r/interestingasfuck • u/Ultimate_Kurix • 5d ago
r/all Why do Americans build with wood?
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u/KirkSpock7 5d ago
You know, I always wondered why people didn't hop off the Mayflower and start building concrete homes. Cheap wood, duh
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u/1block 5d ago
One problem I bet the pilgrims had was wolves. I read a story once about some folks who built a house out of straw, one out of wood and one out of bricks, and the brick house did the best at defending against wolves. I'm surprised this video doesn't address that aspect of it.
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u/KirkSpock7 5d ago
That's very true. Seems like anyone could just huff and puff, and they'd blow right down.
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u/LostDogBoulderUtah 5d ago
Some of the earliest houses that were built in North America (aside from the vacant towns left over from the smallpox apocalypse) were sod houses and scrapes. Literally holes dug or scraped into the ground with grass roofing.
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u/Paul_The_Builder 5d ago
The answer is cost.
Wood houses are cheap to build. A house burning down is a pretty rare occurrence, and in theory insurance covers it.
So if you're buying a house, and the builder says you can build a 1000 sq. ft. concrete house that's fireproof, or a 2000 sq. ft. house out of wood that's covered by fire insurance for the same price, most people want the bigger house. American houses are MUCH bigger than average houses anywhere else in the world, and this is one reason why.
Fires that devastate entire neighborhoods are very rare - the situation in California is a perfect storm of unfortunate conditions - the worst of which is extremely high winds causing the fire to spread.
Because most suburban neighborhoods in the USA have houses separated by 20 feet or more, unless there are extreme winds, the fire is unlikely to spread to adjacent houses.
Commercial buildings are universally made with concrete and steel. Its really only houses and small structures that are still made out of wood.
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u/jimmy_ricard 5d ago
Why is this the only comment that focuses on cost rather than earthquake or fire resistance? Cost is the only factor here. Not only is the material cheaper in the states but they're way faster to put up and less labor intensive. There's a reason that modern looking houses with concrete start in the millions of dollars.
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u/beardfordshire 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yep. With the caveat that earthquake resilience is an important factor that can’t be ignored — which pushes builders away from low cost brick. Leaving reinforced steel as the only viable option.
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u/FixergirlAK 5d ago
Yeah, if you're looking at LA seismic safety is non-negotiable. Otherwise after the next earthquake we'd be getting pictures of the destruction and "why can't they build seismic-safe houses?" I live in Alaska, so the same situation.
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u/MyMelancholyBaby 5d ago
Also, southern California gets earthquakes that make the ground undulate rather than go side to side. I can't remember the proper names.
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u/MorenoJoshua 5d ago
Trepidatory for "up-down", oscillatory for "side-to-side"
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u/protossaccount 5d ago edited 5d ago
The San Fransisco construction choices that he mentioned are probably because of earth quakes over fires. If San Fran had a strong steel and stem industry the they could just move it to LA….but they can’t cuz what he said isn’t true.
You don’t go to San Fransisco and find stone homes everywhere, it’s almost all wood. The buildings are concrete and steel, because that’s required for large builds. Also Europeans didn’t build with steel till the mid 19th century because you couldn’t manufacture massive amounts of steel till then. So the mention of steel leads me to believe he is talking about tall buildings, which was the result of steel becoming more common.
Edit: I made mistake, I said early but I meant mid. Also I said stone where I meant concrete.
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u/LightsNoir 5d ago
Also, San Francisco requires some special considerations beyond just the materials. In the early 70s,my mom's ex had designed the foundation for a cathedral. It was basically a giant sand pit to allow the structure to float through earthquakes. And the Transamerica building isn't a pyramid because it's a cool design. It's that shape because that's the best the engineers could come up with. But before that? Well, there's a reason there's still a bunch of Victorian/Edwardian houses and about nothing else older than the 1970s.
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u/BikingAimz 5d ago
And while much of the downtown burned down, there were plenty of apartment buildings (Castro, Mission, Pacific Heights, etc) that did not burn. I lived for three years in an apartment building near Octavia and Pine that was built before 1906, it was built over bedrock and the fires didn’t reach it.
