• HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Here in Europe, we use mostly cinder blocks or bricks. I guess wood is more common in Northern Europe and Switzerland

    • proudblond@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • MrsDoyle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In earthquakes in NZ the wooden houses flex for sure. What kills you is the brick chimney falling through the roof.

      • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        In Europe we use reinforced concrete for the same purpose. Don’t know if it works but it’s the way it’s done.

      • lunarul@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And also because there’s no snow or serious rain. Took me years to get used to the flimsy houses here, they wouldn’t last a year back in my country.

        • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know about that. I’ve lived in a typical “flimsy” American wooden house in an area that had a lot of crazy weather with extreme winds and even a couple of tropical storms. That house had absolutely no issue with those. These houses are a lot stronger than they look. They flex but don’t break.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            My house is 80 years old, I’ve personally seen 3 feet of snow on its roof, it weathered hurricane Fran with no damage, hurricane Matthew caused a leak around the chimney that stained my living room ceiling a little.

            I’m ready to take anything this area is willing to throw at me except tornadoes. A direct strike by tornado will pull it down.

        • Stoney_Logica1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I live in the Pacific Northwest where it rains quite a bit. Wood houses are fine in the rain as long as the moisture barrier and roof have been installed correctly.

        • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Canada also builds houses out of wood. There’s pretty serious snow here and the houses work great.

          I also live in one of the the windiest cities in Canada . The asphalt shingles have blown off houses frequently, but the houses themselves are solid.

          • lunarul@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m pretty sure those wooden houses in Canada are built differently from wooden houses in California. The ones I’ve seen are thin wooden struts covered with some drywall.

            Edit: and just saying “flimsy” by comparison to the usual reinforced concrete structures back home. I now own a home in California and it’s definitely solid.

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So funnily enough, 2x4 exterior walls meet code for 3 stories, but where I am, it doesn’t meet the insulation requirements of minimum r-20, so it’s normally built with 2x6.

          • lunarul@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I know it is possible to build solid houses out of wood. The ones I’m talking about would 100% not withstand blizzards or tornadoes.

            Like most in my native country, I grew up in a building made entirely of solid reinforced concrete slabs, including most interior walls. I could not hear my upstairs or downstairs neighbors and when I saw people punching holes in the walls in American movies I thought it’s just an exaggeration, not something that can actually happen. Wooden houses were culturally associated with poor rural people who couldn’t afford living in a nice solid apartment. That culture persists today, and even in isolated villages new homes are built with concrete structures and brick walls.

            When I bought a piece of land and was looking at options for new houses, I found a company making very solid wooden homes (still a lot more solid than the average Bay Area home) for reasonable prices and both my and my wife’s families were outraged at the idea of building a house out of wood.

            Just some random background to why I’d use the word “flimsy” for wooden struts sandwiched between drywall sheets.

    • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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      1 year ago

      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_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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!

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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          1 year ago

          It would stick crack and crumble around the steel. It wouldn’t work here, which is why it against building codes here.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        That’s a really poor argument to pass down to people.

        Solutions exist to make buildings earthquake resilient and the USA created a good part of it.

        Vibration dampeners, structure stress relievers, special mortars and concretes, specific structural geometry, etc.

        There is no reason why the US should keep its attachment to wood construction. Tornado alley would vastly improve if house were to shift from match sticks and hope to brick and mortar with reinforced concrete foundations.

        • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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          1 year ago

          Tornado alley is a completely different part of the US than the West Coast, which is specifically what I was talking about. It’s like 2000 miles away. Tornado alley doesn’t have earthquakes, so this discussion doesn’t even apply to that. Bust now that were talking about it, in tornado alley, houses at least do have a brick exterior around the wood.

          • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I picked Tornado Alley because it’s low hanging fruit; I’ll get to that again.

            USA has a fixation for wood construction, completely unreasonable and unjustifiable. There are several countries and regions in the world with sysmic activity that do not opt to build in wood.

            Japan sits atop a zone of tectonic plate subduction. Hearthquakes are not unknown to them and they build with modern materials. Tokyo, with its extreme population density, is built to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. Are the USA dumber than Japan?

            Regarding Hurricane Alley, wrapping a woodframe with brick doesn’t make the structure sturdier, just makes it heavier and more prone to break under stress, as the brick work won’t have structural role.

            A properly built modern brick or block structure has a super structure reinforced with rebar and concrete, which then receives the brick/block work to finish the building, with some walls being part of the superstructure of the building. This forms a monolithic construction that tends to be very stuborn and stays in place unless something blows it to pieces. Older buildings used other techniques, usually tied to the brickwork itself to create load bearing structures.

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • ours@lemmy.film
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

    • naonintendois@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Exteriors are wood too, hurricane straps. Basically metal connectors connect everything from ground across the roof to the ground again.

        • naonintendois@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          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.

            • ours@lemmy.film
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              1 year ago

              Same in the Caribbean. Houses and buildings made of concrete to survive hurricanes. Windows may blow out but the walls stay firm.

        • naonintendois@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • MrJameGumb@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      We have plenty of brick houses here too, but they all are still built around wooden frames for the most part

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      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.