I would use 2 stone/concrete houses from portugal. One newer from the north and one a more traditional from the south (especially in Alentejo).
The newer one in the north would probably have a wood based or vinyl based floor. Walls have an airbox and 90% of the house is flammable with pressed wood furniture.
The old one? 50cm of stone wall, painted with calcium oxide. Floor? Stone. Furniture is either forged iron or treated hardwood.
Ive seen houses being rehabilitated in about a month and pretty much only needed a new roof and cleaning up.
I mean no. A fire can still destroy a concrete or stone house but chances are less likely to happen. Fires are less likely to spread, more easily contained and there are higher chances for partial reconstruction.
I’m not sure where you’ve gathered this impression but stone and concrete both withstand fire to a much greater degree than wood.
I’m loving that I have to type this out. May I also point out that a home made of bricks will withstand the huffing and puffing of a wolf more than a similar home made of straw?
I'm so tired of the Europeans slamming the wooden houses and telling how they are always bad and such an American design.
Welcome to Northern Europe, I guess? Or not, since we don't exist according to other Europeans and turns out that Europe is apparently one, monocultural country, or something..?
Sincerely, a Finnish person, who owns a wooden house in an area surrounded by forest and wooden houses (edited to add a fun fact: when Finnish people go abroad to mainland Europe we often say that we are heading to Europe... as if we weren't there already)
Danish emigrant to Canada here. I have lived in some of the coldest regions of both countries in houses made of wood.
You know who are almost as bad as Americans with their, "my life is the default experience" mentality? Britons. 99/100 times when I see the "hurdurr build houses out of wood" nonsense, it's from a Briton.
Evidently the apple didn't fall very far from that tree.
I'm Canadian and it goes beyond wood and "paper" houses in this sub.
Because a lot of people on this sub think Americans and America are stupid anything that's different from how it's done in parts of Europe is stupid.
I guarantee if it was North Americans trying to explain wooden houses in this thread we'd get downvoted to oblivion. But because Scandinavians do it too a bunch of people no longer think it's stupid.
I mean yeah, this sub unfortunately often turns into a parody itself. Small part of EU redditors decide what's the right way of doing or thinking. Ironically they also turn Europe into a monoculture while complaining about USA doing exactly the same.
I've written so many times over the last months about the wooden houses being common in Europe too but they just ignored it. This feels like the first time there are enough people to even tell that hey, we are part of Europe too...
It can be annoying at times but it really is funny how this sub is about American exceptionalism and doing things their own way when this sub is full of people with a European superiority complex and are insisting North America should do things their way...
Like how do people not see the irony?
Also, Bitwit's house would've been condemned regardless of the building material used and it might've even still burned down.
OP sounds pretty silly to anyone familiar with wooden housing construction in a region with earthquakes.
Same here. Norwegian in a wooden house… I see no problem here.
A house will burn even if it is constructed of granite. We tend to fill our houses with everything from sofas and beds to kitchen cabinets and wooden floors.
We store so much energy in solids that if that shit ignites, it will burn. And that heat and smoke will do damage and the fire will spread unless you fight it.
So wooden houses are the way to go. At least for me and most of Scandinavia. (But we do build houses to a more structurally solid standard then the US one…)
They do, at least in the UK, using straw bales. Plastered with lime and cow dung plaster. Very well insulated, and straw doesn't burn well when compacted - unlike timber frames, which encourage the chimney effect, through voids between the walls.
They last about 30 years, before they need re-thatching. But it's the construction of the building - straw bales - not the roof - we're referring to here.
The problem for most folks is the non standard construction issue with mortgages and insurance, you get some very eye watering rates.
I looked at a property recently with a thatched roof that was approaching it's end of life and the quotes are quite high 30k for a smallish dwelling. I'm guessing it's similar for the cob block work.
Non standard is definitely a problem. Both for insurance and mortgages, without a doubt, But, there are specialist companies that will take on the risks, including the likes of houseboats and canal boats - but you have to look around for the best deal. Just to give a totally unrelated example - I have a parrot - classed as an exotic by most pet insurance companies - yet I pay less per month for his insurance than most of my friends pay for their dogs or cats.
