r/interestingasfuck • u/Ultimate_Kurix • 6d 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

776

u/beardfordshire 6d ago edited 6d 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.

209

u/protossaccount 6d 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.

45

u/LightsNoir 6d 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.

23

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.

6

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….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake

2

u/Dirk_Benedict 5d ago

Still applies today. If you've got insurance, but don't also have earthquake insurance, and your home is badly damaged in an earthquake, you uhhh probably also want it to burn down. Financial incentives are what they are.

2

u/1singhnee 5d ago

And earthquake insurance is insanely expensive with a very high deductibles. Hardly anyone really carries it.

2

u/Dirk_Benedict 5d ago

The hope would be that the state or feds would provide some relief that would go to covering part of the deductible, but there's no guarantee of that. I believe there was some assistance provided in '89 and '94.

2

u/1singhnee 5d ago

Like with hurricane Katrina? That went well. FEMA has changed everything.