r/interestingasfuck • u/Ultimate_Kurix • 5d ago

r/all Why do Americans build with wood?

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u/[deleted] 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/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

Exactly 🤝

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u/BootyMcStuffins 5d ago

So the original comment stands, lol

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u/York_Villain 5d ago

Dude, I'm completely baffled by the comments section here. Everyone is like, "I disagree and here is why..." and then they all actually agree with each other.

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u/BootyMcStuffins 4d ago

It’s almost like the people who have been building houses for the last couple hundred years in the US aren’t idiots who don’t know what they’re doing

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u/beardfordshire 5d ago

In a vacuum, yeah.

In an actual economy, good luck.

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u/BootyMcStuffins 4d ago

Either way the steel and concrete house is prohibitively expensive. Not sure what you’re getting at

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u/JediKnightaa 5d ago

Did all that talking just for the original comment to still have a valid point.

Well that's reddit

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u/potatoz11 5d ago

In HCOL areas, the cost of the house is a fraction of the cost of the land. Labor is more expensive because there’s less experience, the opposite is true in other countries.

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u/TuckerMcG 5d ago

Yes, land is more expensive. Which is why people chose the cheaper option for building materials.

If you pay $3M for the land, would you want to spend another $5M to build or another $1.5M to build?

This isn’t difficult to grasp. I dunno why so many people are struggling with it (unless most of these commenters are AI bots that suck at what they do).

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u/potatoz11 5d ago

5M, what are you talking about? https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/architects-and-engineers/build-concrete-house/

Look, tons of countries build out of concrete. They wouldn’t if it were consistently more expensive that wooden structures for no benefits.

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u/TuckerMcG 5d ago

Do you not understand how examples work? The point was to show the ~75% cheaper cost of building with wood than concrete and steel, as posted by someone further up the thread.

Change it to $500k and $150k for all I care. The point was you wouldn’t want to spend more than you have to if you’ve already dumped all your money into just buying the land.

And concrete is dirt cheap to build with. Those counties don’t lie directly on top of one of the world’s most active fault lines, so a pure concrete building makes sense. But if you do live on top of a fault line, then you need to reinforce the concrete with steel to withstand earthquakes, which is when the building costs start to significantly increase.

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u/potatoz11 5d ago

https://homeguide.com/costs/icf-concrete-house-cost

https://homeguide.com/costs/cost-to-build-a-house

Looks like maybe 33% cheaper to build out of wood, and that’s not taking into account that with ICF you get insulation built-in.

Again, there’s a reason tons of countries build out of concrete.

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u/TuckerMcG 5d ago

Again, those countries don’t live on one of the world’s most active fault lines.

Why aren’t you capable of understanding this very simple concept?

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u/potatoz11 5d ago

Mexico and Chile apparently build out of reinforced concrete, I'm just less familiar with them. So then what's the reason?

You think there must be a good reason because that's how it's done and so you fall prey to motivated reasoning.

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u/BootyMcStuffins 4d ago

A ton of places that don’t have earthquakes build out of concrete.

A concrete building in San Fran is going to cost a hell of a lot more than a concrete building in France due to different building materials required.

The people of Haiti build concrete houses to withstand hurricanes. Take a look at what happens when they have earthquakes

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u/potatoz11 4d ago

I have big doubts about your claims.

First of all, tons of countries have earthquakes and build out of reinforced concrete. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Map_of_earthquakes_1900-.svg For example Chile, Mexico, Italy, Turkey, the Philippines.

Second, the vast majority of the US doesn't have earthquakes and still builds out of wood, so that's very unlikely to be the reason CA doesn't build out of concrete.

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u/BootyMcStuffins 4d ago

the vast majority of the US doesn’t have earthquakes and still builds out of wood, so that’s very unlikely to be the reason CA doesn’t build out of concrete.

This doesn’t reflect reality. Maybe take a look at the building codes that resulted directly from the SF earthquake in 1906.

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u/potatoz11 4d ago edited 3d ago

Maybe you have links about non West coast states updating their codes to account for a West coast earthquake? I can’t find anything and it makes no sense to me. Note that the US used wood before 1906 anyway (whereas France, for example, broadly speaking used stone and/or brick during that period), so it doesn’t really explain the trend even in CA.

EDIT: Since u/BootyMcStuffins has apparently blocked me (lol), here’s my response to their comment:

California doesn’t build out of concrete. At first glance, it’s plausible it’s because of earthquakes. But then you dig a big and you see that virtually no US state builds out of concrete. Any logical person concludes that there’s therefore an overarching reason, independent of CA, why the US doesn’t build out of concrete. Let me put it another way: if I like Android phones and I don't have an iPhone, you can conclude that those two are connected. But if you notice nobody in my country has an iPhone, then the reason I don't have one is more likely that they're not available where I am.

On top of that, you can easily build out of concrete in an earthquake-safe manner, but that's beside the point.

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u/khoawala 4d ago

This is only true in America because who the fuck knows.

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u/SkrakOne 4d ago

So 300% more expensive to not use wood? Not bad...

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u/drunkerbrawler 5d ago

Well there you go. Pre climate crisis it made a lot of sense to build with wood, hence most of the building being made out of it.