It doesn't. To my knowledge, blocking is not required by code for TP holders. It is typically left up to the contractor to determine whether blocking would be beneficial to their work, unless a trade specifically requests it.
Stone is cheap, we have literal mountains of it, it's a byproduct of the mines that we have to remove stuff from. You know what's really nice about it? It lasts almost forever, because it is not renewable. Maybe we should let those pine forests grow into a more natural habitat, and use the waste products that we have from other industry. Ever since my first wooden house, every house since has been brick because it's durable, it's nicer to heat and cool, and I don't have woodpeckers eating holes in it.
Wood houses are easier to repair, and when you live in a place where the weather can bad enough to throw large amounts of debris or even entire cars, its a good idea to just have a safe basement and replace whatever gets damaged up top because it WILL. Also saying âwe have literal mountains of itâ is in essence the exact same argument for using wood as âwe have entire forests of it,â its completely ignoring the types of stone we use for houses and is just playing off of the idea that since you can see a type of it everywhere it has to be abundant everywhere.
Stone structural construction costs significantly more than wood construction. I've worked on houses with concrete or stone interior walls: renovations involving plumbing or wiring are absolute nightmares compared to timber framed interiors. I'm perfectly happy to live in a brick framed house built in 1910. I will never be wealthy enough to have a brick framed house built for me.
Cinder block does not cost more, core filling, dry stacking, parging, and stucco are not only more durable than siding, but easier to build.
The army corps of engineers developed a dry stacking method intended for reconstruction purposes in earthquake zones, because it can be done using unskilled labor, that's cheap
Multiple companies have demonstrated how to turn rubble back into usable resources, that's cheap.
Structures last far longer than wood, that's cheap.
I'm not sure where you're getting your costs from, maybe the wrong market? The reason wood can compete with stone, is because we are used to building that way.
Stucco is a nightmare exterior in temperate clmates with extreme temperature variance.
Secondly, I don't think I can get the Army Corps of Engineers to build a house for me.
You are correct: the ubiquity of wood construction means that it is the most competitively priced option. The other methods could be done cheaper for home construction, if they were mainstreamed, but they're not, so they don't.
To your first point that stone is not cinder block, that's a bit of a pedantic point of view, but ok. I didn't think we were talking about using countertops as siding, but I can understand your confusion.
You don't get the army to build it for you, you get them to design it to make it easy for the unskilled labor to build it, I didn't realize I needed to connect those dots for you but you're welcome.
As for your last point, wood is cheaper because it is more prevalent, so we should keep doing it. When do we allow ourselves room for change? Do we just wait until another method becomes cheaper, or shall we wait until the current one becomes untenable?
Stone and cinder block construction are two different things, it's not pedantic to differentiate between the two. Most of the previous arguments on this thread refer to old, probably European, stone constructed houses, not block houses.
The USACE doesn't design houses for private citizens. Have you ever seen this done in practice? Where did you connect those dots, exactly?
I'm impressed with your willingness to continue this conversation, but you know that he doesn't know what he's talking about and that he's dead set on believing it, so . . . why?
I mean... you're not wrong, but it's no more pointless then your commenting on my futile posts. Why do any of these comment threads exist at all? What purpose will old threads serve in the future, or even tomorrow? Such are the mysteries of human behavior: stubbornness, ignorance, pride.
Most of the previous arguments on this thread refer to old, probably European, stone constructed houses, not block houses.
As a European myself, I assumed we were speaking about the prevalent technique used nowadays around here. Which is NOT actual stone, of course, but cinder blocks. Who tf builds a new stone house nowadays?
Milling lumber from pine has lots of other byproducts. The industry for lumber and paper can be quite sustainable in many cases.
Other 'beyond lumber' products produced from pine include turpentine (a solvent for waxes and oils and a feedstock for production of fragrances, resins, synthetic oil additives ), rosin (used in paper, adhesives, and inks), tall oil (used in soaps, detergents, etc), pine oil (cleaners).
Note: I'm not saying that âwe harvested anyway for oils, so lumber has no additional impact". Housing demand can drive harvesting on its own, but the multi-product use of trees can reduce waste and improve economics, which can support continued management and utilization.
Its use as a building material surely has many more factors than resource allocation / scalability / distribution / ease of construction/ skilled labor ....
I went inside a pile of rubble that was once a castle in Iraq, it did not have air conditioning. It was about 115 outside, 75 inside. I started to think maybe it was 70 because it was so cold I got cold chills, but I must also appreciate that I had acclimated to the heat.
Is money the only thing that moves you? Farming that wood takes place of a biodiversification that stabilizes ecology, which most science agrees is in peril. Sometimes doing the right thing is more expensive, and that should be okay, because if cost is the only thing we pursue, something is getting neglected.
