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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I do not see why I would want to use brick rather than lumber. Wood plus proper insulation plus drywall is quicker, easily modifiable, and lets wireless signals through.

It makes almost everything a much simpler do it yourself project.

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Bricks don't interfere that much wireless signals and for new bricks no additional insulation or drywall is needed [1]. Still some plaster inside and facade oustide is needed and you are completely right building with wood is much quicker, more flexible and also probably cheaper.

[1] https://www.heluz.com/en/product/heluz-family-50-grinded

>Bricks don't interfere that much wireless signals and for new bricks no additional insulation or drywall is needed

How acoustically active are the rooms in a house like this? I can only imagine how many rugs and tapestries hanging on the walls would be needed just to stay sane.

It insulates outside noise pretty well of course so you probably mean how does it work with indoor noise and frankly we (Central Europe) have lots of such houses and I don't see the problem very much (I am in room made from (different) brick walls right now). Buildings made with concrete are much more problematic in that regard. Tapestries are only in museums and rugs are becoming less popular with floor heating.

yes. echoes/reflections in interior spaces is a huge problem for me. you say tapestries are museum only pieces, but i was really referring to any cloth like material used as a wall hanging to help absorb some of those reflections. also, do not see how a rug on the floor would interfere with floor heating. rugs are not 100% coverage, but would still help reduce reflections/echoes. as would furniture, but not as much as wall hangings/rugs.

No cloth-like material on walls is used to absorb reflections of sound, it's not needed, usually a modest amount of furniture, wooden flooring and perhaps some curtains on the windows are enough. I think when we speak about residential buildings, the rooms are not that big and there are not a lot of people in a room at a time, so it's not really an issue. When you have a pub full of people and the owners didn't think about acoustic treatment, it's a different story of course.

Rugs are not 100% coverage but the rugs that were used here in the past were maybe 90% coverage? Like not glued to the floor but covering most of it. So these are not popular anymore.

I'm not a builder but what you say makes sense particularly if you're building your own house. I've only ever lived in stone or brick houses so I don't really know what timber-framed houses are like in person, and my gut tells me I’d still prefer the former

I feel like it's a good time to introduce HN to "groverhaus" - a DIY extension performed by a mod on the SomethingAwful forums to a property in the Great Dismal Swamp.

It's really amazing: https://twitter.com/boldlybuilding2/status/11979995316711301...

For those, like me, who didn't know, Groverhaus is a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groverhaus

Ah sorry, folks like you who aren't familiar with Groverhaus were exactly who I was posting that for - I guess the twitter thread doesn't really give enough background. The best intro IMO to the 'haus is unfortunately a paywalled episode of the podcast "Well There's Your Problem". It's a good podcast though so worth a few bucks a month

I'm a big fan of thermal mass.

This is probably climate-related - when there is a big difference between day- and nighttime temperatures it is very comfortable.

Because in much of the US, termites are a thing.

In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations. That durability is hard to achieve with wood frames and drywall.

But the major driving force is probably wood prices. We have less forest, and those forests have been farmed for wood for centuries. Long straight hard timber takes way to long to grow to be used for anything but accent pieces. (Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification, countries with more forest like e.g. Sweden tend to build wooden houses in the countryside).

In industrial buildings you sometimes see something akin to American construction methods, but they usually use aluminum instead of wood

Ummm, the durability of wood is way longer than you’d think. My family lives in a three-floor wooden house from 1760, and it’s showing no signs of decay just yet. As long as you replace the facade/roof tiles when needed (every 50 years?) and don’t get water into the main walls, a wood building will last for a very long time. Fires excepted, ofc :)

It is easier to keep an uninsulated wood building from rotting. Insulation slows drying if something gets wet.

An uninsulated house sounds kind of pointless, and sounds more like a barn or shack.

> As long as you replace the facade/roof tiles when needed

As long as you keep replacing the wood... a wood house will last?

No. Facade/roof tiles is only the outer surface.

"In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations. That durability is hard to achieve with wood frames and drywall."

I don't see a real difference in durability. There are plenty of stick built houses that are passed down for generations. The ones that are torn down is usually not a durability issue but more of desire to upgrade (wiring, more sqft, HVAC, etc), and it happens with masonry too.

Brick and concrete houses are rarely affected by the wood worm?

You mean termites? I would assume that's true. But they shouldn't be a real concern with wood framed houses when constructed and maintained correctly.

But that's the point, you don't want to have to hope for the best when maintaining a wood based home. By the time you notice you have termites, it might be too late. Brick removes the guesswork.

There is no guess work. You have a block or concrete foundation, no water leaks in the house, and that's basically it. Termites need water to survive. So if your house doesn't have any leaks, the you will see mud tubes coming up in the foundation. You can treat before they become established. You can use preventive measures like spraying the foundation, bait traps, etc.

Even masonry homes require preventive maintenance. It's just that the maintenance and concerns are somewhat different.

> There is no guess work. You have a block or concrete foundation, no water leaks in the house, and that's basically it.

You also need proper ventilation/drainage to ensure that you don't get moisture build-up inside walls and other spaces from condensation and the like, but admittedly that's more of a factor for things like dry rot or mold, rather than termites.

In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations.

That might have been true once upon a time, but looking at the houses that have been built around me the past few years, I'd say that quick and cheap is the driving factor of the day. Most people building houses now aren't doing so on the assumption that they'll be in use 100 years from now.

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