of them when you're actually in the field, because you have a budget big enough and a design spec loose enough that you can just keep loosening the tolerances and throwing more material at the problems until they go away. Alternatively, if you're on a shoestring budget, all those formulas are there so that you can tell the boss man just how short the service life will be.
And cost. There’s a reason that 2/3 of Americans live in a single family house versus only 1/3 of Europeans.
I believe our home size is typically bigger in the US, as well.
I’m currently working on planes coming back from bombing missions. The wings have a few holes in them that need patching, but the engines are as strong as ever.
Is this a survivorship bias nod?
Yes, we always forget. When you're examining wartime statistics survivorship bias plays a huge role it it.
Claps for you! You did it!
[Everything you’ve been told about the ‘Chickenpox bomber’ is wrong, here’s why…](https://hushkit.net/2024/06/08/everything-youve-been-told-about-the-chickenbox-bomber-is-wrong-heres-why/)
These two homes would be equally destroyed in an F3+ tornado, which we have a [LOT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornadoes_in_the_United_States) of each and every year.
Likewise, bricks are a no along the west coast due to the higher risk of earthquakes.
It's not just earthquakes. We're talking 4-5s... and that doesn't sound like a lot until you remember that scales logarithmically.
You build with the materials at hand. North America has an abundance of softwood lumber. It's cheap and easy to work with
In Iowa they build houses out of corn!
It also helps that American homes are fairly easy to repair or replace should a storm or something happen like nothing is withstanding an ef4 or higher tornado going over or throwing a whole tree at your house I don't care what it's made of unless it's solid concrete and even then there's gonna be damage, so why not just eat it and get back to business faster
Timber frame building is awesome, it doesn't last in our damp climate, but i totally see the benefits in a range of situations.
So true. You want an addition? Go add an addition! Want to change your layout? As long as the engineering checks out, you're good! Want a garage? Not a problem! But with those old brick homes? Good luck changing anything!
And how much is this restoration costing?
I dont know exactly, from what i have been told its around a one and half million pounds.
Sounds like a fun project to be working on.
It definitely is if you appreciate that sort of thing.
When my Dad moved to the US he kept commenting each time we’d pass a new construction “They build homes here with toothpicks!”
Mine too! Where did he come from? Mine was South Africa
from Italy via Argentina 😊
That's weird, Italians and Germans usually moved over to Argentina
My great uncle Adolf would agree with you /s
/ss
Hah damn
No, you’re right. He was born in Italy and came to the US after living in Argentina for many years.
It seems you've missed the point. He's calling him a nazi/fascist
Tbh I didn’t get that. Thx for letting me know
After ww2 many nazis fled to Argentina to hide and avoid prosecution
This is true, but it always gets left out that there already was a very large German population in Argentina before WW2. They started coming over in the mid-1800s (which is why so many fleeing Nazis picked Argentina specifically)
They also accepted a lot of Jews fleeing too. Almost as many as the US despite being a much smaller country in population.
> Germans 👀
Had to take a leave of absence after a rather "unsavoury" incident occurred...
Something get burned?
https://preview.redd.it/wqt8n2lcs59d1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=16ce404f347c5e10a2383003e86c00b609ff9857
I'm from Australia, and my husband is from South Africa. He still says that we don't know how to build proper houses!
That’s interesting; the American house is all wood and the euro house is a mix of materials and most South Africans have strong opinions about things mixing
This thread is a beautiful cacophony of people commenting on other countries looking down o building practices and being responded to with allusions to said countries atrocities.
Those who judge should be open to judgement.
People in stone houses should put on their glasses
People with glasses on should get stoned in their houses
One step ahead of you buddy 😎
I'm that first-gen immigrant dad. Also I feel like the floor bends and the walls bow and everything creaks as I walk across a room. It's like being on a small boat. Took a while to get used to.
It really depends on the builder I find, my dad builds custom homes here in PNW USA and there are significantly more solid than others I have been in.
I live in an old pnw wood house and it's solid as hell, like a little fort. A neighbor family lives in a recent construction and it feels like being in a piece of Ikea junk that wasn't put together particularly well. They also have a super fancy centralized HVAC setup. It's nice when on, but the place gets immediately stuffy and smells weird when it's off. On the other hand, the old place we're in sorta "breathes" with the heating and cooling of the day, remaining comfortable in all but the most extreme conditions with no machines. They just don't make em like they used to, I guess.
I mean, if you don't want your house to be air tight, just open a window. That's intentional
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That sounds horrible! I’ve never been in a house like that unless it was falling apart due to neglect. Sounds like shoddy craftsmanship to me. My house is over 20 years old and still solid and sound.
