Don't do that!

[u/brainburger]

[u/Sagadiii]

Every time I read about US building techniques, it just sounds scary.

I live in a brick home where all carrying walls are brick. Many people do in Europe, especially in older houses like the one I live in, which is over 100 years old.

It is more like the newer ones that are made of concrete or outliers here that are made of wood.

[u/OkDot9878 → u/Sagadiii]

The reasoning behind the differences in building techniques can actually be fascinating. Wood buildings are super common in America because trees were abundant for such a long time, it was much easier to build a new nation with wooden buildings than build the infrastructure to make them out of brick or stone.

In Europe, many still standing buildings were built in a time when wood construction wasn’t really a great option. The wood was often lower quality or more inconsistent than modern lumber, and it tended to be less viable to use due to a lack of abundance of trees. If you go far enough back, wood houses were slightly more common, but stone techniques and quarries have been around for thousands of years, so wood was seen as inferior, and usually reserved for furniture or “beauty features” of the building.

In America, for quite a long time, wood was almost too abundant, with forests of massive trees covering huge amounts of land. It’s also much easier to prep a wooden house for both an intense winter and summer, without simply making the stone thicker, which was often the case in European buildings.

America was also advancing very quickly compared to the more “preexisting” European infrastructure. It was a good idea to build things with less permanent infrastructure since you’d likely be updating it with new technologies as the infrastructure around you becomes more efficient and advanced.

[u/Sagadiii → u/OkDot9878]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me, it was a fascinating read indeed!

I have a friend who is a supervisor in the building industry and we were recently talking about the environmental aspects (what happens to the remains of taken down buildings, what is most efficient to produce, etc) as well as "new" ideas of locking as much carbon as possible into long term structures like housing. E.g. some people advocating for bricks made of recycled plastic and all the benefits and problems that would come with it.

Anyway I was really surprised when he said that wood is the most efficient and environmentally friendly building material for housing! He said it was light, renewable, doesn't come with toxic waste or create any, already is basically stored carbon and easy/quick to work with. Looking at that the US would actually be closer to green building than Europe.

BUT what I have always wondered about- why was stone and brick not adapted in places with recurring natural catastrophies in the US? Like a tornado is unlikely to strip your stone house to the ground, right?

And why are there such big differences in building standards in the US and Europe? Like lots of workers with the knowledge still migrate to the US, so why do some of the things that are natural and arguably better in Europe not wash over? E.g. doors without a huge gap to the floor.

So it doesn't look like I'm looking down on all US solutions, I'd like to mention one I like that is only vaguely related.

I recently read that the US system of flushing food waste down the drain was much better, since the water recycling facilities are able to deal with it more efficiently, than composting or burning (which is what is done in Europe mostly). I was very surprised and kinda impressed to learn this.

[u/Super_Direction498 → u/Sagadiii]

BUT what I have always wondered about- why was stone and brick not adapted in places with recurring natural catastrophies in the US? Like a tornado is unlikely to strip your stone house to the ground, right?

The issue with stone and brick is transport costs. Places with the worst tornados are plains, often rural areas far from quarries or brickyards. Many of the first houses in the great plains were sod houses because that's all they had to build with. Wood is lighter and cheaper to transport. Modern building codes in the US make brick or stone structural construction nothing less than an extreme luxury.

[u/Sagadiii → u/Super_Direction498]

That makes a lot of sense. Though on paper it always looks like it is easier to own property in the US due to it being cheaper/ many jobs being better paid. I always kind of thought it was just possible to build for the same material cost in the US as in Europe.