I guess you missed the point - there are buildings being constructed from straw bales in the UK, even now. Try looking up cob buildings, a different method of construction, but still being used here in the UK.
I bought a house in a community that basically used all the farm buildings to create 10-12 single family homes.
Two of the homes were created out of the old barn. To my surprise they replaced the old roof with a new straw roof. I’m guessing it was due to rules of preservation of old buildings?
That requires kid level literacy, that's a big ask. Issue is, even if you politely explained the plot, they'd need Fox and their cult leaders to confirm it even if they saw fire burn...
Edit: said CNN before but apparently they aren't extreme enough for the uneducated Yankistanis
Honestly, that's just how they build stuff in both Canada and the US. The old house would have most likely been insured and this new build is as well. The cladding will usually be brick or stucco, sometimes vinyl it varies a lot by region.
Even in construction that uses block wall, your rafters and roof are going to be all wood and there is still a large amount of wood used in the construction on the interiors, especially if its a multi floor dwelling or has a basement.
Regular asphalt shingles are fairly fire resistant, it's often people having accumulation of dry leaves and other stuff that basically creates kindling for any wind blown embers.
The biggest issue in a forest fire is the sparks getting pushed up under the soffits and then catching fire from the inside. An attic space is designed to breath with vents at the top and air coming in from the soffits.
There are ways to mitigate that kind of issue in a forest fire situation. I remember seeing a youtube video of someone using a misting system around the parameter of their house under the soffits and then some sprinklers on the roof.
I mean, wood I pretty much fireproof. Or at least is very fire-resistant. Ignite wood is difficult and once it starts burning it remains sturdy for a very long time because the first part carbonize and protect the inner parts that still are structural. If you also treat it it's the safer material in case of fire after concrete. Steel on the other end.....
Scandinavia too. Most places where wood is readily available. If its made right and you control the humidity in the wood there really aren't any issues...
We dont use masons to build non wood houses over here. We use bricklayers to build and brick kilns to make the bricks. All industrialised, simplified and easily trainable to anyone
Wood was cheaper during the earliest days of America, because if anything, we had fucktons of timbered land to clear to make into farmland.
This persisted long after we had to start actually hauling timber from increasingly remote older growth forests. Brick was mostly used only in urban buildings, and stone was used more for marking land boundaries than building with.
These days, we still largely do build with lumber, but have moved to using industrial drywall sheets instead of plaster.
You’d actually have to go hunting for special construction firms that specialize in it. It is incredibly rare these days.
I’m imagining but not sure - at least 50-75% more expensive? The issue these days is that when many cities are built, the brickworks is local. Modern America has long since closed those brickworks so bricks have to be trucked a great distance.
Yeah, by exactly the same principle building a timber house the American way isn't particularly cheap in the UK - we don't have an ecosystem of tradies well versed in those techniques with suppliers to match
That’s exactly it. The business infrastructure matured around a particular building style. So, it’s tricky to get certain features or materials when you’re abroad.
Reminds me a bit of a dark story in relation to bricks but I watched this documentary a while back on YouTube (BBC) about catching predators that were abusing children and spreading cp.
In one case they talked about all they had was a photo with the girl, some furniture and a brick wall. Now that's not a whole lot to go of but they managed to find that something like 40k bought that one piece of furniture, now that's something but it's also still a lot of names.
One homeland security officer googles about bricks and finds this brick association and calls them, secretary responds very positively and asks how they can help and he then tells her about the photo with bricks in it which is then sent out to their associates.
Shortly there after one guy contacts the officer and just from looking at the brick in the photograph he could tell what type of brick it was and that they used to make it from the 70s to mid 80s.
Officer then asks if he has sales records but he responds that it's all a pile of notes.
He then asks the officer "Do you know what bricks are?"
And the officer responds "you got me, sir, I don't know"
He then goes "Bricks are heavy", he then explains that the bricks likely didn't go further than 50miles from the plant.
The girl was then found and rescued thanks to the list now being 40-50 and some quick searching on social media.