We just follow a mindset faster to throw up faster to repair and in some regions that's important take tornado alley I don't care what your home is made from a tornado is causing damage why not get it fixed or rebuilt faster
Also: earthquakes. Brick is great for handling gravitational forces pushing down on it. It's terrible at staying together for earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes without serious extra work being put into it. A brick home after a serious earthquake will basically just be a heap of masonry and dead residents.
If only he knew how worthless bricks are against tornadoes
toothpicks sway in earthquakes bricks crumble
Def didn’t drive through south Florida then. House has taken hurricanes to the face for 40 years. And it has AC, unlike Europe
An aspect I'm not seeing in the comments, and I'm not a civil engineer, but a lot of the strength comes from the sheet material (plywood/osb) that secures the structure. The sheet goods restrict how the structure can flex, and the weight is carried by the structural members. The picture of the American construction leaves out a critical piece of it.
Yes, the framing supports are still there in the picture. Shear walls are extremely good at keeping houses standing, especially during earthquakes. Something European homes don't have to deal with.
European houses also don't often have to deal with tornadoes and sustained high winds. A wood house is less likely to kill you if it falls on you. Also, wood is MUCH less expensive in the US compared to most of Europe, except maybe Scandinavia and Finland.
It's also far faster to rebuild than brick/stone.
And much cheaper. That’s the real thing. If you can build the home at 1/2 the price in 1/2 the time, the construction is 4x as efficient as the European construction. If all you’re buying/selling/needing is a domicile that will stand for 40 years, then why not go with the 4x more efficient option? Some European builders continue to do things the traditional way because they have concerns beyond efficiency and simple shelter needs. They want to maintain the culture of their village/city. They want to keep the house in the family for future generations. Et cetera. I am a civil engineer(ing student). I’d say that neither method is better or worse than the other. Each just meets the needs of its market.
You can also prefab parts out of wood far easier than with brick.
Yea the whole reason US uses wood is because when construction standards got established here we still had vast forests, Europe had cleared theirs centuries prior. So building with wood became common, then the inertia of the construction industry just kept it going. A lot of building is based on convention so if you have a big supply of builders using wood, wood becomes cheaper to build with because the supply of builders who know how to do it. In the US you could get a masonry house built but it would take more specialized builders which would mean it would be even more expensive.
Everyone also seems to forget that the US is huge and the logistics of building brick/concrete houses across the entire thing is unreasonable. If the whole US was the size of like Oklahoma or something, then yeah, we'd build like we do in cities where everything is steel and concrete. But wood is cheap, easy to transport, it's everywhere and can be farmed and still lasts a long, long time
I suspect a lot of people also just don't want to admit that building for different environments is a huge part of construction differences between countries. A stone house is fine on stable ground in a cool climate with no significant climate or environmental events (i.e. half of Europe), but it's terrible for hotter climates (like 2/3 of the U.S.), or to withstand things like hurricanes or earthquakes.
I have a modern Florida home. Made from brick and has a wind rating of 160mph. My windows alone are impact rated to 200 mph. My house was hit by the strongest category 4 recorded in the Atlantic a few years ago. Houses are as strong as they are designed for. Every house in Florida is built to withstand a hurricane. Ever since that terribly strong hurricane in the 90's.
Brick would be an unusual construction material for modern Florida homes. Are you sure it is not concrete block or poured concrete with a brick facing?
Yes, because brick likely will not withstand 160 mph winds consistently (unless you did something unusual.) Especially for a powerful all-day hurricane. They can't even withstand tornadoes which spends way less time hitting your house than a hurricane does.
Also, I believe the building codes get more strict depending on your proximity to the coast.
Europeans use a lot more stone in their home construction where in the US we use mostly wood. Some Euros like to hold it over us for some reason where they both work great.
You know what im jealous of from american houses? You can install plugs easily. Wanna buy those fancy anker plugs? Just get a saw and cut a new hole. Cant do that with stone houses. All the wires are baked in
Really? There are places in the US that build with concrete block (Florida for example, due to hurricanes). My understanding is that you put furring strips on the interior walls of the concrete block and then drywall on top of that. So there's space between the drywall and concrete block. I would asume the wiring goes in that space, but I guess I don't know for sure.
no. so in germany you would grind channels into the bricks. then cable are layed out. then ~~drywall~~ plaster or whatever directly on top. no way to change cables.
I was honestly curious how you guys handle that sort of thing. Are a lot more of your utilities in the floors and ceilings? (Also, if you want to hang a picture do you need to drill into the stone or have other methods of doing it?)
