After looking at the various tv series about build houses in strange/uncommon places or house renovations, everything is done with a lot or only wood.
I remember also lot of other tv series episodes in CSI or medical one with issues of termites (or bad maintenance of that wood) or stuff hidden inside the walls.
Including how much are important the firefighters because of this situation it is common to have problems.
At the same time, you have tornado and other big issues that destroy your house easily.
It isn’t more safe for you to use bricks for houses like we do in Europe?
Sure we don’t have tornado, often earthquakes (I am from center Italy) and maybe water flooding (like everywhere).
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wood is a useful building material and also a tornado proof structure would actually just be an underground bunker; tornados will absolutely fuck up brick and stone houses.
Wood is cheap, wood is plentiful, and wood is a lot more durable than people around the world want to realize. Where I live we have a tornado season. Therefore you may ask why don’t we build tornado proof homes? The simple answer to that is we also live near the New Madrid fault. Not to mention unless that house is built in a dome shape our of reinforced concrete a strong enough tornado will tear it apart.
Europe is an entire continent. You all don’t build houses the same way. Timber houses are extremely common in Scandinavia.
Tornadoes will destroy concrete and brick buildings easily. I don’t think you fully appreciate their destructive power.
I recall Italy being wrecked by an earthquake in 2009 and seeing piles of brick and stone rubble. Maybe you also don’t appreciate The destructive power of these as well? Wood flexes, brick crumbles.
Floods damage all the belongings in a house. That will get wrecked regardless of what your wall are made of.
Beyond these reasons wood is a superior insulator material. We have large parts of the country that get extremely hot and stay hot throughout the night with high humidity. It is easier to keep a house with better insulation (wood and fiberglass) cool than something with higher thermal mass like brick and stone.
Mainly, because it’s cheap and there’s a lot of it. In Europe some countries that have a lot of wood primarily use it to build as well. Check out houses in Sweden and Norway. Provided the wood comes from a sustainably managed forest – which most wood in the US and Canada does – it’s a very environmentally friendly way to build, much more so than concrete blocks (which make up the actual structure of most modern European houses – bricks on modern houses are just a facade). It’s also easier to build well insulated houses with wood, compared to concrete blocks.
Safety is not a huge concern. Tornados are very targeted in the houses they hit – you can have a house torn to rubble when the neighboring one is completely fine. Your particular chances of getting hit by a strong tornado are not high, but if you do get one it will tear a brick house to shreds. Wood houses are actually better for some types of natural disasters, like earthquakes. As for hurricanes – we now know how to hurricane proof wood houses pretty effectively, but south Florida is one area of the US where you do see mostly concrete block houses, due to the prevalence of strong hurricanes there and the ease/tradition of building hurricane proof houses that way.
Fire is not a massive concern with wood houses – houses generally burn from the inside out, with the interior finishings combusting before the structural elements. This even happens when the source of the fire is outside – usually coming in through a window or other opening. So fires are extremely destructive in brick houses as well. Also the US has better fire safety regulations in general than Europe, including broader sprinkler requirements, even requiring them in detached single family homes in many areas. This is a much more effective way to protect against house fires than brick walls. It’s true that termites can be a problem, but they can also be mitigated against.
For starters, we have lots of wood, just like in Scandinavia, where most residential homes are built of wood. It is a plentiful resource.
Secondly, tornados are very uncommon for the vast majority of people, and even when they do occur they are highly localized events. One street could be completely flattened, while 100 meters away may look completely untouched (maybe a little messy from tree debris).
On top of that, bricks are not going to stand up to a tornado, so you might as well not spend the extra money trying to protect against them.
To make a tornado proof house it basically has to be a concrete bunker, which is rarely worth the extra cost and decreased overall practicality.
Because it’s a functional material to build houses out of.
Brick houses tend to perform poorly in tornadoes. In California where I grew up you almost never saw brick used due to earthquakes there in which brick does not stand up as well.
Using wood is not a safety concern for us.
* Tornadoes are rare. I live in a somewhat tornado prone area, and I’ve never seen one in my life.
* Wood is a lot less expensive than brick and is readily available.
Brick = more money.
> At the same time, you have tornado and other big issues that destroy your house easily.
There is no way to build a house above ground that is tornado proof. A tornado is like the finger of god picking a scab. The scab is your house, no matter what it’s made of.
So, do you know what a tornado will do to a house made of brick?
The same thing it does to one made of wood.
Never mind there really aren’t any tornados where the vast majority of us live.
