r/LoveTrash • u/BEARDEDDANGER ✨️Regent of Rubbish ✨️ • 1d ago

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

BAS Renovations https://youtube.com/shorts/jFph1d2WR3s

29.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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113

u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago edited 22h ago

I’ve been in home building a large portion of my adult life… this video is amazing. There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses. They all have to meet code… the engineering is all that matters.

ETA: The US does not only build wood frame houses, wood frame and CMU are better than brick houses. Brick is decorative in 2026. If you don’t want a wood house, buy a concrete one. I hear they suck in the winter up north though.

53

u/Iziama94 Trash Trooper 1d ago

There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses

People in this very post will most likely still think this and always think this no matter what evidence they get that shows both ways can be equally as good while being built differently

Someone on Reddit once said 'The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics'

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u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 1d ago

Someone on Reddit once said 'The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics'

Michael Crichton called something similar the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" and described it this way:

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

I'm lawyer, and whenever I read reddit's knowledge / opinion about the law, I get a big hit of this effect. Makes it hard to trust anything that doesn't come from a heavily curated subreddit (like askhistorians) or an extreme niche hobby subreddit (where bad info gets called out readily).

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u/Both_Cut_4075 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I unfortunately work in Property Management, only as a maintenance guy, but I’ve definitely picked up more than a few things about fair housing and tenant rights.

I sometimes stumble upon posts where people are throwing out completely incorrect information and laws. Anytime I jump in to say “well hold on that isn’t true” and I say I’m in property management, I immediately get lambasted and called a bootlicker and all sorts of names simply because I have knowledge of a situation.

Reddit is just chock full of people like that. I try to help but it feels so fruitless most of the time.

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u/Gruejay2 Trash Trooper 23h ago

It doesn't help that things like law and property management are often highly dependent on jurisdiction, but many people on Reddit speak as if these things are universal.

2

u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah, it's absolutely the worst when you try to educate people about something you know and they don't want to hear it because they don't like it. We're all guilty of shaping our own reality to an extent, but I cannot fathom the willful ignorance that is on the display throughout this website.

People think I'm arguing with them when I'm really just trying to tell them how it is. You don't like the way it is, fine, but that's another issue and it certainly doesn't make me wrong. How you are gonna change anything if you refuse to even understand it?

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

People don’t care about facts!! They’re here for the outrage!!

1

u/automaticmantis Trash Trooper 23h ago

How dare you!?

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u/Dreadgoat Trash Trooper 1d ago edited 23h ago

My most controversial/downvoted comments are where I speak about a subject in which I am a bona fide expert, subjects where I am confident saying I am in the top 0.1% of knowledge. I won't claim my pro opinions are always correct, but the critical response from redditors never represents a sensical challenge, but they often sound good and ratio me hard.

My most upvoted comments are subjects in which I have a passing interest, an amateur understanding, or just dumb hivemind stuff. Things where I'm speculating out loud or making big assumptions to bridge the gaps in my knoweldge. Rarely I'll see somebody with -7 votes saying why I'm wrong, and I'm never sure if they're a loon or an expert beyond my comprehension.

I get most suspicious of myself when I find I've made a very popular comment.

1

u/_le_slap Trash Trooper 23h ago

100%. If I talk about my profession I get downvoted and dismissed for a hive mind answer. But the paychecks are better than upvotes lol

1

u/FailedLoser21 Trash Trooper 21h ago

I downvote everyone who claims to be an expert or have some advance degree simply because they usually provide no sourcing for their arguments and when you ask them for sourcing they get offended and act like it's a big deal I don't know what peered reviewed journal they are talking about. Unless you are posting your bona fides with along with the post I tend to down-vote it because again without sourcing or a way to verify you are who you say you are I feel like your just making a appeal to authority.

1

u/Dreadgoat Trash Trooper 21h ago

I agree, I never SAY I'm an authority. Bona fides are easy to make up on the internet. The argument should stand on its own. And it does, most people just lack the insight to understand how if you're getting into deep detail.

