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Comment by myth_buster | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> And where many houses in the U.S. are made of wood, China suffers from a relative lack of lumber. Unlike in the U.S., many people in China live in high- or low-rise buildings made out of cement.

A critical argument, but unfortunately mentioned towards the end of the article. But overall its a interesting article and this gif [0] comparing Shanghai '87 vs '13, from it gives a good perspective of the modernization (akin to images of Dubai).

[0] https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/...

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Is it a critical argument though? Even if single-family homes in the US tend to be made out of wood, that sector does not seem to be that big, and would certainly not account for any major portion of the difference (roughly 6 million new dwellings in US built per year, say half of them wooden houses, say 10 tonnes of cement (ie 60 tonnes of concrete) per house = 30 million extra tonnes per annum, about 1.5% of Chinese consumption).

Dams, roads, bridges, factories, shipyards and large malls high-rise buildings is where the cement goes, and China is using ~20 times more than the US... My reading is that they are developing fast and catching up to the Western world in material standards of living.

The interesting question is...: how long will this momentum last, and will they keep going lont enough to overtake the current first world economies? I can see good arguments for both sides of this question.

Why does such a large geographical region lack wood? Really? Maybe they just don't care and are happy with cement buildings.

Most of China was deforested a long time ago in the interest of expanding farm fields. As another reply you received noted, much of the western territory of current China (which historically was sparsely populated and not part of China proper) has always been arid and has never had forests.

Xinjiang has beautiful gold pine trees on its border with kazhakistan. I was surprised, actually, I thought the whole place was a desert but it turned out to be more lush than much of northern China (at least for the northern part I visited).

What on earth is "kazhakistan"? You mean Kazakhstan?

> Why does such a large geographical region lack wood? Really?

History spanning back >5000 years, using either rocks, clay bricks (which require fire) or wood. North America has huge amounts of timber which wasn't exploited much until very recently, and a relatively low population for the size of the territory (even counting just the US, there were more chinese in 1900 than there are USians today, and the 1900 US population was below the Chinese population around year 1000… the two countries have almost identical surface areas).

Europe doesn't build with wood either, ignoring wood not being a very good construction material for high-density urban spaces, there's nowhere near the amount of raw materials you'd need lying around, and not enough room to grow it in the quantities necessary.

Oh and much of the Chinese territory is completely unfit for lumber growth (too arid, too montainous, or both), and what little would be fit is necessary for food production. China already imports ridiculous amounts of timber as it is.

What are you talking about? The whole of northern Europe is pretty much built with wood (perhaps with the exception of Iceland?). It is a great construction material. The downsides are that it's comparably expensive and the international know-how is low, since few countries have the amount of wood required.

It's also hard to fireproof without modern technology. But you can still build in modules and with modern technology the cost difference isn't that great for low rise areas. Not far from here there's an 8 story building completely built with wood, and higher buildings are not unheard of. For detached family sized houses it's the standard choice. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same throughout Canada, northern US and parts of Russia.

> The whole of northern Europe is pretty much built with wood

Wooden construction for buildings over a certain size has been outlawed in Norwegian cities and all of Norway historically, so it's actually mostly concrete and stone, although small towns have mostly wooden, detached homes.

In Germany, wooden houses are unheard of. Not sure where you are getting your info.

There are some very high quality German self build companies that use timber frame and glass construction. HufHaus and Weber Haus are two but there are others.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/episode-gui...

> Revisit: Walton, 2008

> Kevin revisits David and Greta Iredale, who replaced their original house which they designed and built themselves with a German built, precision engineered Huf Haus.

> Esher, 2004

> Kevin McCloud follows a couple who have built houses before, but never on this scale. Their new 'Huf Haus' is designed and made in Germany but delivered for assembly in Surrey.

To quote wikipedia: Germany has several styles of timber framing, but probably the greatest number of half-timbered buildings in the world are to be found in Germany and in Alsace (France) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_framing#German_tradition...)

Not log cabins, but wood framed "Fachwerk" houses are everywhere in Germany, or at least Bavaria.

Here in Australia, a friend tells me of an expat German friend of his. When she visits people, she likes to shake the internal walls of the houses with her hands and (good naturedly) says "you guys can't build houses for shit". Which is true - Australian houses are generally flimsy, cheap stuff. :)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wooden_houses_in...

I am non-American, and I do not understand why (most/some) Americans think think the default/superior housing material is wood. If someone can explain, I'd be happy to learn.

I'm perfectly fine with brick-and-mortar houses (and concrete sky-scrapers). Brick houses have less fuel for fires, better load-bearing properties (pros), although they take longer to construct.

> I'm perfectly fine with brick-and-mortar houses

Brick is just siding. What's the frame made out of?

You can use wood, you can use steel, you can use concrete with rebar. Those are your only real options.