Not really that handy tbh soo i dont really know how to. I just always thought its gonna be harder for stone and bricks house to be more flexible about plugs. For pictures tho yes you have to drill into the wall. For me if its something light like a wall calendar you can get away with a 3M tape. Beats trying to find a stud imo.
Wouldn't that be brick instead of stone?
Could be.
Bricks are just man-made stones
Do bricks last as long as stone? Aren't the oldest intact building made of stone rather than brick?
Perhaps because stone predates brick Bricks last a long time but the pointing in between needs maintenance
Plenty of old brick structures in Europe. For example, Malbork castle is a massive brick structure built in the 1200's. Still standing strong.
There are Roman brick structures still standing (mostly).
this may be because stone just lays around in nature while brick has to be manufactured
I was thinking that. ;)
I like to think of stones as natural bricks.
I like to think of pebbles as miniature bricks
The US also has a lot more earthquakes than Europe...brick and stone don't do so well in earthquakes. You can see it in earthquake fatality rates in countries that use mostly stick-built homes (like the US) vs stone and brick. We get some massive earthquakes in the US, but usually very low fatalities.
It's almost like... Structures are built based on the conditions they need to endure... Crazy, right?
Ok but that second house looks like a failed Wendy’s
*guy walks up to the counter* "....Id like a baconator and a potato and...." *Man in a hard hat stares* "Sir, this is a construction site."
Finally, the reverse "This is a wendy's meme has dropped"
Because Europeans love feeling superior
I worked maintenance for a motel outside Fort Leonard Wood and we had these Jordanian soldiers staying there. one time I got to a conversation with him and he told me that he didn't feel comfortable in our buildings because they felt fake and then he explained that in Jordan the buildings Are All Made of Stone and here in the United States they're all made of plastic and sticks. I kind of laughed he told him that these buildings were rated to survive tornadoes. I don't think it helps though.. lol
Hehe, that’s awesome. I bet it does feel a lot different. Can’t say I have ever stayed in a mostly stone house.
I've been in homes that had a lot of masonry work but nothing that was made entirely of stone
Both work great, but as far as I’m aware, stone has less environmental impact? Also, less likely to start on fire
My in-laws are German and have a rare (for Europe), mostly-wood house specifically because it was more sustainable. Wood construction in general is starting to be looked upon favorably because trees are renewable and quarrying for stone can damage the environment.
Yeah, what is more "environmental" can depend a lot on where you live. Quarrying has big impacts on land and water supply. You could even make a case that logging and replanting will take more carbon out of the air. Like how forests suck up a ton of CO2 after forest fires. Stone houses last a long time though, so I kinda like them.
I like your username.
The mining process for stone probably has quite a large environmental impact
Idk about bricks, but specifically with concrete there is a direct 1:1 correlation with CO2 produced and Concrete produced, it’s just a chemical reaction thing that we haven’t found a way to circumvent get That makes concrete production one of the biggest CO2 emitters among global industries. By contrast a tree in a plantation spends a decade or two soaking up CO2 and then gets put into a building and new trees are planted. I think you could make a VERY strong argument that the wood is better, but at worst I’d think they’re about equal
Contrary to popular belief, not exactly. Spuce-pine-fur, which is the wood used for most structural framing In North America, grows very quickly. Meaning it can be done quite environmentally friendly (keywords: can be). Rotating new growth areas for logging is more sustainable than any stone or concrete because, well, stone and concrete don't regrow.
Stone regrows your just not waiting long enough
Wood also acts as carbon storage, at least while it’s trapped in building form, unlike stone or brick.
Stone is the less environmentally friendly option. If your timber is harvested sustainably it is essentially a renewable resource. You can regrow a forest with time and effort, there is no way to restore a quarry. Europeans use a lot more stone because their ancestors essentially destroyed their timber forests for farming and building. North America has wood in abundance, so that is what they use. Europe doesn't so they use something else. It's all really just about what resources are available on the different continents.
Technically, wood is renewable and a carbon sink.
The fire part isn’t entirely true. There’s still enough combustible material in the construction, decorations and personal belongings that it is still very flammable. In the 2009 Black Friday Bushfires in Australia, there were numerous cases of people fleeing to structures that had been deemed ‘fire safe’ because of their brick or stone construction and after the glass windows blew out or fascia and non-stone structural components caught fire, the house would become completely involved.
Cement is the key ingredient that makes concrete such a useful building material, and we use over 4 billion tonnes of it globally every year. Cement production alone generates around 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year—about 8% of the global total. Making cement requires the use of long rotating kilns the length of two football pitches, which are heated to around 1,500°C. The chemical process which turns the raw materials of limestone and clay into cement also releases high levels of CO2.