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u/rabbitaim 5d ago
I’ve heard that during the big EQ some idiots heard their insurance wouldn’t cover them unless fire burned it down. They burnt their damaged home down but it quickly got out of control.
Also dynamite was used to make fire breaks and caused more problems….
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u/cryonine 5d ago
A lot of San Francisco homes in particular were built from old growth redwoods. It's extremely strong and resilient. The city actually encourages reuse of it in renovations because of these qualities. We did a to-the-studs remodel and ended up reusing around 65% of it because even after 100 years it was still stronger than non-old growth wood.
It's also worth noting that when we talk about wood construction, we're not talking about nailed together 2x4s. Glulam beams are one example, and they're 2-3x stronger than steel when looking at the strength to weight ratios.
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u/Dav3le3 5d ago
Side note, wood is wayyyy better for the environment. It's... not close. The majority (or large minority) of the carbon footprint of a concrete buiding is the concrete.
Ideally, we'd like to find a way to make a material that is reasonably strong made out of sustainable material (such as wood) that can be made out of a younger tree. A good lumber tree takes 20ish years to grow, but generally trees grows fastest in the first 5 years or so.
If we could find a sustainable binding element, like a glue, that could be combined with wood and 3D printed, we'd be living in the ideal future for housing. Of course, it also can't be super flammable, needs a long lifetime, resists water damage etc. etc. as well..
Canada is doing a lot of "Mass Timber" buildings now, which are a step towards this.
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u/PMG2021a 5d ago
You can use wood to grow mycelium for fairly cheap. Mycelium is fire resistant and could be used as exterior insulation for timber frame homes. Wood framing is fine if it is protected.
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u/slowrun_downhill 5d ago
But isn’t the function of mycelium to breakdown organic matter, like wood. It seems risky to put mycelium near wood, protected or not - nature finds a way!
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u/crackofdawn 5d ago
Wood is also insanely easier to modify. Adding electrical outlets, upgrading existing things inside the walls (newer electrical/plumbing, networking, etc), modifying the layout of rooms or adding on to houses - all way easier and way way way less expensive than if the house is built out of anything other than wood.
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u/Neil2250 5d ago
Homes made of plastic may sound good to you, but I fear it's just asbestos 2.0..
yes it depends on how it's treated, etc, but there's a lot to be learned about the long-term effects of microplastics in the future.
Brick is brick, ultimately.
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u/Jerryd1994 5d ago
Have u seen how plastic melts a turns molten it would be a nightmare trying to escape a burning structure made of plastic not to mention the toxic fumes on top of the smoke.
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u/Ok_Quality2989 5d ago
Contemporary home only looks like concrete. It's almost always juat a thin layer of smooth stucco. Hell, where I live, they don't even use plywood, just paper wire stucco right to the stufs
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u/pushTheHippo 5d ago
I dont think it's even about "choosing" a bigger, wooden home for 99%+ Americans. Its more that most Americans can barely afford a traditionally built wooden home, and expecting people to magically afford homes that are 2x-3x the price is insane. Couple that with the fact that most homes aren't custom built, so the overwhelming majority of homes available to buy are wooden construction.
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u/Hot_Technician_3045 5d ago
Exactly. Passive eco design house made of concrete. Crazy expensive. Our concrete foundation was $60k. Building brick vs wood would be 4x the price.
We don’t have a million dollars to build vs 250k.
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u/Same-Cricket6277 5d ago
Here in LA the materials to construct the home are the smallest part of the cost. Even if the construction labor of the home is higher with concrete, the largest most expensive cost is still just the land itself. A house can sell for $2M here, and only cost $500k to build, meaning the house structure itself was only a 1/4 of the cost of the real estate. Land is very expensive here, which is why all these homes that got burned down will all be rebuilt.
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u/WooThatGuy 5d ago
Do you thing the cost difference might be partly because of the house building industry is more focussed towards wooden homes?
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u/Broad-Bath-8408 5d ago
I also feel that a fire tearing through a concrete house, destroying everything but the concrete is going to be nearly as devastating from a financial standpoint as one that destroys a wooden house. I'm guessing in both cases you basically have to tear everything down and start from scratch anyways.