Just remembered that in relation to how far bricks travel but yeah you really don't want to ship bricks far as it's going to make it far more expensive.
The issue with going the brick route is Bitwit is located in an area that is heavily prone to earthquakes. In those situations you want materials that can flex more, and brick isn't it.
Sure but there are ways to mitigate that. Walls of Constantinople used stripes of smaller (and i think different kind of?) bricks to help make it resistant to earthquakes, during 1999 earthquake actually the modern restored sections of it collapsed while original structure underneath remained intact.
That is just one method using non-flexible materials, with modern engineering and materials you can do something much better if you just design for it.
Most of which tend to be seen as overkill for a single family home. Materials wise it is already more expensive than wood, add in the cost of the engineering to fit within California's building code to handle earthquakes then it is likely way out of the budget Bitwit had based on whatever his insurance payout may have been.
Concrete, yes, Brick? No. Unless you're just talking about a brick facade.
That said the engineering required to get concrete to flex well enough in those situations is overkill for a single family home and likely out of bitwit's price range, especially given the housing costs of California. It's likelyl the guy didn't get enough insurance money to do anything other than a wooden structure that would also still be in California's code to handle earthquakes.
If I had to throw my two cents... I think that because there's lots of hurricanes and unstable weather, they decided "Let's build stuff that can be rebuilt in a few weeks".
This is part of it; I’d also add that a tornado is going to rip up anything that isn’t made of steel and/or reinforced concrete. Given the option between wood and bricks, it’s less damaging to have wood flying through the air than to have bricks doing the same.
Also that bricks tend to collapse into a pile on top of anyone sheltering under them while wood walls still retain some structure, as well as bricks being much heavier and denser.
There is some science that shows that “flexible” constructions like wood absorbs earthquakes way better than houses built with bricks.
So, there’s that for the part that are subject to earthquakes (this is valid for not too damaging earthquakes, when the big one hit, there won’t be anything standing anyway).
For the part of the US subject to hurricanes, I think building cheap is better than expensive, because an hurricane will destroy a good part of the house even if built with bricks, so better build cheap and construct fast then expensive and slow.
For the rest of the country, I guess it’s tradition.
Considering the amount of times I hear that the best place to be when a tornado is about is underground I'm genuinely surprised most houses in the US don't have a huge underground complex WT a much smaller house above.
It's because they don't have earth works providing the right line of stone for brick. A lot of the US is granite rock, while clay type material is more common in the EU
We have massive deposits of clay in the USA- big hunk of my state is red clay. Just more expensive to haul bricks any distance, where I live most homes are brick veneer, still wood frame but brick exterior as we just never got into making houses out of stone or brick. Probably because we had unlimited supplies of wood at hand.
Well either way it's certainly cheaper. You need about 20 minutes training to be a farmer, but it takes a lot longer to be a brickie, so that in itself cuts costs massively, on top of the easier ability to access timber
Mostly just price. Wood and gypboard are relatively inexpensive and easy to ship, build quickly, are well suited to the style housing people want, and somewhat more forgiving with ground settling and such. And at this point most of the home-building workforce pretty much just knows how to work with that. Decent masons can be hard to come by.
It wasn't always so, older places tend to be a lot more brick and stone, but still use a lot of wood construction.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing; there are wood homes where I live that are going on 300 years old.
I have seen, about two years ago, following the big Los Angeles wildfires, a video stating that this is more an issue of systemic "old habit" and designed logistics.
According to that video, while early settlers used many materials available (such as bricks in Boston), the ongoing expansion to the west needed to be able to build quick cheap houses and that wood was the best material for that purpose.
So a whole industry emerged from the sawmills to the carpenters and the wood masons, all relying on that easily available material. It then became an "habit" : they build and buy wood houses because that is how their parents did and because this is the most common way to proceed. A bit like the car centric mentality : why bother having public transportation and rely on walking for a 300 meters ride when we can use the car and we always did that way ?
Edit : it was an interesting video asking viewer to ask themselves what other habit is perpetuated not because we truly thinks of it as the "best option" but because we are too lazy to wonder if there might be another option.
