What's wrong with wooden houses? Easy to build, easy to insulate, in normal circumstances cheap. Far far better for the environment than concrete...
I would even say it is the opposite, you are lucky to have access to cheap enough wood.
No seriously, i do not see a single advantage of a wooden house. But I am eager to hear.
Cheaper (where I am). Let’s WiFi signals through easier, so I need fewer access points.
I’ve worked with both, and the main advantage of concrete would be the sound insulation. But I feel like a quality wood + drywall + insulation installation can come close enough for residential purposes.
They sequester carbon rather than produce it.
They're easy to modify and expand.
They're durable and last forever if you take care of them.
Plus the carbon sequestration
And in the case of craftsman style homes the use of wood is very beautiful but of course you could throw a few planks of wood onto a concrete shell.
It’s softer too, I lived in a condo that was all concrete and granite, anytime you bumped into a corner or fell down it just hurt more than wood.
For larger construction, pumped concrete is cheaper to build. It’s generally (but not always) more fireproof without special measures being taken.
You think that concrete is stronger because it looks solid and heavy. In many cases, concrete or other masonry buildings are actually clad buildings with wood or other framing. Also, generally speaking a small scale, poorly built concrete structure will be more solid than a poorly built wooden structure.
I live in an urban house in upstate NY, it’s a wood frame house built in 1925. It’s not a luxury or high-end construction, but there’s no structural reason that it won’t be standing in 2125. Keep a roof on it and control storm water and you’re good to go.
That’s an American thing.
The walls in my brick house in the UK literally are a foot thick of brick. Even internal walls.
The chemical reaction for the cement in concrete generates C02 in a 1:1 ratio with the amount of cement produced. Unless you're capturing it you release 1 ton of C02 for your 1 ton of cement. Steel for rebar is even worse, the ratio of C02 generated is greater than 1:1. None of this includes any of the energy you used to heat any of the ingredients either.
Even plastic is better, some of the Carbon & oxygen get sequestered in the plastic.
A process to completely sequester or not generate any C02 in the production of cement & concrete that was cheap & easy would be a Nobel prize winning innovation. If the whole world switched to that it would be more significant than switching all vehicles in the world to electric.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0430/Why-ar...
"A six-story building collapsed Friday night in Nairobi, killing at least a dozen people. Several buildings in Kenya have collapsed in the past year. Why?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPYJ4l-lBI
Only the big ones end up in the media..
But you are right it seems like an overestimate. I found this showing 17 buildings collapsed in eight years, citing a CMU study:
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2016/05/02/kenya-s-l...
And lots of basements were packed eaeth, a whole nother level of 'unfinished'
Note that this foam is foil faced meaning it insulates against radiation energy as well as conduction or convection.
I doubt interior load supporting walls are 2x6. Often there are internal 2x6 walls, but that is to allow extra space for plumbing - 2x4 is plenty strong enough for load bearing in most houses, but toilet drains/vents don't really fit.
Could be another regional difference. Our code requires 2x6 minimum for load bearing walls.
Not a big deal for a qualified carpenter, but enough extra labor that you will pay extra for it in addition to materials.
I don’t understand if people posting this realise what a low bar this is? Brick and stone houses last a thousand years.
Many (brick and wood alike) were destroyed by fires and floods.
All in all, the lifespan of wooden structures is more than adequate, and significantly cheaper.
Further, they're designed to exist without modern heating and cooling, and many still don't have those (or they don't work very well). Yet they stand, and often still have perfectly-aligned original wooden trim work, despite being subject to swings in internal temperature and humidity that'd ruin a modern house in a hurry (modern ones are too air-tight to survive that, aren't built with any care to wood grain direction, and use much lower-quality timber throughout, including for trim, though they may benefit from extensive use of dimensionally-stable plywood).
edit: and even if some of the wood has rotten you can almost always just replace or sister up that piece and be absolutely fine.
https://imgur.com/user/AlphaStructural
What's interesting to me is you have Europeans marveling at houses built of flimsy wood instead of strong brick and concrete. Yet except for occasional water and termite damage what's failing in these houses is the concrete and brick foundations. Not the wood framing.
