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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why people don't use this in Europe. It's mostly airbrick or brick detached houses and concrete apartment blocks.

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One reason I've heard is the much higher cost (and lower availability) of appropriate lumber. The forests were mostly cut down hundreds of years ago, while in north America, that process is still underway (though thankfully slowing a bit).

I'm not sure forests being cut down is the problem these days. Wood is one of the most renewable and sustainable materials out there. Old growth has been cut down, or become out of most people's price range at this point in NA, but farmed fast growing pine is cheap and sustainable. Perhaps NA has more land to support such farms though.

It's not in Europe. Wood is expensive here. A 2x4 stick here (Ireland) is ~ 12 eur at the local home center.

And yes, we have tree plantations, but they're mostly sitka spruce, and there aren't _that_ many of them compared to potential demand for wood.

The US cut down its forests too! Since the early 20th century, it started to replant more trees than it cut, and now has an ever increasing area of forests, much more than in 1930s for example.

Total area is up .. from the 1930s. However, some of the most wooded areas (e.g. the Pacific NW) are currently at about 20% of what they were when europeans arrived.

> that process is still underway

No it's not, the total amount of forest in the USA is increasing.

Only since the "trough" caused by human forestry.

It is still way, way down from the levels when Europeans first arrived.

They are not comparable at all in quality, sturdiness and fire resistance. Since you are paying for a home most of your working life anyway one would better have a real thing.

My previous house was a balloon framed townhouse built in 1930. My current house is a balloon framed house built in 1940. For the same amount of money you get a house that is 2 or 3 times larger and yet more power efficient when you build with wood, and both of the houses I have owned had 2 or 3 families grow up and old in them before mine. In Europe and Asia they build with stone and concrete, and people make due with less space, and they can't afford to heat them without cheap Russian gas. It's good that houses in the UK are finally required to be built with some insulation, but Europe is decades behind on this.

They do. Finland and Russia love their timber houses (although Russia still mostly uses solid timber walls due to the lower quality of lumber and the lack of skilled labor).

There are countries in Europe where wood buildings are common (and even most popular option for e.g. single-family homes). They can be considered the slightly cheaper option though.

Could it be that European houses are much smaller? America usually favors size over quality.

Probably but big houses here are also built with brick

because we like real buildings :)

now seriously: i have seen some wood structure in northern Europe. but in general, using bricks creates sturdier, better isolated houses. that can resists for centuries, literally. they don't mold. they don't burn. so why not? it's just better from my point of view.

And they don't evolve. They are hard to replace and are expensive. Most Houses need to last 30 or 50 years. European Houses last twice as long. Instead of modern houses there are so many old bad isolated houses with chimneys for firewood instead of heat pumps and solar roofs.

I think I disagree, from experience, old houses can be retrofitted quite successfully to the modern age, while wooden houses just seem to age much faster.

Plenty of hundred and more year old wooden houses where I live in Norway. It can be hard to tell though until you see someone take off the external planks to renew them and you seethe solid baulks of timber underneath.

My wooden house was built in 1953 with a concrete watertight cellar serving as the foundation. The wood doesn't start until more than half a metre above ground. I see no reason why it shouldn't last another fifty years or more.

> Most Houses need to last 30 or 50 years

Why? It seems absurd to me to only have a dwelling last for half a lifetime. This view seems to assume a disposable, consumerist logic, which seems at odds in my view both from reasonable use of energy and time and with a sustainable civilization.

>Why?

Your average house in the city is going to get bulldozed after 30-50yr because in that time things will change enough that someone is going to want to develop the site into something else.

Your average farm house is probably a 200yr structure.

Your average house in an European city is going to stand for 100 years or more.

I once made a friend who is a property developer very happy by pointing out that his new building (built with traditional materials) in Edinburgh's New Town might still be standing in a 1000 years whereas I'm lucky if anything I do lasts 10 years.

"Most Houses need to last 30 or 50 years"

I've never lived in anything that wasn't at least 50 years old and usually at least 200 years old - so that seems very odd to me. Mind you, I appreciate different countries and cultures etc.

Next you will be saying that roofs need to be replaced every 10 years! ;-)

Most of Europe outside of the Alps don't really have to worry about earthquakes either.

Wood has advantages. For one, insulation is easier. A lot of the current best practices for insulating a brick building are basically to build a different kind of building, insulate it, and then add a cosmetic brick facade. But in a Mediterranean climate insulation is less of a concern and some thermal mass to even out the evening vs daytime temperature is enough. Sturdy is a matter of what you're trying to achieve - for example wood is superior in earthquake zones. But the real deciding factor is the cost of materials and labor - in much of Europe wood is more expensive and craftspeople are more familiar with other techniques. The converse is true for much of the USA. Wood is also just as long lived - hundreds of years if well maintained and kept dry (at least in regions where termites aren't endemic). The biggest problem with short lived American residential construction isn't the wood but instead the use of engineered materials and fixtures with finite lifespans. For example laminate flooring and older plastic water piping which is expected to last only a few decades before needing to be gutted and rebuilt.

> they don't mold

Having lived in a European house with 50cm thick stone walls that had a mold problem, I disagree with this statement.

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