After going down a YouTube rabbit hole, I discovered these and how they’re “popping up everywhere” in the US. But what got me is that after the first floor, it’s all made out of wood. Nothing against wood construction for a single house, but a 5/6 story apartment is really unusual to me. Also wondering about noise, building issues etc
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I literally never think about the structural material of which my apartment is made. It could be candy canes and jelly beans, as long as it passed code inspection it’s fine with me.
Why is this something foreigners worry so much about and Americans don’t seem to care about at all?
What the hell do you people watch?
I’ve never heard of this, at least by that name.
But yes, wood is common to build things here. Its unusual to you because your country is different. But its okay for countries to be different. We have different resources and different climates and different considerations to make, which will result in us making different choices in what is ultimately best to fit our specific society.
In urban areas, noise is an assumed thing. No one should be moving downtown and then be bitching about the noise.
I’m sure my mixed use building is mostly wood and its fine. I actually rarely hear my neighbors.
We lived in one in Seattle for a year. I swear the people above us had a giant dog who loved to jump out of bed in the middle of the night. And below us was a grocery store, who would often set off the fire alarm burning the bakery bread at 4am (fire alarm for the entire building, mind you). But I can honestly say that we never heard the neighbors on either side of us. Don’t know if concrete walls would have helped with the upstairs/downstairs noise.
Wood construction is often quieter and better insulated. We think it’s just as bizarre that yall are obsessed with frigid and uncomfortable homes.
I hated living in this type of apartment because of the constant commotion and noise since id always lived in more residential areas. It had nothing to do with the construction of the building, just the hustle and bustle.
the house I live in is over 100 years old & has survived storms with high winds, close scares with tornadoes, and year after year of brutal winters, sometimes -30 F.
it’s made of wood.
the same as living in a mixed-use development anywhere else?
The problem with wood isn’t stability, it’s flammability. You can build quite tall with wood.
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/19/mjostarne-worlds-tallest-timber-tower-voll-arkitekter-norway/amp/
Through sprinklers and the like the flammability problem is solved.
Aside from that the apartments can be anything from meh to great depending on how they’re built, what market segment they target etc.
[Wood is abundant, inexpensive, durable, renewable, and strong](https://web.archive.org/web/20201111200406/https://www.awc.org/pdf/education/des/ReThinkMag-DES515A-MultistoryWoodConstruction-140210.pdf). It’s very common in other areas of the world too. I haven’t lived in one of these buildings but have spent untold number of hours in them, they’re definitely buildings. What about noise? Noise is mitigated with insulation, drywall, etc… I’m not an engineer but I don’t believe a steel frame would be quieter than a wood frame. Maybe someone who is can chime in.
There is nothing notable about it.
If my upstairs neighbors stomp around I can hear it, but I don’t notice much of any normal day-to-day noise.
In California, bricks and other masonry often don’t do well in earthquakes. Wood, on the other hand, can be surprisingly flexible.
It’s very normal construction in the US, and there’s a range of quality which affects how nice they are to live in. If the owner/developer was very cheap and skimped as much as possible, you can hear a lot of noise. But they can be built much better, with insulated double walls between units and resilient underlayment and/or gypcrete topping and added insulation in the floors and ceilings, in which case you hear little noise unless your neighbors are exceptionally obnoxious.
5 over 2 is also common.
It’s really not that different than any other apartment building, other than the fact that they’re wayyyyyy cheaper to build. We have pretty strict codes in most places so they’re more than safe.
I’ve lived in one before, and it’s pretty much what you expect from apartment life. Upstairs neighbors are always noisy
I’ve never lived in one but I’ve helped design many of them (mechanical). Wood framed mid-rise apartments are super common and we design a ton of them every year. I like a concrete podium (1st floor) because it makes design easier from a mechanical perspective. Wood framed multifamily buildings are usually super cheap and if you live in one, you can almost guarantee corners were cut while building it. As far design, those are the buildings I’ll design as cheaply as possible while still making it functional. And even then, the developers usually toe that line of it being functional.
Like a commercial building on the first with housing above?
Those are generally called taxpayers, or mixed use occupancies. Although they are generally only 1-2 of residential above the first story.
Some places like that in my town have access issues with the second and third floors only accessible from a exterior stairwell on the rear or ladders/ aerials on the windows. But that’s more to do with those specific buildings and not the type as a whole.
