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Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

US building standards are pretty good for our wood frame houses these days. These houses can withstand pretty much anything but tornado or earthquake. Proper maintenance of the external facing structures of the house (roof, paint, siding, windows) mean it can last a very long time (100 years). We also insulate houses more or less depending on where they are. New homes are quite energy efficient.

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I grew up in Germany and 100 years does not sound like a long time for a house to last. Maybe that’s they main difference: expectation of longevity. Which is surprising because while my hometown Cologne is in fact more than 2000 years old, many of its buildings were destroyed in various wars. I’m not sure where the cultural expectation that houses should last forever originates.

That was just an example. I think they can last pretty much indefinitely with maintenance. I know we have wood frame houses built in the 1700s and 1800s that still stand in New England and other places.

Americans think 100 years is a long time; and Europeans think 100 kilometers is a long distance.

(As an Australian - we completely fall on the American side of that remark)

"I’m not sure where the cultural expectation that houses should last forever originates."

Probably partly from ownership of buildings transitioning form wealthy capitalists to middle class. For the capitalist the house is an investment since they get rent from it, but for the middle class family who own their house the house constitutes a huge portion of their wealth. Banks are the main winners, as they profit from loaning money to middle class to purchase the house.

The second factor is the rise of cities. As more people come closer together, the value of land naturally rises. Hence, the "natural" portion of the houses price does not come from the structure itself, but from the value of the land, and the market forces demand for the building.

If the building becomes... defunct, a huge portion of the middle class familys wealth disappears (sans the land - but, often the land is rented from someone).

Hence it's nice to imagine buildings last forever, while paying back your 50 year loan on the house.

Wooden framed houses tend to survive earthquakes better than any other construction technology, as wooden frames are flexible, especially as they're constructed with nails, which lend the frame a lot of give.

Wooden houses can (from experience) survive magnitude 6-7 earthquakes.

This is highly dependent on the design and the size. The larger a wooden building is, the more likely a lower floor will soften and pancake during an earthquake, and structural elements need to be added to stiffen it against lateral movement.

Japanese pagodas have very interesting designs that keep them from toppling. My favorite is the Horyu-ji pagoda. Each floor is not connected to the one above it - they're just stacked, loosely. The floors shift independently during an earthquake. A gigantic central beam in the middle acts as a tuned mass damper, preventing them from sliding off entirely. One person can make the central beam sway. https://gizmodo.com/5846501/how-japans-oldest-wooden-buildin...

Tō-ji pagoda's design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG37gQSvrf4

Design really is everything.

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