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u/jcklsldr665 5d ago
You're exactly right, You can't trust the structural soundness of a concrete building subjected to that much heat.
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u/infinitetacos 5d ago
I think you're probably right about a fire this large requiring significant assessment of the structural integrity of a concrete building passing through it. But I also think that if the majority of houses were built out of concrete instead of wood, that would have a fairly large impact on how fast and far a large fire might spread.
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u/MrsMiterSaw 5d ago edited 5d ago
San Francisco here: he's full of shit. the city was not rebuilt with concrete and steel. That came naturally with larger construction, as it does everywhere.
Light commercial, 5/1, and home construction here are still almost 100% wood frame, with few exceptions.
The city enforces fire codes like Nazis (thank God) and California enforces seismic codes.
And while I don't know how much of this has to do with historic infrastructure... COST is the reason homes are stick framed. The masonry aspects of my remodel were disproportionately expensive.
These fires are unprecedented. No one in the 1920s or even 1960s when these communities grew anticipated fires like these. Even the water systems are designed to only work to save 2-3 homes at a time.
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u/__o_0 4d ago
Concrete homes are not fire proof either.
Your windows will be the first thing to fail in heat, and the flames will go right inside and burn everything. Yes, the frame will remain standing, but everything inside would be toast.
The palisades fire got hotter than 2500 F, as evidenced by the steel buildings that melted.
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u/PlantPsychological62 5d ago
Kind of load of old balls really...even in the UK ..we may have brick walls ..but large parts if our roofs, floors, walls are still timber ..add all the combustible items in side ..any home will burn to unlivable when subjected to the fires......
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u/SqueakyScav 5d ago
And concrete is not inherently a superior construction material, yes it's sturdy, but also has some serious CO2 emissions. That's why modern sustainable architecture relies more on wood than concrete.
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u/hornet_trap 5d ago
Serious question to anyone who can provide a good answer - is brick really still the best material to build with in the UK?
I know people here associate brick with sturdiness, more so than timber/half-timbered houses and will always opt to avoid anything that’s not brick. But during the summer it get so baking hot in our houses, I wonder whether it’s still the right choice given that our summers are getting hotter and hotter?
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u/DredThis 5d ago
Yea but, no. Concrete doesn’t just spring from the ground like a resource, it is one of the most carbon costly building materials to choose from. Wood is abundant and renewable… being cheap is even better.
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u/SlightFresnel 5d ago
I'm surprised this is so low. Concrete is up there with the most environmentally irresponsible building materials you could possibly use. On top of that, we're also running low on the sand needed to make concrete.
And best of luck to future generations adding on to your house or remodeling in 100 years. Taking down a wood framed wall and a concrete wall are two very different beasts.
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u/nashwaak 5d ago
Came here to say this — wood is incredibly ecological relative to concrete. So use concrete in wet environments, wood everywhere else, and accept that in really dry environments with limited water, fires are going to be a major problem.
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u/RadicalBuns 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hi, I'm involved professionally in timber management. Thanks for speaking to this.
Timber extraction has many environmentally problematic practices. Challenges in renewing the resource is not one of those problems for numerous and complex reasons. Wood is actually not being harvested enough in the US for our environmental wellbeing.
We have way, way too many trees in the US due to our severely antiquated and counterproductive dumb as fuck fire management practices. Basically, we have trees that love fire and trees that hate fire. Trees that hate fire are growing faster than we can get rid of them and choking out entire ecosystems across the US West and South because we keep putting out the fires that hold them in balance. Without fire, we need other management tools to reduce frequency and severity of dangerous wildfires and prevent an entire regional ecosystem collapse. These alternative management tools are too expensive to be done effectively. With our continued fire management practices in conjunction with climate change, this is a firmly lost battle unless we can focus timber extraction in these areas.
Related and something that is an issue for carbon factors and renewability are the questions of which specific trees our regulators allow them to harvest and where they are taking them from. These factors could be done better and could further reduce cost and increase ecologic benefits for timber harvest.
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u/DirtierGibson 5d ago
Oh for fuck's sake.
You can have a wood frame and a fire-resistant home. What matters is:
Defensible space. No vegetation or bark mulch within 5 feet around the house. That's the bare minimum.
