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Comment by meerita | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with the article at all. New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on. Only a tiny fraction of the house is built on concrete. Having said so, some of the arguments to me are fit on Survivorship bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias. I'm a big follower of builers in Youtube and the amount of things that are done today in USA when building houses is quite impressive.

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> New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on.

Definite minority of those houses where I am.

Reporting from Sweden, almost all our stand alone houses (small houses) are built the same except with better insulation in walls, roof and windows (because of the climate).

I've never considered our houses rickety, although I do think wood now days is worse than 50 years ago, less growth rings in construction lumber.

I follow an Instagram account which features houses from all over Europe. Only Norway/Sweden/very northern countries have mostly wooden houses. The rest of Europe has mostly stone/brick houses.

It might also be climate related, wooden houses are warmer and stone houses are cooler.

Stone houses, if they're not properly insulated, they aren't energy efficient at all.

In Poland majority of houses are built using some kind of hollow bricks + concrete for foundations/basements (basements in newer house are rare)/ floors and beams to support floors.

Houses that are built using wood are so rare that most people would stop by and to some photos.

Same in USA. Basement is concrete or brick-concrete mix. Then they built up all using aluminium or treated wood. Last time i've checked a review about new techniques and material the builder said the house could last over 200 years and easily repareable in any part compared to brick houses.

Yep, now we have better insulation techniques, here in Spain i am living a newly built house and only 3 walls are bricks and concrete. The rest is a frame with insulated walls. Feels like a concrete house.

I dunno, the only thing not made out of concrete and brick in the Netherlands is sheds.

I hadn’t seen wooden construction at all until I emigrated to Japan.

In Poland, concrete blocks of some form are definitely most common. Not that many people build with wood.

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