this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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What do you normally build houses with?
Here in Europe, we use mostly cinder blocks or bricks. I guess wood is more common in Northern Europe and Switzerland
In California we use wood because it flexes during earthquakes. There may be damage during a big one but at least the house is less likely to collapse on you.
In earthquakes in NZ the wooden houses flex for sure. What kills you is the brick chimney falling through the roof.
isnt brick an excellent insulator?
Pretty neat, I've never seen masonry like this before.
I'll point out that the webbing is likely strong, but considering the lack of ductility, this seems likely to fail during an earthquake. What're these called, I'd like to look into them more.
i was so sure it was, i looked it up after seeing your comment and... you are right. even double brick which ive always been told was great, apparently isnt all that good. TIL
In Europe we use reinforced concrete for the same purpose. Don't know if it works but it's the way it's done.
Wait, are earthquakes common in Europe?!
Italy ils pretty shaky, Portugal too. Southern France is waiting for its own Big One.
For reference, nowhere in Western Europe is even close to the much of the west coast of the Americas in terms of seismic activity.
If we did that in the US west coast, they would crack and fall apart from tectonic plate shift. You need to build things to be flexible for earthquakes and general shift.
I live in a 100 year old farm house in California and every spring and fall we have to move the strike plate (thing the door latch nubbin goes into) on the front door up or down about 3/4 inch due to seasonal house shifting. The door stops closing and we know it's spring time!
Steel reinforcement is what keeps them up. At least it's supposed to.
The structure would still be damaged, although it may be “standing”.
It doesn’t work, it’s been tested plenty by people far smarter than either of us.
It would stick crack and crumble around the steel. It wouldn't work here, which is why it against building codes here.
That's because Europe has had many more centuries worth of deforestation. The greatest resource the Americas had to offer to Europe was essentially unlimited lumber.
And we wasted a lot of our forests on superfluous things like war ships - see the Castillan plateau which is now a dry and barren land.
Why aren't they replanting?
Once you've destroyed an ecosystem, it takes a lot of effort to bring back. Often you can't just expect to plant the same type of trees as before and expect it to take.
There are ways to introduce things gradually, but it's not an on/off switch.
Plus there are entire keystone species of trees that blights drove to actual or morphological extinction. I don't know about European species, but the mountains of appalachia used to be covered in massive American Chestnut trees that were so big around at the trunk they were on par with west coast species. After the blight, you can still find groves of chestnut trees, but its like they're a different species - they live 7-9 years and die basically around the time they first mast. They never live long enough to really leave the sapling phase.
In Florida houses are also built from cinder blocks because wood is too weak against hurricanes.
Edit: interiors can be built from wood, but all exterior walls are made with cinder blocks.
So that people can remain secure like the third little pig!
Exteriors are wood too, hurricane straps. Basically metal connectors connect everything from ground across the roof to the ground again.
What part of Florida? I know there's different wind speed ratings depending on how far north you're building. In South Florida I only ever saw cinder block or full concrete exteriors.
It should be compliant everywhere, maybe a particular municipality has specific restrictions though.
Interesting. Here in California, building brick structures is prohibited because of the risk during earthquakes.
I'm actually living in California now. Very different structures to the buildings. Houses are much smaller overall too. But the landscape is so much nicer to look at and explore. I never realized how boring and flat Florida was until I left.
Wood is becoming popular for new constructions in France too.
With the new regulations you need to limit the amount of CO2 emitted for building and maintaining the house.
It's much easier to respect this regulation by using wood rather than concrete so we see more and more wooden constructions now.
something like this for example
Or this
That appears to be a military bunker of some sort
It does, doesn't it? That's before surfacing is done.
I was thinking more like a commercial building than a residential.
In Europe? Bricks and mortar
It's not like it's a "wood house" though just the framing is softwood lumber. The foundation is reinforced poured concrete, there's steel support braces, the ties and hardware are likely zinc coated steel, roof is asphalt shingles or steel, wind bracing is lumber or steel rods depending on code, could even have exterior brick or vinyl siding.
I understand a lot of homes in Europe are not well insulated, and weren't built with it in mind. Climate change is causing problems with this design deficit.
That is mainly specifically a UK problem. Most homes in Europe are pretty decently to excellently insulated.