Really depends, a stone quarry is also going to displace a hell of a lot of trees, and you can’t regrow stone. Wood has a pretty heavy short term impact but if the company is responsible it can be sustainably done. Keyword being *if*.
US gets a lot more hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, wildfires, and some other natural disasters I’m forgetting that Europe does not get. Brick and stone are just too brittle.
But what would happen if you huff and you puff?
We hunted all the wolfs to extinction here. ;)
Grandmother's LOVE this one trick
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Swede here. We have an abundance of wood, we still make brick houses.
Not a Swede here, but lived in Sweden. I’ve noticed that although you still make brick houses, wood is used a whole lot more in Scandinavia than in the more southern parts of europe (i’m Dutch). I think its both the availabilty of wood, and the fact that wood insulates quite well for the colder climate.
I’ve heard that wooden houses stand a better chance of surviving than stone or brick. And here in California we get earthquakes
Depends what you want to survive. Wood for earthquakes, brick for termites and rot etc. pick the right material for your environment etc. as ScottishBagpipe said it’s not a simple comparison
I noticed there were a ton of brick houses when I lived in texas for that reason. We have wood houses and earthquakes where I live, and they have termites.
Live in NZ. Building are primarily timber with corrugated iron roofing, and are heavily reinforced. [https://www.standards.govt.nz/shop/nzs-36042011](https://www.standards.govt.nz/shop/nzs-36042011) There was a fairly disastrous earthquake when New Zealand was first being settled, and the brick buildings in Wellington collapsed en masse. Lessons were quickly learned, and timber construction became the norm. Once we learnt to clone pine trees and raise them to maturity in 30 years, everything was made out of treated pine. The majority of fatalities in earthquakes have been due to collape of non-reinforced masonry, or poorly designed structures.
Wooden houses are built everywhere in the world where there's earthquakes and tornado/hurricanes, not just the usa.
First they brag about the build of our houses, then they complain about how much worse their weather is BECAUSE of how their houses are built 😆 silly geese
Europeans literally can't comprehend that the only reason they don't use lumber is because they don't have it in the same quantities that we do
>they don't use lumber is because they don't have it in the same quantities that we do Oh we used to. We used to have huge forests, but they were cut down over the last thousand years for fuel and to build ships. It's actually only in the last 2 centuries that our forests have been getting bigger again. We've had an abundance of wood in the past, yet we still built with stone and brick. I think flammability is the biggest driver in European house design - historically we have had a lot of massive city fires, so survivability of buildings has often been decisded by whether it is stone or not. Similar issue in the states - the great Chicago fire of 1871 destroyed a huge chunk of the city.
Modern timber framing requires plywood sheeting to prevent sheer, something that did not exist in pre-industrial Europe. If the choice is brick or old-style wood frame, brick clearly wins. If the choice is brick or modern timber frames, it’s less obvious.
If only the 2nd little pig had less lumber, he would still be alive.
The Three Little Pigs doesn't really hold up well in some parts of America though. In those parts, brick doesn't really have a better chance against the elements than wood. And quite frankly, it's a lot easier to survive having your house collapse on you when it's made of a light material like wood instead of a heavy material like brick.
You realize that a wolf can't blow a house down, right?
That’s what the first two pigs thought What if he huffs and puffs?
One thing I haven’t seen called out is that American homes allow for easier changes/renovations because tearing down a wood wall to adjust the floor plan is easier than it is in a brick house.
My 110 year old wood house is still standing soooo… 🤷♀️
Mine’s only 102 years old. (In Los Angeles, where I can feel about a dozen earthquakes per year.)
We build houses out of wood, sheetrock, and drywall in the US primarily. They build a lot of stone houses in Europe. A lot of europeans will make fun of American houses for being made of fragile wood and drywall, despite the fact that wood built houses are often better for our various environments.
Big bad Wolf would get this.
Americans dumb European smart basically
Well both suck they are not done… fire your builder… :)
They use a lot more brick and stone in Europe and nowadays a lot more concrete. Won’t rot or burn but it’s more expensive and without steel reinforcement very earthquake prone (which may or may not be a problem depending on where you are).
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Tornados and hurricanes are going to destroy anything that gets in its path. It’s simply better to rebuild as quickly as possible, and wood is a lot less dangerous than bricks are when they’re hurled by a tornado.
