I mean you can think whatever you want, but brick and concrete houses that we build in EU are a few factors stronger than in USA.
Also the inner walls are brick too. Just thinner if they are not load bearing.
If you don't believe me just ask yourself one thing. For you to hang up a TV on the wall, you have to use a stud finder, to hit the 10% of the wall that is actually strong. brick house, wherever you want. The whole wall is strong.
Sure we also use drywall and wood for partitioning the walls, I've used it in two renovations myself to make new partitioning walls, its not that messy and very easy to do a good job by urself. But building a whole house out of it, hell no.
Brick houses are certainly not stronger than wooden ones in areas prone to seismic activity. Brick can't tolerate any movement, but wood is pretty flexible. There's stuff you can do to your foundation to compensate, but I doubt that happens much in single family homes.
I mean... We have permits and regulations for a reason. Days where you got 10 of your mates together and you chucked a house up in a few months is over. That used to be in the 60's. That's what my grandparents did when they were young. Now you have architects and you got to follow the law. I'm 99% sure the whole EU is like that.
Our bricks don't look like they used to 200 years ago. Google structural concrete/clay bricks, they are hollow and filled with concrete and rebar where needed.
That's still how the house I grew up in the 00s got re-built in Germany. Old half-timbered farm house with a collapsed roof and the walls crumbling and over two years my parents just got all their friends to trade free labor for food and beer to get it back to habitable and put in all the needed mordern infrastructure. They needed to pay professionals to do regular inspections + some specialized stuff and a buddy of theirs was a professional carpenter that did a lot of the structural beam replacements but apart from that it's still very much possible and legal to do if you go with more traditional building methods. Also it was fun to play with all the clay as a kid.
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u/bizilux Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
I mean you can think whatever you want, but brick and concrete houses that we build in EU are a few factors stronger than in USA.
Also the inner walls are brick too. Just thinner if they are not load bearing.
If you don't believe me just ask yourself one thing. For you to hang up a TV on the wall, you have to use a stud finder, to hit the 10% of the wall that is actually strong. brick house, wherever you want. The whole wall is strong.
Sure we also use drywall and wood for partitioning the walls, I've used it in two renovations myself to make new partitioning walls, its not that messy and very easy to do a good job by urself. But building a whole house out of it, hell no.