They don’t really have issues that aren’t common in others unless your neighbors in the commercial space below are up to weird shit or you get screwy construction that’s a death trap.
I know people that have lived in them.
No major issues.
Noise from neighbors happens but it does in any type of construction, even the old mill buildings around here that are structural brick.
They tend to have very good air handling, heat, water, etc. because they are new construction.
I’m sure there are crappy versions out there but I just haven’t experienced them.
Where I live in Seattle Washington the building codes were amended to allow six over one because developers were building up to the maximum height limits solely with wood due to costs. Developers like to build with wood because it’s cheaper than having to resort to concrete and steel and raising the height limits means more housing which Seattle desperately needs.
I’ve lived in a wood framed building on the 4th floor and honestly noise and insulation are not really issues. You can hear if, say, the apartment above you drops something heavy but generally it was never a problem.
What’s a 5 over 1? Is that like the big buildings where the first floor is commercial, like restaurants and stuff, and the other 5 floors are apartments?
I have never lived in one but I have family that do and I will stay with them for a week at a time. They live in very high cost of living area, their rent is very expensive, and the building might have a bit more bells and whistles. I believe the building was finished in 2016.
But here is my run down.
Their sound insulation is top notch. You can not hear anything from any side. Sometimes you can barely hear people walking in the hall way, if you are right next to the door. They have a kid who is very, very loud and when they went to the neighbors to apologize the neighbors had no idea who they were and never even heard a kid.
Their apartment is large. Its like 1400 square feet. On par with many middle class suburban homes. People complain about apartments being very cramped, but this one was certainly not. It had 3 good size bedrooms, two fairly large bathrooms.
The balcony situation sucked. It was tiny. Barely large enough for two small chairs. Thats one thing I did not like about it, while in the unit you feel like you are always in doors so to speak. The way the units are designed, a cross breeze is impossible. So if you open a window, you get a bit of ventilation but its not like a home where you can open windows on opposite sides and get an actual breeze. The windows also feel a bit small. You can’t step outside easily. No outdoor BBQ. We came to the conclusion that these places should be designed with a large patio so you can at least do some of the indoor-outdoor living that California is known for.
Having businesses downstairs is great. If you want something like Sushi, between the time it takes to leave the unit and be sitting down at the Sushi bar is like 90 seconds. I wish there was like a 7-Eleven downstairs, just knowing if you need anything you are less than 2 minutes away is a big deal. Its much better than needing to go drive to something, deal with traffic, deal with parking and all that nonsense. Most traditional apartments have like no convenience but these do.
You tend to feel secure in them. Before someone can get into your unit they have to get into the building, walk by security, expose themselves to cameras, then they have to get to your unit. Making any sort of smash and grab very difficult.
They’re built out of stouter stuff than 2x4s. Recent construction near me was using a few 6x6s. I made a motorcycle ramp using a couple of 2x4s and some 1/4″ plywood, so that’s half a ton when very much not built up to code. It’s convenient having heated parking and bike storage underneath, though the business portion of the 1 are stuff like insurance and chiropractors rather than something we would actually use.
No, but as a carpenter I help build them, and as a union man I try to make trouble for scab contractors who build them. Personally, I’m in favor of denser housing in American cities. We shouldn’t have the single family house be the norm here. I also like that the 5 over 1 has a commercial section on the bottom, though I wish it was more frequently used for community space than jammed full of coffee shops and retail, etc. I think 5/6 level apartments are an alright development for cities that need more density, but my ideal would really be to see more fourplexes and other developments that have a handful of households on the lot, each with a bit more space than an apartment allows, and with some shared space like courtyards.
I’m sure the noise is terrible.
I think the difference is in the cities where you find those going up, a lot of the renters don’t just live in those apartments for years on end.
Those are usually transitional. Post college , young adults, or people moving to a new city and living there temporarily.
Yeah they may be there a couple years or five even but it’s not like the whole fucking family lives there for generations.
Here’s [a relatively recent Cheddar video on how 5 over 1 construction came to be](https://youtu.be/mrxZqPVFTag). It has to do with a change in building codes to allow the combination of fire retardant wood and sprinkler systems to be built up to sixth floor (so five stories above business use).
I lived in 2 different apartments that match this description, and like others have said I didn’t think for a moment about what it was built out of. There are a lot of colleges in my state, so I always associate these kinds of apartments with pre-furnished places geared towards college kids.