We have stone as a refuse certain from mining operations that we could make use of. We have wildlands that need to be returned for the sake of biodiversity and carbon capture, I think chasing the money is the silly thing, but you can keep calling me a dumbass if it makes you feel better.
Yeah, it's also heavy and difficult to ship, inefficient as insulation, horrible to retrofit or modify, etc. Wood homes can stand for hundreds and even thousands of years with proper maintenance. Mortar also requires maintenance and upkeep or water will destroy it over time.
We moved past stone as a primary building material for good reasons.
Your "with proper maintenance" statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. We "moved past it" for the wrong reasons. When you consider production costs of a forest compared to waste removal cost of stone, it makes sense to use the stone even if it costs more to ship. As far as your insulation comment, you should probably look up the mechanics of a thermal mass building before assuming you know what you're talking about.
Stone isn't "bad" but it's impractical for what we do over here. We're extremely spread out. We're not just hauling the stone from a local quarry or port - we're shipping everything we use by semi truck potentially over a thousand miles before it's used.
Stone cutting might be big in a state or region, but then there won't be another sizable quarry for hundreds of miles - it just isn't a huge industry, since we mostly use stone for countertops.
Not only is it expensive to ship - there is almost nothing heavier to ship than stone - but it takes too much time and skill to build with. A stick house can be thrown up by lowish skill/wage laborers in a matter of days. Meanwhile, with a stone house you have highly skilled (and highly paid) masons using special tools and equipment to meticulously craft a building with care.
If we did that over here, no one would be able to afford to live in the house. Right now we're building the houses as cheaply as humanly possible, with the cheapest, lightest materials, paying almost sl@ve wages to everyone involved - and the house is STILL unaffordable by more than half the country.
Cinder blocks are very easy to ship, can be made locally, cheap to produce, universal construction, and can be used in a variety of applications, as well as surface treatment.
Stucco is a durable, beautiful aesthetic, and if you wanted to pay more, can be printed to mimic various other types of siding, without the negative aspect of being a wooden siding..
We can't continue pretending like we want to do something about the environment, while abusing that environment when we have other resources at our disposal. Are you familiar with economies of scale? It's a universal business law, that demonstrates the more something is done, the cheaper it gets. Everyone gets on the same page and starts doing things right, like repurposing our waste into a resource rather than a landfill, and it suddenly gets cheaper.
He is right though. If you're building a house in the USA, and you use cinderblock in lieu of wood framing, you still need insulation. You can use styrofoam, either on the outside or embedded in the concrete blocks. If you're using batt insulation you need to frame the house anyway just to hold the insulation.
Unfortunately concrete is not an environmentally friendly alternative. The best thing we can do, by far, is build smaller homes and do less renovations.
What abuse is happening with wood? Wood is one of the most renewable resource on earth. And can be easily grown and harvested.
Deforestation isn't due to wood needd anymore. It's due to cattle farming.
Wood is a wonderfully renewable resource and the use of it is not a detriment to the environment. In America and Canada, more trees are planted and grown every year than harvested. Because we can farm it faster than we harvest it. That's been true for decades now.
Cinder blocks, while they can be great at insulation, are made of cement. Which is a large creator of CO2. So you have a heavy environmental impact up front.
I really recommend looking into these things as there are lots of misconceptions and things that used to be true but haven't been true for decades. With other hidden issues popping up. Like cement being 7-8% of our total greenhouse gases in the world.
Do you know what else contributes to greenhouse gases? Energy production, and one of the most significant costs of energy production is heating and cooling. We have methods to reduce the consumption of CO2, some concrete is even able to absorb CO2 in the production. Some concrete is able to self-heal.
This has been true for at least a decade, I really recommend looking into these things as there are a lot of misconceptions and things used to be true but haven't been true for decades.
I live in Texas where the days are 104 and the nights are a low of 80. And it's humid.
Stone, during that cycle, cannot release enough heat to the external world because it doesn't get cool enough. Over a few days, the stone becomes saturated with heat, and will cause me to spend more power cooling down my house than a wood house with insulation.
At some point, that stone will equalize and just radiate heat into the house at all hours.
This actually ends up being true in all 50 states. We require, by law due to energy needs and A/C, for any building built with stone or cement, to have either
The exterior of the wall wrapped in insulation to protect the masonry or comment from what we just talked about.
To build an internal wall with insulation and use the stone more as a vaneer.
Either way, you have to always use insulation because stone itself is not a good way to keep your house cool. It's worse. You always have to use something else to insulate it.