I wouldn't want a concrete house in the US without inspections so strict that the inspectors basically dictate when & how concrete may be poured, and/or laws explicitly breaking corporate liability protections for failure of concrete within some long time span, or otherwise ensuring that builders care very much that their structures last several decades without needing repair. I suspect they'd be crazy-expensive as a result.
In Florida a slab foundation and cinder block walls is what you want in a place with Hurricanes and a high water table.
On the California coast you want a stick built house. Because of earthquakes.
North east the frost line goes down several feet.
Lot of places you have expansive soils which will totally wreck a masonry building.
Also the problem the local workforce will be familiar with local designs. And likely to make mistakes if forced to build something different.
Why they are so old? Did owners not have money to rebuild?
Some people like the old style of architecture, which is possible but very expensive to reproduce with modern techniques (custom masonry, built in carpentry, that kind of thing)
And let me tell you, those old frames are unbelievable if they've been taken care of. If you do a renovation and open it up the wood is thick with tight, straight grain. A lot of these homes were built with old growth timber that was abundant at that time and unavailable today. The natural aging of the wood has dried out moisture and resins and makes for stronger lumber, albeit lumber that is more brittle which isn't a concern for how it is being used.
There's a good chance the wood was quarter sawn as well and if you have the original floorboards there's a good chance they were quarter sawn back then too. This, again, makes for better construction as the wood won't warp as much.
Why tear down something that is of historic value, and has a character and beauty completely missing from modern housing?
And Americans build a lot of detached single-storey houses [1], which mitigates some of the disadvantage of wood: Noisy neighbours? You've got a six-foot-plus air gap between your houses. Fire risk? Escape is trivial when every room has a ground floor window. Rain getting onto the wooden walls? Much reduced by a porch stretching around the entire building. Needs regular repainting? Easy when it's a single-storey building.
Wood is also substantially cheaper in the US than in the UK - so while it might not look like a cheap material from the prices at British wood stockists, Americans who call it a cheap way of building aren't paying those prices!
> Rain getting onto the wooden walls? Needs regular repainting?
Most “wooden” US homes do not have wood siding. Vinyl is extremely common, and most homes that predate vinyl have had vinyl installed because it eliminates the maintenance associated with painted wood. Mine is decorative masonry. (And I wish I had vinyl)
I thought all new homes in the past decade or so came with cement fiber siding like Hardibacker, Durock, or Wonderboard. I have not seen new construction with vinyl siding in a long time (west of Rockies).
Those are typically are used with masonry siding. Vinyl siding is usually put on OBS boards with a vapor barrier in between.
It’s OSB, then a weather resistant barrier, then the cement fiber siding on the outside nailed into the OSB.
Personally I don’t like vinyl siding because it looks cheap and it melts (this seriously happened to a friend of mine - the sun reflected off the windows of his neighbors house and melted his siding.)
They suck if you want to retrofit them to have modern heating and cooling. The high ceilings, giant windows on all sides, large open attics (vital for temp control without AC!), and generally poor sealing (=great if you need them to survive temp and humidity changes throughout the year, and not turn into a giant mold farm like a modern house would) all work against you.
Where I live now, ceiling heights are going back up. 10 years ago it was common to have 9 foot ceilings on the first floor, 8 foot on the second. Now it's common to have 9 foot on the second floor as well. And there are a not-insignificant number of houses being built with 10 foot ceilings.
I would rather spend less on my utility bills, and conserve the energy.
There are a few people fighting this, https://gracedesign.ie/ makes stunning beautiful house frames, and I'm having my own house built in wood right now. By coincidence, so are the people in the field next to me. But there's decades of prejudice to overcome.
It's not when you consider that we cut down most of our trees.
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statis...
In any case, the typical American wooden home is not going to have a family above you. :)
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2662623,-71.8167462,3a,75y,1...