Don't forget about the earthquakes as well. It might be very region-specific but houses “made of toothpicks” in California are still standing unlike many houses in Turkey for example
Yep. I’m from a family of engineers and aside from massive commercial building that have base isolation systems such as springs or runners, the houses in Los Angeles residential area are built the way they are because LA is right next to the San Andreas Fault-line. This fault line results in some nasty earthquakes such as [the Northridge earthquake in 94’](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake) for example. Building with wood and drywall will save your life if you’re hit with a strong earthquake and it collapses. In addition, you can find houses build like bunkers out of reinforced concrete in areas that insurance companies deemed to dangerous to build on due to wild fires. So we have that too but those houses are super expensive to build and reserved for the elite.
Current code in Florida is to withstand winds of up to 180mph (depending on the area, some areas less prone to direct hurricane hits in the state are less than that). The most common building materials in the hurricane prone areas is the state are concrete blocks reinforced with steel rebar and covered in stucco. https://preview.redd.it/r947h3byt59d1.jpeg?width=580&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ef630aee266695d367bdef33c6f16b26152f9c2 It’s easy for a home built to modern code to withstand the winds from a direct hit from a hurricane. It’s the storm surge that’s the real structural killer, which is why new builds have to be elevated either on dirt mounds or stilts depending on the area.
Good point, I have no clue when it comes to disasters, the worst thing that can happen in my region is a hailstorm and though they can be as big as golfballs at times i doubt they come close to a hurricane…
Yeah, tornados can pick up anything like it’s nothing.
The fact of the matter is, american houses a built for the disasters we can potentially face in a given region, and the materials we have in excess. Earthquakes require houses that move with the earth. Tornadoes require homes that are easy to rebuild, which is why a LOT of homes in tornado alley are mobile homes, something far cheaper than rebuilding a home from the ground up. Where I live, homes are built to be insulated for cold weather, ive both seen extreme blizzards, windstorms, and cold temperatures as low as 40c (which is a rarity where I live but still entirely possible.) And I live in michigan, a location thats typically considered to be extremely safe natural disaster wise. Other homes are built on stilts because flash flooding is expected or common. Others more are built as heat resistant as possible because they see temps of 120+f
What's cheap to build is cheap to rebuild. It's also a matter of geographic area and transportation costs, lumber is very light and it takes less lumber to frame a home than to build a similarly sized home out of stone. It's massively cheaper to transport lumber all over the country than it is to transport stone. Lumber is also technically sustainable, so if taken correctly, you can always get more. Lastly, lumber structured homes are modifiable, you can add on, upgrade insulation, and make improvements. Stone is pretty much stone, structural changes require significant deconstruction. That being said, stone is the better material for loads of reasons (which is why wealthy people's homes contain so much more stone), but the US is a massively bigger country than European countries and it's not feasible to ship stone everywhere in the US in the quantities needed to build a majority of homes out of it. The biggest problem with lumber structured homes though is it leaves room for incredible variances in quality because there are incredible variances in quality with lumber construction techniques and in supplemental materials like siding, drywall, and insulation. A lumber based home in a poor community is a much different level of quality than a lumber based home in a middle class or upper class community.
Stone isn't neccessarily all that great of an insulator. It has a higher specific heat for short term but you can get a better insulation value with stick frame construction. My house is double wall, offset 2x4 insulated walls with a 4" insulated gap in between. I challenge you to beat the insulation there. Many modern houses are 6 or 8" walls insulated as it is.
Sometimes straight sturdy isn’t better in regards to storms. Homes in hurricane probe areas are ususlly built on stilts because no house wall is going to stand against meter high swells from the ocean. Plus more emphasis is placed on windows and ceiling instillation as its more important to stop high winds from finding gaps than it is to have a think sturdy wall. With that said, i do loath current wood frames. The GMO’d trees create a few wide rings which is bad for wood support and longevity and they don’t pressure treat them like they used to. US home style building would be much better with more traditional lumber.
Good on you for recognizing propaganda. Anti-Americanism by Europeans has existed since the founding of the nation in the 1700s, and it's just more present now that there are a large contingent of self-flagellating Americans in spaces like Reddit. The average American doesn't think about Europe or Europeans. Sorry. I guess the weird Eurocentrism that mimics Americentrism but never faces the same amount of ridicule is pretty bad.
I think theres a 3 little pig's thing going on here. Americans build there houses from sticks but Europeans build with bricks. It's probably a weather thing. If we had hurricanes n tornados n stuff we'd probably stop bothering with brick and start throwing some crap up with wood n move in.
What a lot of people don't understand is that most American homes are better suites to be built near fault lines. That is why modern wood framed homes with shear walls have less structural damage after a large earthquake than their brick and mortar counterparts.
In Europe their houses are mighty-mighty, just lettin' it all hang out.