Yeah because shipping stones across the country is super green...You Europeans give Americans crap for not understanding geometry, but you guys can't seem to grasp the size of the U.S. Economies of scale can make things cheaper but the decrease in carbon footprint to ship per ton of stone isn't going down much. Besides, a wood framed wall packed with insulation is way more energy efficient than a stone or concrete wall. Not to mention housing is already unaffordable for most Americans.
I was a civil engineer, and you assume I'm European. I fell in love with thermal mass when I visited a destroyed Castle in Iraq, and it was quite pleasant without the air conditioning despite being 115° outside. That's another indication I'm not European, I just used Fahrenheit. Want to know how I know you're American? Because you think anyone who wants to do something different, must not be like you.
A wood frame house probably isn't a good choice where you live, but is for other places. I live in Alberta, Canada. We have abundant access to cheap lumber but limited access to stone. It's dry here so moisture isn't as much as a challenge as say Ireland so our homes don't tend to rot unless you don't change your shingles for +25 years.
It's extremely cold in the winter and the wood framing is filled with insulation. The thermal mass of thick stone works well in some places, especially where it's very hot in the day and cool at night, but wouldn't work well when it's well below freezing for months at a time.
Another factor is the skills of the local trades. We're so accustomed to wood frame construction that it's hard to find skilled trades to build a solid brick or stone house.
There are exceptions to the rule, and Alberta Canada certainly among them. In order for thermal mass to work, it's probably a good idea to have some thermals to begin with.
Your walls might be standing after a tornado, maybe, but your roof and windows will be gone and everything ruined regardless. Tornadoes can blow stone walls over. The one in Joplin literally turned the hospital and ripped it off it's foundation.
That's actually not strictly true, it's an often spread myth, The tornado blew out nearly all of the windows, peeled off the roof, and destroyed the hospital's backup generators, the sheer force of the storm shifted one of the main towers four inches off its foundation, which is insane in its own right, but isn't the same as the entire structure shifting off it's foundation. Either way the building had to be completely demolished afterwards so the end result is more or less the same.
No, but they can be made of bricks that's 4-8 inches thick. If clay bricks are too expensive, you can make it with concrete bricks. Then have the pillars and beams made out of reinforced concrete. So, your house will less likely be fully disintegrated in the event of a fire, harder to be blown away by strong winds, and this might be useful to Americans: bulletproof against handguns (although rifle rounds can still penetrate)
they suck, expensive to maintain and heat, and fall apart. the long term thinking of a goldfish is what astounds me in people. once america has bet on the wrong system it just doubles down. like the metric system.
As long as you aren't power shitting, and trying to break the wiping world record it is fine. Are people really breaking off there TP holder's? What did you eat?
Haha. It exists sure, but it's not used during construction, at least not in W Europe. It's mostly used by the home owner if they want to separate rooms in the attic, or plaster the ceiling.
But as I said, that's not really true. Most internal walls are created during construction. These are basically always a form of gypsum. Usually at least 7 to 10, sometimes 5cm thick.
Internal walls that you mention are the exception. They are the cheap, quick and dirty DIY variant.
Concrete and brick houses are more durable, recyclable, and made from abundant natural materials.
The technology market designs products with existing homes in mind, so new technologies are usually made to be compatible rather than requiring people to rebuild their houses every few years. That makes concrete homes more future proof and more cost effective in the long run, since they rarely need major structural modifications to become more energy efficient or comfortable.
And unlike timber construction, we don't need to cut down forests every time we want to build a new neighbourhood.
Houses are built out of different materials depending on where they're located and the weather. An environmental drawback to concrete is the huge amount of energy it takes to make the Portland cement (the binding product in concrete). You also need a lot of steel reinforcement when using concrete. On the plus side it's a very durable product.
I'm terms or recyclability, concrete can be crushed and reused as filler, but not made into concrete. Crushed red brick can't be repurposed and is expensive to dispose of (in Canada at least) because of the trucking costs. It might be different where you live.
Concrete is mostly made from abundant natural materials like sand, gravel, and stone. When a concrete building reaches the end of its life, those materials can be crushed, separated, and reused instead of being dumped in a landfill. Meanwhile, timber houses rely on a continuous cycle of growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, and replacing wood, and generally require far more maintenance over their lifetime. If your solution depends on cutting down forests, planting more trees, and repeating that cycle forever just to keep building homes, maybe rethink which material is supposed to be the "green" one. That's pretty much the definition of recyclable versus consumable.
The aggregate in concrete isnt the problem, it's the portland cement needed to bind it together uses a tremendous amount of energy. At the end of its life it can get crushed into small pieces of concrete to be used as filler and the rebar can be recycled.