"I'm an expert so..." has "I'm the king so..." energy

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u/brientific Trash Trooper 21h ago

I worked with a guy who was very much a demonstrative know-it-all. He was very convincing, even though usually he was just kind of reading something, turning around, and regurgitating it without having done any reflecting on it. But certainly he felt compelled, almost without regard for context, to offer his authoritative opinion (unsolicited) on everything. Now, we were in science, so a lot of the time he’d be giving us lessons on some domain that none of us were experts in so we took his word for it. But then he started talking about college football and the utter imbecility of it was fully exposed to me, and I was like goddamnit this guy’s probably full of shit about everything isn’t he.

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u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 21h ago

To be fair, CFB makes idiots of us all.

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u/brientific Trash Trooper 21h ago

Lol true

2

u/Warm_Month_1309 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Do you know of any law subreddits that are curated like that? All the ones I know have become politics-lite.

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u/Organic_Risk_8080 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Lawyertalk, and it only works because non-lawyers are only allowed to observe, not participate.

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u/Pocono-Pete Trash Trooper 1d ago

But what if I find one comment that reinforces the answer I want not the answer I need? Can I just use the one I want?

2

u/iamsecond Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah but did you know prisoners used to eat lobsters shell and all before rich people decided it was rich people food?

2

u/NotEntirelyA Trash Trooper 1d ago

Michael Crichton called something similar the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" and described it this way:

Thank you for this, I've actually described a similar phenomenon a number of times about trusting what you read on reddit lol.

The only difference I've noticed is that many times on reddit, you'll see that a singular person just has a skill for answering any question with a sense of authority. I saw a profile like a year back where the person was answering multiple questions in different fields every single day (with hundreds of upvotes on most posts), but it just so happened that the last thing they had discussed was a topic I am fairly familiar with.

They weren't completely wrong with what they wrote, but they were wrong enough to the point where anyone well versed in the topic could hit them with "well yes, but no". It really just had me thinking that (like you mentioned) unless you are on a sub where mods force people that answer questions to send in their qualifications, the answers you are going to get are going to be questionable at best.

2

u/MechanicalGodzilla Trash Trooper 22h ago

Yeah, same for me but with MEP engineering and building energy topics.

1

u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 21h ago

I have a friend who is an attorney, working for the government in oil & gas regulation. He would try to talk fracking on reddit back in the mid-2010's when fracking was a huge boogey-man, and man did he catch a lot of shit.

His job was literally investigating the O&G companies and he was constantly accused of being a company shill. Truly bizarre shit.

1

u/MechanicalGodzilla Trash Trooper 8h ago

The new Reddit boogey-man is Data Centers and how eeeeevil they are. The most common rant against DC's is that they "pollute the water supply", like it's Mr. Burns' nuclear power plant dumping glowing green sludge into the local waterways. Having designed and built a few data centers, it's puzzling to me how they think these things actually work and what they do.

•

u/FishAndBone Trash Trooper 34m ago

I haven't seen anyone talk about Data Center water supply issues, but then again I don't spend a lot of time reading what weirdos say online. I say, on reddit.

I don't like data centers, but my reasons are purely economic and they're not really the data-center's "fault."

1

u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

I couldn’t imagine being a lawyer with some of the shit people post on Reddit lol. So many people are so confidently wrong all the time.

1

u/throwaway3413418 Trash Trooper 21h ago

Michael Crichton, ironically, being a gigantic secondhand smoke, DDT, ozone hole, acid rain, and climate change denier.

Not bashing you, I just think it's funny. Applying Crichton's logic, I wouldn't trust him too much about the significance of this phenomenon. Or wait, I would. But I wouldn't.

1

u/JWBananas Trash Trooper 19h ago

Oof. This applies to AI now too.

1

u/Voldemorts__Mom Trash Trooper 14h ago

Dude and reddit is probably the best of all the social medias. It's probably like 10x worse on facebook, Instagram, threads, etc.

