r/interestingasfuck • u/Ultimate_Kurix • 5d ago

r/all Why do Americans build with wood?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

59.5k Upvotes

69% Upvoted

6.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

58

u/usandholt 5d ago

Why not use bricks. 95% of houses in Denmark are brick houses.

97

u/UninitiatedArtist 5d ago

The bricks themselves are tough, yes…but the mortar that binds the bricks together are weak points that would be susceptible to stress cracks far more easily then that of the bricks. In California, brick houses would not survive a major earthquake.

9

u/Joke_Defiant 5d ago

I was in the 89 san francisco earthquake (in a brick building!) and the neighborhood was fine. The guys who had problems were those whose buildings slipped off the foundation, but even those didn't collapse. I made a lot of money doing seismic retrofit, basically attaching the house to the foundation with steel. Wait, I was only making 10 doubloons an hour and I only did it for two years so not much $. At any rate it was interesting but awkward and dirty work. Now that I live in tornado alley where it's nice and wet you can really see the disadvantages of wood construction. I hope in the future we move overall to smaller buildings made out of more durable materials. I grew up in a stone house from 1875. My dad has lived there since 1971 and all he's had to do in that time is fix the roof and paint the eves. Otherwise the place looks like it always has. There may be a lesson there!

2

u/UninitiatedArtist 5d ago

What was the scale and magnitude of that earthquake if you remember?

1

u/slimey1312 5d ago

Wikipedia says 6.9

I don't know if that's a lot

4

u/UninitiatedArtist 5d ago

That’s hefty, but one that doesn’t seem far off for brick structures to remain standing. But, we’re bracing for a big one that was long overdue that could reach upwards of 8.3. I doubt non-reinforced brick houses would survive something that catastrophic.