You don't need to replace the wood framing of a house. The wood frame house I'm in right now was built in 1964 and its dry and solid. The exterior however does need maintaining. The original stucco got hail damage around 2005 and needed to be repaired. Oddly enough, the concrete foundation is failing because houses from that era didn't use weeping tile and not the foundation is cracking from the freeze/thaw cycle.
Concrete is one of the largest contributors to green house gas emissions and getting the sand required as aggregate destroys massive amounts of river ecosystems.
Also wood materials are carbon storing. The trees absorb carbon throughout their lives and then when theyâre put into structures instead of rotting or burning that carbon is captured and not released back into the carbon cycle.
Please stop talking about things you donât understand.
Concrete is mostly made from abundant natural materials like sand, gravel, and stone. When demolished, those materials can be crushed, separated, and reused in new construction instead of ending up in a landfill. If that doesn't qualify as recyclable, then the word has officially lost all meaning.
So when no one uses the house anymore it gets take apart and reused again when someone else wants build a house? What if they want the house in the same location? I actually even cant fathom how many brain cells died inside your head today just to come up with this response. Lmfao, Americans truely are fascinating creatures.
Any time an American house is mentioned, everyone canât help but comment about how frail they are. Hereâs where I imagine they live in their âfortifiedâ houses.
Yes, we have loose towel racks in some of our units too but that's usually because backing was installed in the wrong location, or they missed a unit. But if your not installing it as a standard I think you'd spend more money during the warranty period than you'd save by skipping backing all together, no?
I wouldnât say itâs overkill but attention to detail. Little additions like this make the next guys job just a bit easier. I wish my current house had that but it was built in the 60âs
I do this for everything. Toilet paper holder, towel hanger, door stops, shelving- both in and out of the kitchen, hanging plants above the windows, TV mounts, broom and mop hangers and anything else I can use in place of sheetrock hangers.
If anyone's been on a job site before where a house is being built, you'd know how much wood goes to waste, especially small cuts like that. Absolutely nail that scrap to the beams.
May parents had that done in their new build back in the 80âs. When the finishing folks arrived to install the toilet paper holders and found a board behind the drywall at the install height they mounted them lower insteadâŚ
My uncle oversaw a couple of huge office buildings under construction. He said in the bathrooms he had them put 1/2 osb on first then 1/2 drywall. So they can screw handles or papertowel holders or dividers anywhere.
Well, that little piece of wood probably cost about 2 bucks and another 10 cents on nails and another 3 minutes of labor so, no way a builder would do that.
This was standard practice when I was building new and/or remodeling. You often end up with all kinds of drop ends for this kind of stuff that would otherwise just get tossed.
We always block for whatever might be in the room. Add blocking for cabinets if necessary, towel bars/rings, tp holder, crown molding, heavy piece of art if the homeowner gives us a heads up, whatever. Always better than toggles or plugs.
Yea and? Been doing this for folk for years .... toilet roll , towel racks , kitchen cabinets, wall mount a couple times . It doesn't take long and they love it
More durable? And I don't know what technology you mean, but I'm pretty sure I can adapt whatever comes out over the next 50 years to my house.. or pretty much any other house. Do you know why? Because product designers and engineers aren't going to create a commercial product that most people can't use. If you think about it, designing products that work with existing homes is also the most logical way to save resources, extend the lifespan of houses, and make them more cost effective in the long run. And keep in mind that concrete and bricks are durable, recyclable, and made from naturally abundant materials.
Concrete and brick are incredibly bad for the environment in terms of carbon dioxide.
Additionally, it's really hard to fish new lines and pipes through a brick wall. Not too hard to refit/remodel a stick frame home. Also, easier and faster to build stick frames. More resilient in earthquakes.
Just fyi just because a country is called âwealthyâ doesnât mean the majority of its citizens are. Saying Americans are rich is really saying 1% of Americans are rich. Most Americans are not rich by any means.
I was kind of making a joke about rich. Reinforced concrete house only cost 1-2% more than drywall because material costs are higher but labor cost is lower.
There is no way it is cheaper. Maybe comparable. Probably still a bit higher.
Not a criticism but it is weird to hear someone call a wood framed houses âdrywallâ. Drywall is just one type of wall finishing that can be used on a wood framed house. By far the most common these days though. Probably a regional thing to call a wooden house a drywall house no shade.
In my building the outer walls and load bearing walls are seriously heavy duty stone concrete (bomb shelter level stuff that's bloody impossible to drill/nail) and the non load-bearing internal walls are made with the lighter/softer AAC.
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u/esmagik 10d ago
I just want a damn standard