A brick house would fair WAY worse in an area prone to earthquakes than one made of wood. (they use wood in Japan too)
Wood is cheaper and works very well for building houses. If you go to places like New England there are houses that were built 200 years ago (at least) out of wood doing just fine. You can build them faster, cheaper, they are a bit more flexible (in structure and literally).
There are not tornadoes in most parts of the US, even if there were brick houses are not tornado proof by any means. Brick houses are not any more earthquake proof than and earthquake proofed wood house. Brick houses are actually much less durable in earthquakes they can’t flex and break apart. The totally avoid them in earthquake prone areas. Also wood is light, building larger houses (which we like) is easier with wood than with other materials.
Woods is plentiful, we have huge amounts natural resources in that department. By the way, there are brick houses all over the US too.
Someone will be along momentarily with the architect copypasta. It’s a great, technical explanation.
My summary. All of Europe doesn’t solely use bricks/stone. There are many parts of Europe that use woods. Scandinavia as an example.
Wood is plentiful here since we haven’t clear cut all of our forests. There is such a thing as sustainable forestry.
No building medium will protect you from a tornado. A tornado can destroy anything easily. Period. Brick & stone will not protect you.
And in earthquake prone regions, brick can be worse compared to wood.
Summers here are hot and humid. Every year. Wood is a better material in these climates.
In short, like anywhere else in the world, we build our homes from what material is readily available and what type of material is best for our part of the world.
Brick houses will not withstand a strong tornado. There would be many more fatalities if houses in tornado heavy regions were all built from brick or concrete. Human life is more important than property damage.
The most famous answer:
> Im an architect. And because im an architect, this infuriating meme vomit Germans spout makes me reflexively despise them everytime they bring it up. Pig headed arrogant pricks. Apparently their brains are made of stone too cause they’re equally thick and inflexible.
>The Japanese and Scadiwegians build with wood, but noooooo Americans are always, as per fucking usual, singled out.
>I want an earthquake to hit Germany. Not even a big one. Just a mild roller. A high 6 pointer like Northridge or Sylmar. I want some tight fucking p-waves and then s-waves to come in for the FATTEST, NASTIEST, DROP. Im talking a thicccc ass bass. Real fucking club banger. Get that Northern European plain jiggling like sexy liqifaction jello. Let Mother Earth shake her fat twerking ass.
> Just flatten every brick and masonry building north of Munich, west of the Oder and east of the Rhine. Utter devastation. And then for once I can be the smug one and say “Such a mild quake! California would have never had such property damage or loss of life! Silly stupid Germans! They shouldn’t have built with masonry! Arent they supposed to be good engineers? Everything they build is overdesigned with poor tolerances!”
> Just a little quake and the annihilation of Germany. Its really not that big of a ask if you think about it.
u/stoicsilence
But here are a few answers from the last times this question came up:
https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/21qnj8/why_do_americans_keep_building_wood_houses/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kwstk/eli5_why_do_americans_build_their_houses_out_of/
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28cw34/eli5_why_are_wooden_houses_more_prevalent_in_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/6cce36/why_are_houses_in_america_made_of_wood/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/tvdha/hi_america_why_are_your_homes_made_from_wood/
>It isn’t more safe for you to use bricks for houses like we do in Europe?
No.
Brick and concrete buildings may hold up against rinky dink European tornadoes, but North American weather events will flatten them like everything else.
The only way to build a “more safe” house for a tornado is to build an underground bunker. We’re not mole people, we ain’t doing that.
As you mention, continental Europe doesn’t have nearly the variety of natural disasters the US has. And Europe is more diverse than your specific neighborhood or region.
Europe has also been heavily inhabited for several thousand years and a lot of the trees that were there are…well, gone.
In contrast, we have an abundance of wood, it is fairly durable, and affordable.
Using wood is also not some unique aspect to the US. [Here’s a wooden skyscraper being built in Europe](https://www.timeout.com/news/the-worlds-tallest-wooden-skyscraper-is-being-built-in-switzerland-042222).
Wood is an excellent building material.
Normal brick construction is not more wind resistant than wood. Building a tornado proof house would be very expensive, resulting in an impractical building that would be more like a bunker, and the odds that any specific house will ever be struck by a tornado are low.
Wood is a cheap and pretty ideal building material and our country (and neighboring country – Canada) is covered in a massive amount of forest to source it from.
