Always amses me to see you guys build your wood houses. This looks so much like a construction game for children, I want to play too!
I live on a fault line along the pacific ring of fire, and so building with wood was an absolute necessity for us so long, as they were structurally more lenient to the constant earthquakes. Even now I believe our old government building is the largest wooden building in the Southern hemisphere (and it’s only 4 stories tall). These days as construction techniques have changed, we’ve obviously built things with concrete, steel, brick, etc., but the wooden tradition remains strong, with a huge majority of modern houses here still being built like this.
That aside, wood was also just a much cheaper material to build with, so it was the most economical material to use for a long time for much of the “new world”.
Right. Buildings were mostly wood and mud in Europe until the 18th Century. By then, cities became so dense that big fires were extremely deadly. Little by little people started building in stone, then bricks and now reinforced concrete.
It didn’t really have anything to do with fires. Pretty much every hardwood forest was cut down in Europe and any remaining were protected so they could be used to build ships.
America was colonized late enough that it never really became an issue.
Yeah exactly they basically stripped their continent bare of lumber during that period and it’s all at the bottom of the ocean now. The materials used are just as much determined by economic conditions as practicality.
I’m genuinely curious. I am in the southern US, Alabama specifically with the heat and humidity that entails. There are cinder block homes here, but they’re mostly looked down upon and almost always have mold and mildew problems. How is that handled with brick and mortar or concrete construction?
Double walls, with thermal insulation, external vapor barrier and built in ventilation ducts. Special additives for the mortars prevent moisture from seeping into the walls. Double or even triple pane windows and good quality, properly applied exterior paint reinforces the insulation.
Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t have most of, or any of this. I’d suspect that’s the problem.
I’ll risk the ones you’re used to see are single wall, probably bare block and perhaps poorly cobbled together, as if they were sheds or something alike.
Far off the mark?
Not too far off of it.
I don’t see why brick and mortar houses should be extra susceptible to those problems if build well. But of course Europe didn’t use to see the same extremes of heat and humidity as the US does, perhaps it will become a problem in the future.
You got it right I suspect. Most of these that I’ve seen are a single course of blocks with no discernible vapor barrier or anything. And maybe a thin layer of paint.
Brick manufacturing devastates the environment. We build our houses from sustainable resources.because we’re not cavemen.
We build our houses from trees because we have lots of trees.
Why the aggressive tone? Each technique has its advantages. I guess brick and mortar houses would burn less in California, which has the same climate as Italy and Spain
That is not the reasoning at all.
Places generally build with whatever sensical building material they have most widely available. If there are a ton of forests, they probably build with wood. If there’s a ton of stone, they probably build with stone.
You’re wrong, and honestly kind of a dick.
ITT: Bricks good, wood bad. Nobody with a clue about thermal bridging and energy efficiency to be found.
Or how frames work
I don’t see floor trusses used too often so it’s neat to see them here
This looks like the perfect Lemmy post.
A bunch of people who know fuck-all about the subject matter at hand (in this case construction), and then sprinkle in the usual anti-American bias that flavors a large number of posts on this site. The only thing missing seems to be something dealing with Linux or some pro-commie spin.
At least they’re using an open framework. I hope the plans are GPL compatible.
Those 2x4s don’t look open source to me. Must be some proprietary M$ stuff.
Don’t forget all the top comments criticizing other comments!
I’m currently in a neighborhood that was empty farmland as far as they eye could see just 5 years ago. I had never seen a building being built before, but now I drive past 4 complexes being built just on my way to the grocery store. They’re also building a closer grocery store.
This area is going to be so nice in like 5 years, but right now it’s an absolute mess of construction, road widenings, putting utilities in the ground, etc. We didn’t even have cell access here when I moved in 9 months ago.
I had never seen a building being built before
Must have been nice
Everyone in the comments is suddenly a construction and climate expert.
I just thought it looked cool lol
I always wondered why american houses are destroyed so easily in storms
I now have my answer
Yea it takes a few decades to get this far
So what would you build a house out that can take 400 kph debris storm
I would leave it to the experts knowledgeable in the field to help engineer and design a house like that and let them manage the building
Yeah that what they would pick that kind of house.
Tell me you know nothing about construction without telling me you know nothing about construction.
The problem is that I’ve seen videos from after storms from the us and the houses are easily destroyed compared to other countries
Videos from other countries that I’ve seen (excluding countries with bad building standards like china) have buildings that have stood up better to or completely survived storms
You don’t know what you are talking about.
No other place on earth has more tornadoes (over 200 MPH/320 KPH air speeds) than the US.
Europe gets about 200 to 300 a year.
The US gets about 1200.
Europe gets about 2 hurricanes each year (wind speeds of about 130 MPH/210 KPH).
The US gets about 12 each year.
If you think any regular home structure can survive a direct 200 MPH hit, you are delirious. And for most other storms, having a structure that has some level of flexibility is far superior to some brittle structure made of brick or concrete that doesn’t flex. That wood structure will take a hit and bounce back, while brick, clay or concrete will crack and collapse. Neither is a great situation, but we also have vast forests to cut down for lumber, while Europe, not so much.
They’re building it right in front of those other people’s windows. Fuck these people.
The people in the old house had windows that had a bonus view for a while. Now the property’s being developed and their bonus view just becomes a wall. If they wanted to maintain line of sight they should have purchased this property next to theirs.
It’d be a crazy world where you can’t build on your property because you would block the window of somebody else’s property
It looks like it’s being built in front of their house, not next to it, but I guess this is a corner lot? If it’s next to it then that’s normal.
Do local govts/authorities not block people from blocking others’ windows?
Around here you have to be a certain distance away from other windows, have your roof at a particular angle to make sure sunlight still reaches and a bunch of other stuff prior to approval… and even then neighbors are still free to block construction if it’s impacting their light