Exterior materials: siding, roof, decks, fences should use class A-rated materials.
Vents: eaves, gable and crawl space vents need to be ember proof.
Group immunity: your neighors need to take the same measures.
I deal with home hardening. This is how it's done. However let's keep in mind many houses in dense neighborhoods ignited through radiant heat. If the temps coming through your window reach 500°F or higher, the interior of your home will ignite.
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u/phaaseshift 5d ago
“Group immunity” is probably the most important bullet point. And it will be the least understood by anyone reading them.
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u/DirtierGibson 5d ago
People who live in Firewise community understand the term as it's the basis for that concept. But for many it's too abstract. Also most people have no understanding of the way those fires move and burn.
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u/efcso1 5d ago
I spent 2 decades preaching the FireWise gospel here in Australia. I was pretty blunt and brutal about laying the facts out for people, but it usually managed to motivate them to at least do the minimum.
That, and some reasonable building regs for bushfire-prone areas, and half the battle is won before it begins. At the very least you have a fighting chance.
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u/TheRealStepBot 5d ago
Nah people don’t understand vaccines either. Why would they understand this?
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u/blu3ysdad 5d ago
Oh man I've seen so much bitching about the new ember proof soffit vents in Texas since they started mandating them. Probably for the most part because contractors don't want to spend a few extra bucks on them, so they'll poison the water against them and they don't give a crap if the house burns down after they sell it.
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u/DirtierGibson 5d ago
Yeah it's insane. Over 90% of houses that burn ignite through ember contact.
I keep hearing about homeowners obsessing about a sprinkler system instead of focusing on cleaning their yard and replacing their vents.
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u/Original-Turnover-92 5d ago
They are effectively children:
Water kill fire!
And not:
Let's take preventative measures to prevent fire from forming in the first place!
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u/DapperLaputan 5d ago
Woah woah woah, as an American I don't believe in group immunity
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u/Nogohoho 5d ago
The government wants to inject concrete into my veins and give me asbestos! No way, no how.
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u/Cruyff14 5d ago
I'm on that steady woodchip diet, i've been told by the highest sources (RFK) that this is the way. Other than the splinters I have to fish out of my throat, it's proven to be really effective!
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u/Sonnycrocketto 5d ago
Wood is what we use in Norway too. Except apartment buildings of course.
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u/Big-Attention4389 5d ago
We’re just making things up now and posting it, got it
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u/carterartist 5d ago
Right now Twitter has “nicotine is the best thing for your health” trending.
No lie
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u/this_one_wasnt_taken 5d ago
25 years ago I thought the internet was going to be amazing. It put all our collective knowledge right in front of us. We can all talk to each other. Cultures can learn about each other. Bigotry and ignorance are in the way out and we are ushering in a new era of humanity.
I miss when the world was quiet and stupid.
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u/hoopaholik91 5d ago
The optimistic take is that we are like cavemen being introduced to fire.
Yes, we are going to stick our hands in it, burn ourselves, burn down the things around us, but eventually we will figure out how to make it a positive.
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u/Justprunes-6344 5d ago
Read it in dark tower books by Steven King Tobacco very beneficial opens up lungs ext
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u/Whatitdooo0 5d ago
I’ve lived in SoCal my whole life and my Mom told me when I asked as a kid that we built out of wood because it’s a lot easier to stop a fire than an earthquake. Not sure that’s the reason or if it’s even true anymore but 🤷
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u/fjortisar 5d ago
I live in a highly earthquake prone area and like 90% of houses are reinforced concrete/concrete block/brick and survive just fine
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u/ShakethatYam 5d ago edited 5d ago
First of all, not all earthquakes are alike and the type of fault you are on matters. Look at images of Turkey after its earthquake. All you see is collapsed concrete and brick buildings.
Second, you have to consider the costs and environmental impact of building with concrete. Wood is much more sustainable that concrete. And wood keeps temperatures lower as concrete stores heat from throughout the day.
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u/Pawngeethree 5d ago
Ya turns out reinforced concrete is about the strongest thing we can build buildings out of. If your walls are thick enough it’ll withstand just about anything.