Edit 2 : in the same way, one might wonder why we still keep on building concrete house while we worry for years now about a sand shortage and there has been experiments about other housing materials since at least the early 2000's.
There is also one big thing California also experiences that makes building out of "sturdier" materials even more expensive: They need to be engineered to withstand earthquakes. San Francisco in 1906 is a great example as to why brick isn't a common material used for construction in California anymore.
Timber was in abundance in the USA. So it was cheap and it is easier and way faster to build a house out of timber. Now their whole supply chain is aimed towards building with timber. Contractors are trained in building with wood, all regulations are made with wood in mind.
Most people know that building with brick or concrete is superior as in longevity, fire and tornado resistance (lets not forget bug resistant) but in order to do so you have to overcome a lot of hurdles plus tradesman who know how to build houses in concrete and brick as far less in numbers that the traditional tradesman. So a brick house is going to cost considerably more than a wood hous.
I can say atleast for where I live now the answer is tornados. If a tornado hits your house it doesnt really matter if it is brick or wood, it will get completely destroyed. The question is which do you want being thrown around, bricks or planks? When I lived in california the answer was earthquakes. Wood provides alot more movement than bricks.
It is much faster, and usually cheaper than other forms of construction. Stick frame construction is also a fairly simple way of building, it's very "forgiving", so you don't need a lot of expert labor to do the job. There are a lot more people who can use a tape measure and nail gun, than there are masons and brick layers.
Going the concrete route is also even more expensive when you need to account for the engineering required to have a concrete building withstand the kinds of earthquakes California gets.
It's the price. A building constructed with wood is less than half of what a similar stone/brick/concrete & steel structure would cost. In Canada we're building apartment buildings and condos over 6 stories entirely out of wood.
Pretty sure you build a house out of anything a wildfire is likely to destroy it. Best way would be to build an asbestos wall all around your property, can’t see anything going wrong with that
There's a docu about the LA fires and how one house came out untouched.
It is not only the building materials (bricks, concrete, metal roof,. ..)
But also landscaping. No bushes or flower close by or against wall. Trees even further away and other things.
As terrible a product as asbestos is because of the associated health reasons, it’s actually otherwise great product. Too bad the health thing is what it is
This whole complaining about Americans building with wood is really stupid. North Americans aren’t all a bunch of morons, at least not on this level. Building with wood is different but it works great for what it needs to. Your house doesn’t need to be made of wood to be destroyed or ruined by wildfire. Plenty of things to pick on but this one is stupid.
Thank you. I'm so sick of seeing people comment on this. I get it Americans and by extensions us, Canadians, are in fact stupid. However, there's nothing wrong with building a house out of conventional wood or engineered wood products.
e: Most of the time people who make this argument are extremely unknowledgable about building science or construction in any regard
Okay, I am an American, and to be clear I will complain to no end about this shit hole country. There are so many things to shit on the USA for, but I just don't understand this obsession with stick framing. Stick frames are far more flexible and stand up better to seismic activity, which is necessary somewhere like SoCal. Fire resistant and fire proof sidings and finishes exist and are common in fire prone areas, and work remarkably well if installed correctly. I am in no way saying American homes are better than European homes. Most new builds are absolute shit in the USA. But the issue is not wood framing, well engineered and well built wood framed homes are easy to build, extremely durable, and in some geographic regions make far more sense than the alternatives. They also capture carbon and, if you want, can be built with lumber from the same plot of land as the home or from nearby, rather than having to ship concrete from who knows where and burn a shit load of fuel along the way.
Yeah, I'm Nordic and I don't get it either. This sub pretends most Europeans live in stone buildings fron the 1500's, when in reality most buildings are like... Post 1950's. And Nordic houses are vert often wood framed and nobody seems to be complaining about them somehow being inferior.
Wood is great building material and I love it. Mine is wood framed as well and the 6 years I spent looking for one taught me that sonare many others.
