It is not that much more expensive to build a solid concrete block home, insulate and airtight it well
I realise wood is more plentiful in US than here in Europe, but imho i wouldnt feel safe living in a wooden home.
Wood use to be much cheaper because it requires special knowledge to create strong concrete.
The wooden walls also allow for pipes and utilities to be easily ran. How do you run utilities into concrete homes? The ones I've seen are either exposed or behind a wooden wall.
The US has a large amount of brick homes, but it's usually wooden walls on the insides so it ends up costing more.
It's also more difficult to make a concrete block home look good, and since there aren't too many major storms in many parts of the US, cheap wooden homes work fine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London might also be a reason why Europe prefers concrete to wood.
The brick and stone homes here are actually masonry facade over wood frame. You need to have an air gap and flashing between the brick/stone and the wood, as water will seep through the mortar via capillary action fairly quickly, and stay there to rot the wood.
Yes, but that doesn't mean a wood-framed house built today wild last 100 years.
First, there's a survivor effect. Only the best wood-framed houses from 100 years ago are still around today. The rest have been pulled down over the course of that century.
The lumber used 100 years ago was true-sized -- a 2x4 was actually 2 inches by 4 inches. Today, the lumber is dimensional -- a 2x4 is actually 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches.
Houses were often overbuilt 100 years ago, because they weren't as confident in the engineering. Today, we're becoming more comfortable going to the engineering minimums. Thus, there's a lack of redundancy in the structure -- redundancy that may compensate for some construction shortfalls.
http://www.wral.com/rebuilding-begins-at-brier-creek/1331351...
The building had not yet been properly attached to the foundation and the wind was record breaking (80+ mph). The wind likely went up under the structure and lifted it enough to push it off of it's foundation. NC is known to have regular hurricanes and tornadoes.
Concrete buildings collapse too, often times with much more devastating results: https://www.google.com/search?q=concrete+building+collapse&s...
My house was all build using concrete block with only the roof and interior flooring made of wood,
This winter we had some crazy gales here with gusts up to 100 miles+/hour no issues :) I would not feel comfortable with too much wood in homes around here due to the extremely wet and damp climate on the west side of Ireland, house is airtight and well insulated with heat recovery system and solar water heaters