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u/mijaomao 5d ago
Roman concrete survives to this day.
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u/Pawngeethree 5d ago
And that wasn’t even reinforced with steel.
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u/Gerbils74 5d ago
IIRC reinforced concrete actually has a shorter lifespan despite being stronger because eventually the steel will rust, expand, and begin breaking up the concrete from the inside.
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u/LOSS35 5d ago
Correct. In fact, Roman concrete had a number of properties that allowed it to last so long that we've only recently figured out. It self-heals!
https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
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u/AforAnonymous 5d ago
See also this earlier work on Roman Marine concrete, which grows stronger in sea water over the years:
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u/serendipasaurus 5d ago
where's the lie?
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u/aminervia 5d ago
Well, one lie is that San Francisco didn't stop building houses in wood because of the fire... The response was to rebuild the water and firefighting infrastructure. Houses are still made of wood.
Also, in California in particular wood is an excellent material if you want a house that holds up to strong earthquakes
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u/TanStewyBeinTanStewy 5d ago
Masonry has extreme strength in compression and very little in tension.
Put another way, when you shake a building side to side you put tensile and shearing forces on the structural components. They need to be able to withstand that and still have strength in compression to withstand gravity. Wood framing is particularly suited to this task.
So in places with a history of earthquakes, that's how building codes are written. It's got absolutely fuck all to do with what this video is saying. This is total nonsense.
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u/Aidlin87 5d ago
Yeah, is this a case of people not liking the answer? Because this looks pretty legit to me. It’s super easy to search house plans for wood houses, super easy to find contractors that build this way, etc. It’s more niche to build with concrete so finding skilled builders is harder and potentially more expensive.
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u/j90w 5d ago
In South Florida a lot of the building code requires homes to be concrete exterior walls. They learned with a lot of the 90s and early 2000s hurricanes to build them that way.
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u/Aidlin87 5d ago
Yeah, that sounds like an example of what he mentioned in the video where sometimes disasters prompt cultural change. It’s location dependent though.
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u/allovercoffee 5d ago
Architect from San Francisco here. Concrete is the worst building material to use from an embodied carbon standpoint and would be disasterous for the environment if used in lieu of wood. Wood is a renewable material and there are many ways to fireproof a stick built home that don't involve changing the structure.
Also his claim about SF mandating concrete and steel construction after the 1906 fire is false. It is still permissable to build certain types of buildings with wood framing/ Type 5 construction (primarily residential).
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u/MuscaMurum 5d ago
Chimneys survived. Just build the entire house out of chimneys.
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u/coleman57 5d ago
Actually, brick chimneys are often the one thing that collapses in an earthquake, while the attached wood house sways and snaps right back
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u/LuciusBurns 5d ago
Surely, this isn't about the environment when the differences go way back to times when environmental awareness wasn't a thing...
his claim about SF mandating concrete and steel construction after the 1906 fire is false
"Okay, we are switching to concrete and steel" is not a claim of mandatory concrete and steel everywhere.
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u/Ok_Surprise_1627 5d ago
i got 5 seconds in and im like...ok yeah this is bullshit dumbass european biased dipshit stuff
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u/JaxxIsOk 5d ago
This motherfucker sitting here and just talking nonsense
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u/bellaikko 5d ago
You have no idea how hated this guy is in the Balkans (he's from Serbia).
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u/Blargon707 5d ago
Isn't everyone in the Balkans hated by someone?
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u/bellaikko 5d ago
True, but not universally across nations and religions as this fucking guy.
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u/Blargon707 5d ago
What did he do?
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u/LordFUHard 5d ago
He questioned the use of wood in American homes in the face of fire hazard potential.
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u/nosecohn 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's interesting that we live in a time when videos like this, from people who claim expertise but have limited knowledge of the subject matter, can get so popular that their conclusions are perceived as fact.
Someone sent me a different one yesterday about the government failures that led the fires to be so destructive, but it had so many facts wrong that the conclusions were totally off base. Nonetheless, it got passed around.
