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Comment by xvector | Hacker News Reader

Having lived in both constructions, for the American environs, wood-built houses are vastly superior to cement ones.

Wood construction is better insulating, easier to repair, easier overhaul as the times inevitably change, naturally regulates temperature, adapts better to different weathers, flexes more and thus adapts to stress better, requires fewer and less stringent inspections, fails less catastrophically, has a smaller carbon footprint, is cheaper and easier to source, and is easier to transport.

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Wood constructed houses have one of the arguably worst thermal profiles because of their extremely low thermal mass. Basically, they heat up quickly and cool down quickly. In most of Europe and North America you want the opposite: a structure that evens out high temperature throughout the day, and radiates warmth at night. Brick, stone, or clay do that very successfully. Think of an old stone church at a warm summer day: it's comfortably cool inside, completely without AC

>Wood constructed houses have one of the arguably worst thermal profiles

I can't find any research backing this claim. The exact opposite appears to be true. Stone remains cold all winter and hot all summer. And it's expensive to heat and cool.

In addition, wood can be renewable and has a much smaller carbon footprint than mining and quarrying.

I'm still stuck on dirt-crete (concrete made from dirt and/or saw dust) walls after seeing the vibrant aircrete community on YouTube. It looks like an excellent solution for walls. Thermal mass, air entrained, cheap materials, easy to shape.

If your daily high or low temperature is still twenty Kelvin below or above a comfortable temperature, insulation is far more important than thermal mass.

That is good for temperate climates in the right season when there is a big difference between day and night. It's a terrible design for consistently hot or cold places. i.e. Norway in the winter you're running some kind of heating (coupled with insulation) around the clock. A large thermal mass would just be constantly sapping that energy away. In Spanish summers a large thermal mass just means you don't get to take advantage of the slight cooling you get at night.

I've been watching a lot of real estate videos on YouTube, and it boggles my mind that people pay seven, even eight digit figures for houses made of wood. It's obviously rational (or so many people wouldn't do it), but it is really, really hard to drop the prejudice coming from my part of the world that Wooden = Flimsy & Cheap.

> Wood construction [...] requires fewer and less stringent inspections

I would expect the opposite. I don't have to worry about the concrete of my home rotting because of a water infiltration, or being eaten by termites.

Rotting is a lot easier to spot than structural failures and cracks slowly building inside concrete walls. Wood beams can be repaired more easily and individually than concrete if they do rot. Finally, modern woods are less prone to rotting due to treatment.

That's interesting, can you elaborate? I was under the impression that the main benefit of wood+sheetrock was cost and speed of construction.

Updated my comment with details

Tl;dr, basically it’s just real cheap.

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