Much of Europe deforested itself centuries ago and so doesn’t have enough wood to source as a building material locally. The parts where that is not the case (like Scandinavia), build lots of their structures out of wood and use wood for lots of things. They’ve actually just built the tallest wood structure in the world over there – https://www.cnn.com/style/article/wooden-skyscraper-revolution-timber/index.html
> At the same time, you have tornado and other big issues that destroy your house easily.
A traditional structure of unreinforced masonry would be equally obliterated by a tornado or hurricane, likely worse. It’s not particularly hard to outfit an appropriately constructed wood structure to withstand all but the worst hurricane hits (which are practically an extremely wide and slow moving tornado in terms of wind speed).
You’d basically need to build a reinforced concrete bunker with few, heavily protected openings to withstand those forces. A single shutter over a window or door failing will basically wreck the entire interior.
Wood when constructed properly actually has *good* properties for withstanding earthquakes – it can flex more without failing and it weighs less, which is less mass that’s shifting around.
——–
Addressing some other points:
Wood can rot, yes. Wooden exterior trim will eventually need replacement if not kept weather-proofed (paint and the like). A home with appropriate drainage and weatherproofing should not be having structural members rotting. I live in Northern New England, a pretty damp climate, many homes around here are 1750-1900 and have no significant structural issues.
Additionally, if needed or desired, it’s a whole lot easier to repair or modify a typical wood structure. Altering the interior layout, replacing a failing support, building an addition or additional floor onto it, etc of a concrete structure without compromising the structure is much harder.
We spray for termites/bugs.
Firefighters are trained to fight all types of fires, but brick holds the heat and fire in worse than wood.
Tornados are going to do their thing. If it’s a bad one, brick isn’t going to help. If it’s not a bad one, our homes are constructed well enough, even with wood, to be fine. At the highest level, nothing above ground survives regardless of how it’s constructed. But that’s very rare.
Floods destroy regardless. Sure the actual brick is fine, but the Sheetrock, insulation and everything else is gone so it doesn’t matter that the ~brick~ is standing.
Nope. It isn’t more safe.
The only building that is tornado proof is a building that isn’t touched by a tornado. Europeans really fail to grasp just how powerful a tornado is. Your stone, brick, and concrete homes will get destroyed just as easily as a wood home if it takes a direct hit (we _do_ make homes out of stone sometimes, and we’ve seen them destroyed just as easily). The same is mostly true for hurricanes, although those are generally less likely to uproot buildings and more likely to cause flood damage or exterior damage to the walls and roof.
Wood is plentiful and very cheap here; much of our country is forested and we’re quite good at replanting trees we cut for lumber. Wood is fast and easy to work with. It’s meaningfully long lasting (you aren’t going to outlive a home you build if it’s maintained). It’s more resistant to earthquakes. It lets us build more, build faster, and build cheaper. And 99.9% of wood buildings will never experience an issue where being stone would have made a meaningful difference.
Lol at the European who thinks a brick house can withstand a powerful tornado 🤣
Y’all are silly.
Bricks suck for earthquakes. They don’t bend.
Bricks suck for tornados, you’ve got to spend a lot of extra money to overengineer the structure to keep the bricks from turning into missiles. (this is also true for wood or concrete structures, it’s really the tornados that suck).
Bricks and wood both stand up fine to flooding, it’s just the interiors that get destroyed. Wood gets used as piles (vertical supports driven into the ground) for homes that need to allow floodwaters to flow underneath. Some types of wood are so water resistant they build piers out of them, structures that literally never come out of the water, and those structures last decades.
Bricks suck for cost. Wood is a cheap, locally produced material with incredible strength under shearing forces and more than enough strength under the average compressive forces of a home and it can be cheaply made into large beams and sheets in a factory/mill and then installed on site. Bricks are cheap to produce but heavy to ship and must be laid on site, one at a time. That human labor adds up fast.
Bricks are more fire resistant than wood, but most homes built from wood have some distance from their neighbors, or else are built in a place where the fire codes require a non-flammable exterior or other fire precautions, so it’s only a wood frame with another material providing fire resistance.
Neither brick nor wood are very good insulators. Modern construction of either in an extreme climate will include better insulation, probably foam or fiberglass.
Brick as a material outlasts wood in most situations, but in homes? Wood easily lasts a century or three and in the meantime, trees have grown up with more than enough wood to rebuild that house several times over, and the home has been added onto and modernized very easily because wood is so easily manipulated. The potential life of a brick home will be determined by the quality of the engineering and the longevity of the mortar, not the brick, but I know my brother’s hundred year old brick home had to have a very expensive stabilizing bolt added to keep the walls from bowing outward under their own weight.