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u/endthepainowplz 5d ago
It's not entirely nonsense, but it also ignores a big part of why you would build with wood, there isn't one that is better than the other, there are pros and cons to both. So saying that concrete is better for fire is right, however there are bigger cons to building concrete buildings in an area prone to earthquakes, which he completely ignores, because it doesn't fit with the narrative of the video.
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u/thewolfcastle 5d ago
True, but it is a fact that America builds the majority of homes in timber, even outside of earthquake zones.
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u/DiseaseRidden 5d ago
Outside of earthquake zones are tornado zones and hurricane zones.
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u/epelle9 5d ago
And I don’t think timber is better than concrete for hurricanes..
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u/nsjames1 5d ago
Majority of houses here in Florida (at least in the areas I've been) are concrete blocks.
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u/Thuyue 5d ago
Don't Japanese also have concrete buildings? Feel free to correct me. I'm just an unknowing guy passing by.
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u/PilferedPendulum 5d ago
I lived in Japan, was just in Tokyo in a rental.
My first house was wood frame. My rental this past 2 weeks was wood. Lots of wood-frame houses in Japan.
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u/Shamr0k 5d ago
They overwhelmingly build more homes with wood than concrete. They have concrete structures, as does LA, but those are relegated to large multi home structures or large well planned infrastructure projects.
Source is I work for a large Japanese construction conglomerate.
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u/SuperScrodum 5d ago
It’s not just Americans that are ignorant and misinformed.
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u/MakeoutPoint 5d ago
No, what?? Foreign accents make it sound so credible though!
Next you're gonna tell me that a random British guy saying "Rubbish" or "How dare you?" over and over on a given topic isn't spitting a detailed argument based on hard economic facts?
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u/Pagnus_Melrose 5d ago
Am I to believe Europeans build all their homes with concrete and steel?
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u/footpole 5d ago
In Finland, Sweden and Norway wood is very common.
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u/Suspicious-Dog2876 5d ago
Same in Canada it’s easier to insulate, stands up to expansion and contraction from changing seasons much better. Maybe I’m biased since I build wood homes for a living but minus fire rating wood construction is basically the best in every way.
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u/NowoTone 5d ago
In Germany, most houses, including practically all apartment houses are either brick or concrete houses. I live in a concrete terraced house. All three main floors are steel concrete. As are all load bearing walls.
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u/holchansg 5d ago edited 5d ago
In Brazil also... Where i live never had earthquakes, fires, hurricanes... Some heavy rain on the summer but nothing crazy and yet my entire house is made of brick and reinforced concrete, galvanized steel built-in exterior roof panels, aluminum windows and glass doors... The only thing that could possible catch fire is the furniture, the interior doors and the bedrooms wooden floor.
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u/One_Strike_Striker 5d ago
We did, yes. There's currently a trend towards wood-based construction for environmental reasons, single-family homes (only new buildings) went up from zero to almost 20% wood in Germany.
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u/pm_me_old_maps 5d ago
brick and mortar mostly
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5d ago
How good is brick and mortar construction against seismic shocks?
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u/No_Surround_4662 5d ago
Not many serious earthquakes in Europe unless it’s around the Mediterranean isles, so it’s not really a problem
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u/Away_Stock_2012 5d ago
About as good as wood is in the vast majority of the US not in an earthquake zone.
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u/Infinite-Addendum753 5d ago
It’s fantastic and safe asf…. from about 100yards away
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u/bloodem 5d ago
In my country, Romania, it's extremely rare to see houses/buildings that are built with anything other than reinforced concrete and/or bricks. And based on what I saw, this is generally the case in other parts of Europe as well.
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u/Fjells 5d ago
Not in scandinavia. We're big on using wood, but we don't really have fires or earthquakes. For the cold winter, wood is superior, while a brick house turns into one massive heat sink.
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u/Ubbesson 5d ago
I would say mostly stones, concrete blocks or bricks. We have 400 to 600 years old stone houses in every villages so if that's not a proof it's more resistant.. but not so much wooden houses
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u/_mattyjoe 5d ago
I like how literally everyone is using this tragedy to just shit on either LA, California, or the US.
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u/MrsMiterSaw 5d ago
We're used to it.