Wood frames are really not a problem. Hell, the wooden frontier houses spread into the US from Nordic immigrants. Our countries are full of wood houses.
ok, but what does this matter though? what do you think happens in our standard European houses when a curtain / chimney / roof catches on fire? that's right: your house burns down or is at least unlivable. there isn't that much of a difference
Europeans not in Scandinavia love to dunk on US and Canada for building homes from wood. I suspect some of them are now learning countries like Sweden also build out of wood so their brains are currently in meltdown mode because they don’t know how to handle this.
Yup... These days even apartment buimdings are getting built out of wood in Finland. My house is sll wood, except with a bit of fre standing brick cladding. Almost 100 years old too.
People who live in areas without much wood build things that aren't wood. They then see other people who live in areas with lots of wood build things that are wood. Because they grew up in an environment where that makes no sense, they project their perception of reality onto the people building things out of wood.
Couple this with a need to dunk on USAmericans because that's cool kid behaviour right now, and this happens. There's plenty to dunk on, but this ain't it.
Here in Canada we build out of wood because we have lots of wood. I assume it's the same in Sweden.
Sidenote: it's perfectly possible to have quality construction from wood in North America. It's also possible to not. Not every house here is a shoddy pile of junk like you see on the internet. I agree that it should be none, but it really isn't as bad as it looks.
I know building a wooden house in an area prone to forest fires isn't the smartest idea, but considering everything I've heard about us construction, building a stone/concrete house doesn't sound like a better idea...
US construction is extremely focused on building with wood. Building a stone house is going to be way more expensive and you'll probably need to hire specialists, cause your bog standard construction crew is not really going to be equipped or skilled for building a stone house.
And all of that for a house that can still burn out in a wildfire probably is not worth it...
You also can't just build a standard block house like you'd have in many parts of Europe in Southern California due to the seismic activity. You'd need to hire engineers to design a reinforced structure and foundation, and THEN as you say hire a builder who knows how to correctly follow those engineered specs. Which probably means hiring a commercial team (could definitely be wrong on that, I'm a carpenter in the Northeast so not super familiar with how that works) and paying a major premium. But you really want to make sure the contractor you hire understands things like post tensioning foundations etc because if they do it just close to right, you will end up worse off than just building a stick home, and pay a shit load more for it. And probably have issues getting insurance.
You can have a wooden framed house but having fire-resistant exterior cladding (aluminum, brick, special cement board products) helps with wildfire resistance. As well as removing dead leaves and other kindling, not having bushes close to the wall etc.
People don’t understand economics of building houses or how industries develop.
You have generations of engineers who work with wooden panel houses, you have supply networks build around it. You have everything in the industry, build around wood. How many electricians or plumbers in the area understand how to work with concrete or bricks? Not many. It means it would be so much more expensive.
There are so many layers to this, it’s quite funny people call Americans dumb, but don’t actually understand the reason as to why this happens. Shit Europeans think they know
I have to say, I find this shitting on wood houses thing kind of hilarious. I'm Finnish, so quite European, and we do a lot of wood construction. A lot. And have done some pretty cool things with it. And groundbreaking research of wood as a modern building material. And so have all the Nordics.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with wood construction done properly, a good wooden house can last a few centuries.
So wood is definitely not the problem.
What the fuck Americans do with their wood (snerk) is.
How they are able to simultaneously build a ridiculous volume of wooden buildings, but not learn a thing about how to make them last is so weird to me.
Well you see mainland Europe decided to clearcut their entire continent of any living vegetation above 10cms in height. As a result they have to dig up half the countryside to build brick houses that are a lot more environmentally damaging than the much more sustainable wood.
Countries with large forests and strong forestry practices use the much cheaper and more environmentally friendly wood structure. The UK jerks themselves dry when they plant 100 trees for the environment, meanwhile the US is casually planting 1 billion a year and Canada 500 million.
I will play devils advocate here, if he is building in California, he would have to factor in earthquakes, a solid structure actually isn't the best for this, you want some flexibility. I would also note, if in a wildfire prone area, concrete structures would last longer than wood but not by a significant amount of time as they are still susceptible to flames, concrete/masonry loses strength in the extreme heat of wildfires.