In the US, you will frequently see 2-3 story houses framed with wood and with a brick siding. I'm in one right now. Anything higher than 3 stories will be done with steel or concrete.

Wood is cheaper than steel and lasts for hundreds of years if properly cared for, which is why it's preferred for smaller residential structures.

>>Brick is just siding. What's the frame made out of?

Man, that is going to be a shock to my house that has all of the outside walls, and parts of the foundation, made from brick. Just because your house has a brick veneer doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.

In my particular the case the floors and roof are made from wood. The floor joists rest on the brick walls.

> Brick is just siding. What's the frame made out of?

For brick an mortar houses, the "frame" is also made of brick[1]. All the walls are load-bearing, so there is no actual frame + siding: just brickwork. You have a concrete foundation, then you lay your double-thick brick-walls (for all load-bearing sections - all of the outer walls that are expected to support roofing trusses). Internal walls can be a single-brick wide. The only place timber is used is for roofing.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork

> Brick is just siding. What's the frame made out of?

Brick. It's bricks all the way down...

To be serious: most houses in India are made of bricks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glendalough

There are quite a few all stone building from the dark ages made entirely from stone. Nothing but stone. Not even mortar, I think. They look very similar to modern buildings. If you moved into one today, it wouldn't be a lot less comfortable than it was then.

Byzantine & later Turkish architecture used brick domes and arches as roofing in buildings that are still in good condition. If you stand on the roof, it feels more like a hill than a building.

rammed earth and cinderblocks are used elsewhere too, no?

For a frame? How do you make a floor with cinderblock/brick/etc? Even if it's a single story, how do you make a roof? You need some sort of material other than masonry material.

> For a frame? How do you make a floor with cinderblock/brick/etc?

Same way as usual, except you use concrete or metal for beams, and e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-core_slab between the beams. For brick, archways e.g. catalan vaults, you can do pretty amazing things with brick archs: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/tiles-vaults.html

> Even if it's a single story, how do you make a roof?

You can do them the same way, though a wood bent to support e.g. a tile roof tends to be more common (having just a wood bent is a far cry from a wood house).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8TWMKHHMQ

One- and two-story wood structures do very well in earthquakes (a consideration for some of us, anyway). It has good tensile strength, it is not brittle, and it is not very heavy.

Unreinforced masonry, by contrast, is a terrible choice for an earthquake zone. It's heavy, brittle, and has approximately zero tensile strength.

Thanks! You are right falling/flying bricks are not a good idea in an earthquake or hurricane situation.

After digging some more, it seems like cost is another factor.

I suspect our backgrounds subconsciously color our opinions though: my childhood home (and 99% of homes I have ever visited) were brick and mortar, maybe that is why I am partial to it.

Rammed earth (common in many areas of the world) is even worse.

A rammed earth building becomes a pre-dug grave when there's an earthquake.

"I am non-American, and I do not understand why (most/some) Americans think think the default/superior housing material is wood."

It's a strange US tradition. It's also regional. Until 2002, New York State prohibited most wood construction, and Chicago still restricts it severely. On the other hand, in earthquake country, unreinforced brick is prohibited.

(I live in a cinder-block house. It was built in 1950 by a commercial builder as his own residence, and he built the structure like a commercial building. It's very solidly built. This is quite unusual for Silicon Valley.)

A surprising fact about wood is that large-section wooden beams can perform better in a fire when there's a lot of flammable material around. They burn slowly from the outside so they take a long time to fail, making it safer for firemen to walk around inside. In comparison, steel fails by softening and that can happen much faster just by conducting heat through the whole section.

Bricks are a problem in earthquake prone regions. Even brick cladding on wooden frames tends to fall off and hit people on the head.

One thing is brick is not so good in earthquake prone areas.

It is not lack of wood. Check the population, both at country level and at city levels. Take a look at China in Google Map or Google Earth. If you would like to do research a little further, check the areas covered by forrest. Then you might get an answer.

A little historical perspective would help as well. Check how many houses are made of wood in New York City. A reminder: a large number of cities in China have a longer history than New York City.

Very large portions of China, particularly all of the Western half (Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai) are mountainous and/or very arid.

Even much of eastern China is mountainous, i miss trees in Beijing's winter (they kind of just disappear until spring, not being evergreens).

True, and overall China has little arable land and comparatively even less woodlands.

In Beijing, there are some thujas (cypress-like trees) around but I agree that Beijing winter is not very colourful. And the yellow wind (i.e. sandstorm from Gobi) that you're about to get there just now isn't nice either, despite being a natural phenomenon.

Nothing that could sustain a forestry industry. Heck, beijing is a heavy importer of live tree transplants.

We haven't had real bad dust storms since 2008, though a few days last year were bad. And the wind does blow out the pollution so....

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