Of course, there are new mass timber builds, but those use wood that is heavily processed. I guess the lighter wood would need to be pressed more, to match the same resistance, but I suspect the costs are cheaper with wood grown faster.
I can safely say that there's little difference between a good wood frame and masonry house, today. Modern concrete isn't as long lasting as Roman concrete from 2000 years ago. Modern concrete doesn't play well with water.
Not all architects, to be clear, some really know their foundations but...
You can use modern concrete without steel and build things about as good as Roman concrete. You'll pay a whole lot more than reinforced because you'll use at least 3x more concrete and limit the shape -- only arches. Compare Prague's Charles bridge[0] to Seattle's West Seattle bridge. Or compare the windows of the Roman Pantheon (uh, none) to those in any skyscraper.
You won't have as much self-healing in salt water as some Roman concretes. But modern concretes also have far more compressive strength.
You can still buy lime mortars and build brick masonry houses, if you want to pay for the labor; the materials themselves have never been cheaper.
[0] Yes I know it isn't Roman nor especially made of concrete but there's a lot of good information on its construction and it's basically the perfection of Roman-style bridge building, and without reinforcement you need to build just like that.
As did the musket.
The wood frame will do better in an earthquake. The masonry will do better in a flood or high winds. Consider the natural disaster risks of your local area when picking a home.
Wood lasts a shit tonne longer, assuming you maintain it.
The only thing really thats better is the thermal performance, and price.
It's completely untrue. I have PVC windows that after 30 years are as good as new. Before that there were two glaze wooden windows that after 10 years were horrible. Not sure how bad they were from the start.
> are massive,
I see you might make smaller window out of wood (or pvc) but you'd have to sacrifice thermal isolation quality to do it. They are large because they have air pockets in them for isolation.
> and are not structural, unless there are steel supports.
Load bearing window? That's insane idea as well.
> Wood lasts a shit tonne longer, assuming you maintain it.
Yeah, so not really, because people don't maintain things on average.
> The only thing really thats better is the thermal performance, and price.
Which are the two most important qualities for a window, plus the ease of use which is better for pvc and stays better.
Those are unlikely to be uPVC, which means that unless you've reconditioned them, they are uv damaged to fuck. (source: I lived on an estate with a mixture of glazing types.)
> They are large because they have air pockets in them for isolation.
They are large for structural reasons, Insulation is a side bonus. PVC isn't very rigid, so in order to provide some level of support and stop the glazing units drooping out of windows, the frame needs to be of a certain thickness. its not _solid_ for both cost, ease of production and thermal properties. Solid PVC has a uvalue of about 3-5 u depending on your thickness, which is normally better than most double glazing.
> Load bearing window? That's insane idea as well.
What do you think lintels are for? also, how do you think Bay windows work?
> The only thing really thats better is the thermal performance, and price.
I should have added qualified that with the following: installation cost, over 50 years you'll need to replace them twice, if not more.
also, in the UK at least newer glazing has to have vents in them which kneecaps thermal performance.
And yet this uv damage doesn't manifest in any palpable way. It would be very hard for me to tell which of my windows is 3 years old and which is 30.
> What do you think lintels are for?
To direct the load around the window so it's not put on the window?
> how do you think Bay windows work?
I'd hope that they have a separate load bearing pillar between each pane and if they don't, I don't want them.
> I should have added qualified that with the following: installation cost, over 50 years you'll need to replace them twice, if not more.
I have seen zero evidence for that claim. Estimate of their durability vary from 15 to 50 years and my personal experience indicates that it's closer to the second number if not exceeding it.
I had trouble to find and photo of a failed PVC window on the internet. How does the failure mode for them even look like? What exactly fails? If I were to bet I'd say probably mechanical metal parts because they provide much more complex functionality with narrower tolerances than any traditional window. Probably that's the first reason people consider them failed and replace them. I can't really tell if it's the first reason for replacement or second one after evolving esthetic preferences.
> also, in the UK at least newer glazing has to have vents in them which kneecaps thermal performance.
Those vents are there because those windows are insanely air-tight by default. In absence of this, ventilation in the apartments could pull the air out of P-traps because there'd be no other place to pull the air from.
If you have a ventilation system with separate dedicated intake (recuperation) you obviously get the PVC windows without vents. They are available.
But to be honest the rot resistance is more important. Most wood buildings fail because of rot issues, not because the wood wasn't strong enough.
Traditional wood houses in Scandinavia have tar and seem well preserved: is that usually enough, or did they survive because it’s so cold to six months a year that bugs don’t even try?
For instance railroad ties were treated with creosote or tar. Similar for the underground part of telephone poles. There was a Copper-Chromium-Arsenic mix also that would kill bugs and mold but is extremely toxic, so isn't EPA approved anymore.
I would not want creosote or tar-treated wood in a house I live in, though. It's all toxic.