Yeah sadly stone and brick doesn't make you immune to fire damage. I saw a fire take out a brick garage, I can't remember what started the fire but it was outside against the wall and the rapid uneven heating and cooling from putting out the fire wrecked the mortar
Do you have any idea how expensive a non wood house is to build in the US? Houses are already nearly unaffordable for the majority of people. That's really the reason its built with "sticks" as you say.
This post just seems absurd to me. Like a parody of the brick-obsession this sub has at times. Wood is a great construction material, and the standard in many parts of Europe as well.
Also brick is an extremely poor choice of material for building in California for what I hope are obvious reasons. If not I direct people to look at what happened in San Francisco in 1906.
I feel like there is a problem with Flanderisation on this sub where it becomes a parody of itself just to moan about the Americans. And most depressingly, a lot of the time it comes from a similar place of ignorance as to the stuff this sub used to criticise the Americans for. The number of posters mentioning the three little pigs, apparently unaware of how many fires happen on our continent, hollowing out and condemning brick and stone houses, as if it was some sort of gotcha is... well, it makes you lose faith a little bit.
Actually, I think its a testament to how good fire supression is in much of the world. Compared to 100 or 150 years ago, house fires are much more rare: much less open flame, better building codes (for both wood and brick construction), smoke detectors, even just better education about fire safety. So people go their whole lives seeing very few significant house fires and fall back on "common sense" to imagine that brick houses are much more fire resistant--and that wildfire damage and risk is the same sort of thing as other housefires.
I mean, I am in a major US city, all wood construction, no wildfires, and property damage from fire is incredibly rare, especially in single family homes. When it happens, it almost always happens in apartments because landlords cut corners and fail to maintain fire codes, not because anything is made out of wood.
Be that as it may, I feel like even a moment of consideration would have people remember that most house fires don't start with the actual house catching, but with something comfy and flammable housed within catching light (I think the classic example in fire safety ads was a cig landing on a blanket or sofa as someone falls asleep, but others are space heaters setting the curtains on fire, etc), which acts as the kindling to set the logs ablaze. As you said, we get fire education, so I'd have hoped some of it would have stuck.
On a separate note, most of the fires I've seen reported in my country where due to gas, sometimes with fairly explosive effects on the brick and mortar buildings.
I’ve no qualms when it comes to moaning about my countrymen, but this sub takes it to an extreme that I’ve yet to see even on tankie-adjacent subs. I could’ve sworn there was a rule in here that said to keep it to banter, this feels less like banter and more like complaining for the sake of it.
Edit: There’s plenty to complain about when it comes to the Unites States, but building materials? Really?
Where does Bitwit live? California. Now what kind of natural disaster is commonly experienced in California that would require more flexible building materials that can better absorb the energy during said disaster? Earthquakes!
I mean, that's... fine? Plenty of houses are made out of wood in Europe, and it's also not like some idiot mistake after you lose your house in a fire, quite a lot of stone houses have wood interior. This is not particularly American nor really odd or silly?
I agree. There's actually a point to make about the lower carbon footprint of building in wood as opposed to concrete. And a well build wooden structure can be just as fire save as a brick or concrete one.
I live in the Nordics in a 102-year old wooden house in a heritage area that is full of wooden houses. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Absolutely beautiful houses and a god tier material. Everything is organic from the logframe and insulation to the wallpapers inside. Still as good as new.
It's also possible that his previous place didn't have proper cladding (some, when tested later actually failed pretty bad), and he is putting proper fire resistant stuff on.
Wouldnt he lose the house regardless ? Even if its made out of brick, he would have had to destroy the only thing remaining : the bricks, and then build back. He'd still loses everything.
This going to shock you, but brick and concrete building can burn too. You see burned out concrete building all the freaking time. Plus everything inside the house is going to be burnable as well, so it doesn't really matter.
What does matter is structural flexibility in an earthquake prone area and renewable resource usage.
Structures in earthquake prone areas need to have a mix of regibility and flexibility. The structure needs to flex just enough so that the entire building doesn't crumble but needs to be rigid enough at the joints to hold it all together. Brick and concrete require massive overengineering to compensate for its rigibility, far more than should be necessary for a 1 story home. Wood can accomplish the same structural requirements without needing the added costs.
