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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

I may be biased, because I live in a city filled with houses over 100 years old, and we get incessant rain. They seem to hold up fine. Not sure how long they’ll last but there hasn’t been any push to replace them.

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Have you ever done a mold spore count in your house ? There's a hypothesis that, due to living in stick frame houses, a large part of the American population might be suffering from a low dose chronic mold intoxication which shows up as a heightened state of inflammation.

> I may be biased, because I live in a city filled with houses over 100 years old, and we get incessant rain. They seem to hold up fine

I wouldn't be so sure.

In places like Boston there are many 100+ years old stick frame houses. They hold up just fine. Properly built wooden houses don't get any mold.

Very few are properly built, especially in the last decades. Asymptotically to zero.

I have many friends who own houses built in the last 10 to 30 years ago. None of them have any issues with mold.

> None of them have any issues with mold.

... or so you think. Mold contamination is most of the times invisible and triggers long-term chronic intoxication. People only realise there's a problem if the mold starts growing on the walls, at which point it's too late.

Even growing on the walls most people ignore it…

I have family like this.

Prolific recent media example: JK Rowling.

Hold up ≠ remain a healthy place to breathe.

ChangeTheAirFoundation.org

It's funny that people born here don't know about it and I, an European buying a house and asking the workers that came for some initial renovations, found out. The wall guy said he often finds small amounts of mold when he's called to replace drywalls, but owners don't like to be told about it.

100 years is nothing! I mean my local pub, for many years, was built in the 17th century.

This is probably one of the European vs. American divides though.

I am from The Netherlands. Buildings from 19th century and before are incredibly rare. Maybe 1% of the total housing stock. Thanks to bombings in WWII and a rapidly growing population since.

In my current Spanish town I don't know any building older than 1900. Rapid expansion of coastal towns due to European mobility caused that.

It's not really a European vs American divide, it is more country specific than that.

Edit: Ireland apparently has one of the youngest building age in Europe so I guess a 17th century pub is very rare and special there too.

I'm from Italy and buildings from the 19th century are pretty common at the center of the cities. They were rich people's residences and have massively thick walls that make them very comfortable to live in, both because of thermal mass and acoustic isolation. They're mostly used for commercial purpose now, as they're in high demand as office space for lawyers, medical practices. Only rich people can afford living there (in the upper floors).

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