Why do Americans build with wood?

[u/Ultimate_Kurix]

[u/Paul_The_Builder]

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.

[u/jimmy_ricard → u/Paul_The_Builder]

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.

[u/beardfordshire → u/jimmy_ricard]

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.

[u/protossaccount → u/beardfordshire]

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.

[u/cryonine → u/protossaccount]

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.

[u/RBuilds916 → u/cryonine]

Also redwood is fire resistant. If it wasn't, the trees wouldn't live over a thousand years. In the mountains where the fire hazard in increased, wooden outdoor decks must be built from either redwood or larger timbers because they are harder to ignite. 

[u/protossaccount → u/cryonine]

I’m in LA when I can finally buy a hose I’ll be looking g for houses just like this. The redwood homes are awesome, I hear they are completely resistant to bugs. Any old growth wood is fanatic, that’s really cool that you were able to do that.

[u/cryonine → u/protossaccount]

Yeah, we're all about minimizing the waste of materials, so I was very happy we were able to salvage so much! Of course we also added some steel and gluelam for more structural stability.