Basically, any advantages to brick are outweighed by the disadvantages for the average home, and in the limited places where brick beats wood, like dense cities, concrete is more common than either. Some places use brick or brick veneer as a stylistic choice. But wood dominated because it’s cheap, easy, and durable.
I live in a wooden house built in the 1800s. It’s extremely sturdy and I’m not worried about it. There are some in New England built in the 1600s that are still around. Maybe we just know how to build wooden houses?
Can we get like a list of the most commonly asked questions with their answers in the wiki? Or maybe a stickied thread with commonly asked questions for people to check first…
You build with the most accessible and inexpensive product mostly.
Wood is cheap and plentiful. House fires are rare in modernity, and while some regions have risk of wildfire those are also fairly rare.
As for resisting other natural disasters.
Earthquake: Wood homes are more flexible and therefore better to use in areas prone to earthquake. They take less damage.
Flooding: Damage from flooding comes from mold growing inside the home after the flood and from the building foundations being washed out. Both of these things are basically the same regardless of what material your home is made out of.
Tornadoes: A tornado will destroy a brick or stone building a few seconds slower than it will a wooden home. You can build tornado resistant above ground bunkers but you need a building with steel reinforced concrete walls that are several feet thick, strong metal doors, no windows, and no right angles.
So it is really only fire that is a major weakness for wood homes, which once again is rare. This means that most people will opt for having a larger home by having it built from wood.
Honestly we should build more with brick, it’s cool
We ran out of straw.
The U.S. has more forest now than when it was first settled by Europeans. Our forest lands are very well managed, harvested, and reseeded on decades long rotations. It’s much cheaper to build with wood in terms of labor cost, and material cost. After WW2 modern stick framing was relatively standardized due to uniform board types. You no longer needed expert carpenters, or masons to throw up a house. A few guys could frame up a house with an instruction manual. Give them a bit of experience, and they could form a construction company. It’s got it’s cons, but the pros far out way the cons. Cheap, affordable housing for the masses of people who in previous times couldn’t afford their own homes. Sure they won’t last 300 years, but our country isn’t even that old, and we don’t live that long.
Straw is too expensive.
* It’s cheap.
* We have a lot of it.
* It’s easy to work with it.
* It’s quick to build.
* It’s easy and cheap to maintain and repair overtime.
* You can build additions or modifications to the home fairly easily.
Why not build with wood?
Many homes are made of bricks however brick houses are worse in earthquakes and tornadoes don’t care if a house is made of brick. All it does is add thousands of heavy projectiles to the storm.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brick+house+after+tornado&t=newext&atb=v286-1&iax=images&ia=images
Besides which America makes up only 6.5% of the Earth and experiences 75% of the World’s tornadoes, don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, we have the best understanding of what might work in a tornado?
This question comes up frequently.
Wood is easy to build with, plentiful, and relatively inexpensive.
There are laws governing building construction that ensure that buildings are safe and durable.
Tornadoes destroy brick houses too.
Termites and decay are potential issues, but they’re less common than you might think from TV, they’re easy to avoid, and repairing any damage usually isn’t too terrible.
We really need a wooden houses bot that tells OP this topic has been discussed ad nauseam.
If a tornado is severe (EF 4-5), it doesn’t matter what your house is made of. Joplin, MO got hit by an EF5 in 2011 and the hospital was so damaged it had to be torn down and rebuilt. [Here’s a photo of the hospital after the storm.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c74d675/2147483647/strip/true/crop/620×413+0+0/resize/1760×1172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fsites%2Fkwmu%2Ffiles%2F201806%2Fmedflight_outside_er.jpg) If you get a direct tornado hit, wood is probably better because I’d rather have a wood house collapse on top of me than a brick one.
Housing is very vernacular, meaning it depends a lot on the place where it is located. Here there is a lot of timber and we found a way to make houses strong but efficiently. You guys really don’t understand how strong wood actually is and how flexible having wood frames with skin actually is. There’s no reason your house has to “feel” as secure as the Earth itself.
Because straw is too fragile and brick is too heavy, and because we tend to shoot our wolves. [(reference)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Little_Pigs)
Not all homes are built that way.
My home is a concrete block home, with stucco on the outside.. with one difference.
*The concrete block is FILLED with REBAR and CONCRETE.*
The only wood is the roof trusses.
Wood is abundant and sturdy.