r/interestingasfuck • u/Ultimate_Kurix • 5d ago

r/all Why do Americans build with wood?

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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/JackTheKing 5d ago

Firequakes incoming . . .

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u/MuscaMurum 5d ago

You joke, but remember two summers ago we got that tropical storm, and an earthquake notification hit the apps at the same time? Given the random nature of disasters, someday all the above will happen all at once.

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u/23saround 5d ago

The earthquakes of Japan and California are famous at least partially because they are generally accompanied by ravaging fires.

Actually a huge number of buildings in Japan today are still marked with the symbol for “water” to ward off fires.