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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

If you ever see one under construction, another thing that makes a mcmansion what it is , the cheap wood. Chipboard, particleboard and medium density fiberboard all over the place. God help you if you ever have a roof leak. Or a siding leak. Or it sits out in the rain while under construction before completion.

Contractors save thousands per tract home using this shit instead of proper plywood.

Also, staple gun and nailed construction where there should be high quality wood screws.

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There is definitely a lot of corner-cutting when it comes to new housing construction in the US for the low end of the market, but it's usually seen with poor insulation and energy efficiency, low-quality cladding and paints, and "builder-grade" fixtures. Very rarely have I seen chipboard or MDF used. OSB, on the other hand, is used even in high-end construction and, as an engineered alternative to plywood, has a number of benefits over plywood including increased strength, lower cost, and lower environmental impact.

As for staple gun and nail construction, I can't say that I've seen the former, but nails are a superior fastener to screws for many structural applications such as framing because they have a higher shear strength than screws. A nailed stick-frame house doesn't require specialized tools or skills to build, is relatively low-cost and uses renewable resources, and can easily last 100+ years. It's an excellent choice for many houses in the US.

Not MDF but a cheaper fiber board is often used in trim. The trim itself is often a colonial shape and doesn’t match with the vernacular design of the area or often with the house itself. It is usually 3/8” too thin and 2 1/4” to short.

You’ll often see press-formed cardboard doors in 6 panel colonial style on houses in cities that didn’t exist in colonial times.

Builder grade fixtures fail quickly, while the porcilin in the bathroom may last, a complete rebuild of the toilet is often necessary in as little as 3 years. Vanities are lower grade press board that melts as soon as water hits it. You’ll see mold and dry rot form are both the sink and bath because poor water proofing

> proper plywood

Plywood in an actual mansion?! No, thanks.

Well, i'm referring more to building ordinary suburban tract houses that don't meet the definition of "mansion", and reasonably sized wood framed single family houses. If you can afford to build an actual mansion I'm sure there will be very little plywood anywhere.

Why don't homebuilders in the US use brick and stone? Plywood and screws still seems like cutting corners.

It's been a very long time since brick or stone were commonly used as structural elements in US houses. For decades, houses have typically been stick-frame, perhaps with brick or stone used for the facade. In such cases, the brick or stone is serving merely as cladding for the house just as siding would. Brick or stone facades are typically more expensive than wood or fiber cement sidings but the choice of the former rather than the latter is based on aesthetics, not intrinsic quality. There are definitely high-quality and attractive houses that have no brick or stone. For example, this older house was re-clad with fiber cement siding and it's appropriate for the character of the house:

http://www.fibercement-siding.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09...

It's a lot more costly. Look at the market labor rates and availability in any major metro area for masons.

How come they afford it in Europe then? All four walls in every room in my house here are a foot of solid brick, and it's not an abnormally expensive house.

Because there is a local abundance of materials and skilled laborers.

In the US you’d have trouble sourcing bricks and even more trouble hiring brick layers.

If you visit the north east the oldest building (upto 400 odd years old) are stick+frame because thats what they had available when they got off the boat, the workforce and techniques grew from there.

E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks_House_(Dedham,_Mas...

Edit: corrected 450 -> 400

I think it's more obvious if you've ever lived in or near the parts of the Pacific Northwest that produce a lot of the US and Canada's lumber supply for stick built houses. BC, WA, OR, ID. I personally know very little about the economics of bricks, but you can sit by the BNSF railway which runs from Seattle-Vancouver and watch entire southbound massive trainloads of BC lumber wrapped up in plastic, rolling south towards distribution and end users.

looks like this: http://vanderheide.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/IMG_62...

Any idea of the cost per sqft (or square meter) to build your block house? I build wood-frame homes in the US for ~ $95/sqft. These are nice homes with decent finishes, proper insulation, etc but we benefit from low labor costs in my area.

No I've no idea and maybe it's much more expensive.

But they're not blocks by the way if you're thinking of large cement or cinder blocks - all the houses round here are made structurally from proper red bricks.

My wood framed house in New Zealand cost $200/sqft and we’re not talking high end. Blame our cost of shipping, labour and local building supplies monopoly.

I think it may be more of a cultural thing. Here in Brazil, even the poor illegal unpainted houses in the infamous favelas use brick.

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