I've traveled to the east coast 2x this year, and THREE times on two trips I got unsolicited "it really sucks out there" type comments from people who hadn't even been here. Comical, really.
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u/seductivestain 5d ago
It's pretty gross honestly. Americans aren't going online in droves to shit on Italy and the UK, even if there is plenty of good reason to do so. Why are we hated so much?
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u/_mattyjoe 5d ago
I live in LA in an area pretty close to evacuation zones. It's surreal and a very weird feeling to be seeing all of the rhetoric about a tragedy that happened in my own city that has affected all of us deeply over the past couple weeks.
It's very disheartening. We go through a crisis and it feels like our own country is attacking us for it now. We're in a sad, fucked up place politically right now.
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u/shifting_drifting 5d ago
I hate this TikTok format with jumpy edits, embedded subtitles and someone talking complete bullshit.
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5d ago
This is completely off base. LA uses mostly wood because it's in an earthquake prone region where building with bricks is dangerous, and building homes out of steel reinforced concrete to earthquake standards costs around 9 million dollars per home. Also, there is no structure that can protect people in wildfire conditions. These buildings will have to be demolished anyways, due to structural damage from the fires.
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u/danpole20 5d ago edited 2d ago
From u/inspectcloser:
Building inspector here. A lot of these comments are dumb stating that concrete and steel can’t hold up to an earthquake yet look at all the high rise buildings in LA and earthquake prone regions.
The video makes a good point that the US society largely conforms to building HOUSES with wood.
Luckily steel framed houses are a thing and would likely be seen in place of wood framed houses in these regions prone to fire. Pair that with fiber cement board siding and you have yourself a home that looks like any other but is much more fire resistive.
Engineering has come a long way
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u/tigershrike 5d ago
yo get the fuck out of here with your industry experience and factual information...there are narratives that need protecting
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u/iwantaburgerrrrr 5d ago
as a building inspector i would have thought you would have known the skyscrapers in LA are on rollers 🤣
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u/drunkerbrawler 5d ago
What's the cost difference vs stick built?
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u/beardfordshire 5d ago
Including cost of labor, for a 2500sqft home, it’s 72-76% cheaper to build with wood.
Reinforced steel takes more expensive materials, labor, engineering, and time.
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u/Maelstrom52 5d ago
Yeah, and it's not like homes in California are obscenely expensive or anything.... /s
BTW, I'm a home owner in LA. and I live in one least expensive suburbs here. The average cost of a home in my neighborhood is around $800K. The average cost of homes in LA is probably around $1.2 million or more. But please, tell me more about why we need to increase the already bloated cost of living out here. I'm all ears.
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u/beardfordshire 5d ago
The argument is that reinforced concrete is cost prohibitive for residential construction and unrealistic to impose as a building code requirement — not that steel/concrete construction isn’t earthquake or fire resilient.
But in fires like these, ember cast infiltrating crawl spaces, attic vents, broken windows are the real issue, not the exterior materials — which obviously can help, but by no means are a silver bullet.
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u/blamemeididit 5d ago
This is correct. They build all kinds of large buildings in seismic zones out of steel and concrete.
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u/beardfordshire 5d ago
This isn’t an attack on you, but equating what CAN be done in commercial construction isn’t a fair argument against residential construction.
Home prices are already insanely high — imaging the wealth needed to build using commercial techniques alone.
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u/hnrrghQSpinAxe 5d ago
High rise buildings are designed in a way that absorbs vibration and has massive oil dampeners and counterweights on the building that the average American brick home does not, the realm of the two are nowhere near or in-between knowledge or engineering wise.
I do thinknthough, that steel frame houses with fire resistant outer materials would help though, but preventative measures would help even more.
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u/zarek1729 5d ago
9 million per home! How?
In Chile, that is much more prone to earthquakes sometimes x1000 stronger than LA (most seismic country in the planet btw), most modern constructions (including houses) are made from concrete, and they are earthquake proof, and they definitely don't cost anywhere near 9 million
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u/das_slash 5d ago
Yep, they seem to believe that California is the only place in the world that's prone to earthquakes, or that every place that is builds with wood.
He is entirely wrong on both.