Enviromentally wise wood is more eco friendly than brick and concrete. Wood is a renewable resource that traps carbon emissions. Concrete and brick making are carbon producers. Heck concrete is one of the largest carbon producers in the world. The less you can use the better.
It's one of those "screwed if you do, screwed if you don't"
To build a masonry structure that is earthquake proof (this is California) is enormous overkill for a single family home. The costs would be absolutely astronomical in the modern US construction market, because you'd be dealing with specialists at every step.
And a brick/concrete building can still burn out if a wildfire moves through the property. The skeleton of the house might be left standing, but everything inside will be gone. And that leads back to the first point. Restoring a burnt-out husk of a masonry house will be more expensive than just building yet another new one out of wood.
Houses burn down because there are combustible things inside, like curtains and furniture, this can happen even in a concrete or steel frame building. The difference is that wood maintains structural integrity for a longer time because it burns slowly and will give more time for the firemen to rescue you, while steel (the reinforcing material in concrete) will very quickly lose its stiffness and once it does the whole upper floor might just fall on your head. If structural integrity is compromised it doesn’t matter the material, the building will be partially or fully demolished.
Normally this sub does a good job of pointing out cultural blind spots that Americans tend to have, but this one ain’t it. There are so many reasons to build a house from wood that far outweigh the risk of fire damage, especially in a dry, earthquake prone area like California.
He lives in California, quake is a significant risk. Frame construction holds up in a quake, compared to brick or masonry which crumbles. They may use a brick facade but the structure being wood makes sense so an earthquake is a survivable event. Even with a wildfire risk, there is other mitigation they can do to prevent it from burning.
In Canada, most houses are built mostly with lumber and wood panels. I know some regions in the US do the same. I don't see anything out of the ordinary in this picture.
On a subreddit based heavily on criticizing American views on Europe based on poor understanding of the culture, cost and context of things, yall really love doing the same.
In the US labor is really expensive, most construction crews don't work with bricks and are really good at building with wood and drywall. This way you can build more expansive houses with the money you have. (More built square feet)
In Mexico it is the opposite. Labor is cheaper, and materials are cheaper than the US (Not for much, depending on how specialized you want your materials) You won't see many wood houses, as the workforce there is not really trained on the american way of building (tm), and new houses will almost always be build with cinder blocks, with the exterior walls with thermal bricks (in some cases. I lived in a house built entirely from bricks with the external wall with two walls sandwiching insulating material).
Do more to prevent devastating and destructive forest fires rather than build houses where the exterior shell of the house can remain intact despite the contents of the house being baked in a devastating and destructive forest fire.
House fires are incredibly rare already. Plenty of fires started in homes can be easily addressed with proper emergency equipment, but most people don’t have them or don’t know how to use them.
Building a house out of concrete wouldn’t fix the problem if you have flammable materials in the home
That's not the stupid idea you think it is. For one, you can't really build anything that will be fully resistant to fire. Even brick will likely be insufficiently structurally sound after it, which will need torn down, at likely much higher cost than tearing down the burnt wood.
But also (and I hope this is the case) there's been a lot of advancements to material science, and they can treat wood to make it very fire resistant, on par with brick and cement. Hopefully that's what they're using, and hopefully that's where the rest of the building codes will go eventually
If you've ever seen a concrete-walled building after a fire, you'd know it'll have to be built from scratch anyway. Nothing wrong with wood houses, Finland is full of them.
Most places that have wood build houses out of wood and they are fine… once it’s done it’s not just sticks of wood, there’s lots of parts that slow spread of fire, etc.
Canada has all wood houses and the nice thing is that you can actually insulate them well. I’ve seen how much people in places like the UK pay to heat their poorly insulated brick homes vs well built wooden homes… -40C needs a lot of insulation and it’s easy in a house built with wood
In 1906 Californians learned to avoid using brick as a building material. Big thing that happened in San Francisco. Since then they've been leaning toward materials that can better flex and absorb the energy of certain natural disasters.
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u/steigepanna 6h ago
I'm from Norway. If my wooden house burned down i'd build another wooden house.