In the exterior-treated SPF (think what we use in America for a deck or exterior staircase) there's a durability limit to the rot resistance. And the wood is tough to restore.
Better woods (not necessarily old growth, just white pine or high quality cedar) are easier to restore. They also look nice, so people are more inclined to take care of them.
In the end, nothing lasts forever without maintenance.
Old growth and just 'old' wood is naturally termite resistant because wood gets harder as it ages and the bugs just don't like to chew on it, they will look elsewhere. You don't see many 60+ year old houses getting new termite infestations unless it was in areas of recent repair (fascia boards, brick moldings). But if it's wet, it's softer to chew. It's always comes down to water.
Other methods of preventing rot exist such as charring the end of a post before sticking it in the ground, protecting end grain from contact with water, etc.
If this was a modern house, it would be covered in 5 different layers of plastic with the intent on keeping any moisture out, then sheathed in OSB that basically sees water and just melts away. Like you said, there is no way to keep it all the way dry, but energy efficiency (and cheap materials and quick building techniques) have also driven a housing design that is so tight that if there is moisture intrusion, it's got no good way to vent out.
Past there, I really like a timber framer who does YouTube called Mr. Chickadee, guy was a Marine who decided to live a simple life. He hand makes everything, but don't let the old timey hat and pants fool you, he's spent a ton of time thinking about how the old methods work and why, and picking through multiple cultures that have had old wooden structures that last hundreds or even thousands of years for the techniques he's using.
However, leaky houses probably contribute to their longevity as those areas are able to dry from the outdoor air flowing indoors instead of rotting.
Then you shouldn't have an issue since you are basically living outdoors most of the time.
As long as there is enough air movement, it should dry things out.
The problem is condensation inside the walls. To deal with that, your wall has to be vapor-open to either the inside or outside, so it can dry. Standard interior paint is usually breathable.
Also, if you are leaving your windows open that much in winter you probably consume a lot of heating fuel and therefore generate a lot of heat, which also dries things out. That's how it worked with old wood houses - you generated a ton of heat to dry them out.
Combined with what you said about it being wet, I'm guessing you live in the subtropics.
Building in a climate/ecology conscious way in tropical/subtropical places is very different than in colder places, and most of the knowledge out there is for colder-than-tropical climates, and frankly I don't know much about it.
But one thing that translates well between the climates is shade - shade structures and roof overhangs - especially on the sides that take the most solar load.
Modern plastic paint, modern plastic building wrap, all these ideas of basically living inside a plastic hamster cage, they suffocate the living material (wood) that needs to breathe, and that allows rot and mold. The water eventually finds its way in because rain screen tape can't hold up for 50 years, the water gets in and has no good way to get out.
Also remember, the vast majority of houses built in 1824 didn’t survive either. For the ones that did it’s mostly down to maintenance.
Rain screens are mostly holes (empty space). That's how they allow drying of the exterior wall assembly.
> Unless you seal every fastener hole with some sealant that will last 100 years, which I'm pretty sure would be a magical product, I sincerely doubt a modern house will be standing as long as mine is.
Standing for 100 years isn't the sole metric of success of a house's envelope. There are many others: how much did it leak? how much energy did it consume to stay comfortable? how good was the air quality? what was the cost to maintain it? All of these have to be balanced and building science provides frameworks to achieve that.
Using modern materials while adhering to building science results in very long lasting buildings, far longer than most homes built in the last 50 years.
Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing the house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still have an R60 wall.
Agreed that you can, but as you imply, at a very high cost, especially when you don't use modern sheet goods like plywood that not only impede air movement, but provide sheer/racking resistance unmatched by traditional nailed solid board walls.
> so this cheap, throwaway culture we’re in looks down on it.
Few can afford a custom built home, much less one with artisanal walls. If anything we have a culture that looks up to such artisanal buildings precisely because they are not accessible. Scalability is essential to any impactful building technology. The fact that plywood and OSB can be made at scale from low quality laminates and scraps was game changing.
> Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing the house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still have an R60 wall.
An R60 wall perhaps, but one that leaks like a sieve. The leaking air will bring a lot of moisture and unconditioned air with it, which will in turn require a lot of energy to condition.
Sure, solid wood will be more resilient to that moisture than plywood/OSB, but the swelling and contraction will create more leaks.
There is a reason that for centuries people filled cracks in walls with any goopy substance they can find (mud, sap, tar, stucco). It's to stop those leaks. Modern vapor permeable but airtight house wraps (not latex) are just a continuation of that.
If you took a cross section of wall, and you have interior temp (20c) on the inside face of the wall and exterior temp on the outside face section of wall, somewhere inside that section you’re hitting the dew point and condensation will form.
Another variable is how much the building moves. Being in an earthquake zone here in New Zealand makes me look at elaborate brick and stone buildings with a degree of nervousness.