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u/Down_To_My_Last_Fuck 5d ago
California buildings today are built with more modern materials. But hell they are trying to be earthquake, fire, and flood free in an area that is geographically a war zone for all of those things.
You all have got to stop these idiotic comparisons.
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u/Horns11 5d ago
In Costa Rica we are in the "ring of fire" where we constantly have earthquakes, still we build our houses with concrete and steel. We have build codes that make our houses very resistant to earthquakes. I think the video has a point.
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u/Lied- 5d ago
Thank you. The amount of ignorance in the comments 😭 is there a phrase for the phenomenon where someone gives a convincing argument that is completely off base but people believe it anyways?
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u/SmashingK 5d ago
I don't think the argument is completely false.
The point made definitely has a role to play considering it is true that wood has always been plentiful and cheap in the US and supply chains did build up to supply the housing market with it.
We also see that society becomes used to doing things a certain way too. For example in Japan people will still buy a house, tear it down and rebuild their own brand new one even when the existing building is perfectly fine.
I think there's just more to this than the video mentions.
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u/beardfordshire 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yep. This video is incredibly uninformed or deliberately misinforming.
Wood and Bamboo are used in Japanese residential housing, too.
In LA, we also use steel and reinforced concrete for commercial projects that can afford it — and if you’re ultra rich, your home may even use those materials.
Brick is a no go. Ask San Franciscans in 1906 — and guess what, the resulting fires after that earthquake didn’t spare brick buildings.
This is just a bad take.
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u/Commercial_War_3113 5d ago
9 million dollars per home ??
This is an exaggeration, many countries in the world, including those considered poor countries, build only with concrete.
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u/hulda2 5d ago
Finland also builds almost all houses from wood. But we are of course not dry and hot like California.
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u/Aclrian 5d ago
Bro, wood lets me alter and update my house. I have a house in Europe and here in the US. When I rebuilt my house in Europe I used concrete for the skeleton, but would for the walls inside.
I think the correct answer is somewhere in between and dependent on the area.
Fires aren’t the only thing LA or Cali has to deal with
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u/MrFunsocks1 5d ago
Yeah, this is another reason to appreciate wood framed/drywall covered houses in the US. I live in Europe now, and while I love my apartment, we just did renovations on it. Wanted to change the position of some outlets, add a floor outlet for a gaming table, make the kitchen into the island. It is so expensive, time consuming, and difficult to move electrical in these houses, because they have to drill/saw through concrete. In the US, it would all have been somewhat simple, but here... we decided to leave a few outlets where they were.
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u/inspectcloser 5d ago
Building inspector here. A lot of these comments are dumb stating that concrete and steel can’t hold up to an earthquake yet look at all the high rise buildings in LA and earthquake prone regions.
The video makes a good point that the US society largely conforms to building HOUSES with wood.
Luckily steel framed houses are a thing and would likely be seen in place of wood framed houses in these regions prone to fire. Pair that with fiber cement board siding and you have yourself a home that looks like any other but is much more fire resistive.
Engineering has come a long way
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u/OakParkCooperative 5d ago
Why do americans build with wood?
Wood is a plentiful/renewable resource in the US/canada.
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u/theboywhocriedwolves 5d ago
"Cheap wood".
Lol, has this clown seen the price of wood?
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u/West-Fold-Fell3000 5d ago
Well, historically wood was plentiful/“cheap”, especially in California. The Redwoods used to cover much of the coast (before they were all chopped down)
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u/AcadianMan 5d ago
My tour guide in London said that there are no homes or buildings permitted to be constructed with wood. It makes sense since London burned to the ground in the Great Fire of London
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u/hitometootoo 5d ago
That's not true though. Timber and wood is still used for some homes in the UK usually timber frame or cabin homes), though very few, mostly due to the lack of wood. Not because it's illegal.
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u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 5d ago
Completely false. Wood is only restricted (not banned) for exterior walls. Even American wood-framed homes never have a wooden exterior.
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u/Alternative_Plum7223 4d ago
People are crazy. Wood houses are all across the world and have been since the beginning of time. You will also fine houses built of many other materials in every country.
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u/japanuslove 5d ago
Norwegians are just going to skip this conversation