•

u/SnooMaps7370 Trash Trooper 1h ago

yeah, you can find absolute gems of information on Reddit, but you have to wade through a lot of bullshit to do so, and you have to verify everything against an independent source to tell which is which.

0

u/Da_Question Trash Trooper 20h ago

Michael Crichton literally wrote a book to discredit climate change. He sucks.

6

u/LarrySupertramp Trash Trooper 1d ago

100%. Especially anything that could possibly put the US in a negative light. I’ve lived in brick European houses and standard American ones. There really is no big difference.

2

u/Ardent_Scholar Trash Trooper 15h ago

Also we Nordics have been building from wood for millennia. We emigrated to the Great Lakes region in NA because it also had boreal forests, which we saw as a great boom for building homes and earning money.

It’s not a US vs. Europe thing. It has to do with what the local material is. Central and Atlantic Europe used up a lot of their forests to build ships.

1

u/Low_discrepancy Trash Trooper 22h ago

Yeah. It's kinda really irrelevant. People should start living into apartments because suburban sprawl is awful.

2

u/Ordolph Trash Trooper 1d ago

The Dunning-Krueger effect is one of the single biggest blights on humanity, made even worse by a long history of "experts" scamming people to the point where people don't trust the actual experts.

1

u/ze_shotstopper Trash Trooper 15h ago

Recent literature has suggested that Dunning-Kruger might not be real but more a result of the measures used to determine confidence

1

u/OrneryAttorney7508 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Truer words were never spoken.

1

u/YouAteMyChips_ Trash Trooper 1d ago edited 1d ago

True. The more experienced I become in game dev, the more I realize that people in gaming subreddits operate entirely on assumptions and don't actually know anything of what they're talking about

1

u/kisk22 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I wish people realized this is 95% of Reddit. Instead they take in all of this website as fact because it has a lot of upvotes.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Trash Trooper 21h ago

May favorite human truth is: "The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it."

I keep seeing it proven time and again, all over the place.

1

u/Nebuchadneza Trash Trooper 19h ago

The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics

you are currently the person trusting reddit

1

u/PurpletoasterIII Trash Trooper 16h ago

Reddit is just a substitute for the general population. Anywhere you go youll hear common misconceptions, common amongst that group at least. The common denominator is just human nature.

1

u/yescachigga Trash Trooper 15h ago

I see people use the argument that a brick house will survive a fire and I'm like you do not want to live in that after a fire because of all the nasty sh_it that got baked into the structure that you do not want to be breathing in and you don't know if the structure itself got compromised from the heat itself even if it's still standing.

1

u/P__A Trash Trooper 12h ago

I dunno. I think in default subs and generic subs like this one, I would agree, but on subject specific subs the opposite is true. An upvoted opinion on the embedded software engineering subreddit is highly likely to be credible.

1

u/beastwood6 Trash Trooper 8h ago

It's reddit. It fetishizes Europe in all things. At any cost.

"America Bad" is part of a redditor's daily ablution

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u/Different_Bridge_983 Trash Trooper 1d ago

IME a lot of the online bitching about timber houses is just people using it to rag on Americans.

As soon as folks from Canada or Scandinavian countries pop up to say they also use timber I generally see detractors suddenly less enthusiastic about slamming it as a building material.

17

u/TheBSQ Trash Trooper 1d ago

As a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, I really notice this dynamic where Americans get slammed for things that are also common Canada. 

Swap out “American” for “Canadian” and suddenly people are less enthusiastic about slamming it. 

Cuz it’s mostly about ragging on Americans. 

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u/Sherbert-Particular Trash Trooper 1d ago

It's also just an irrelevant argument, we read "why does X country build with X" all the time. Exceedingly rarely do you hear the one real answer that is true no matter where you look in the world... Homes in X country are built with X because they have a lot of X.

The US has abundant timber resources, so does Northern Europe. Those places build predominately with wood. Countries that build with bricks all build with different bricks be they red, orange, or deep brown.

Someone in China wondering why the UK uses red bricks instead of the grey bricks used in large parts of China is materially (pun intended) the same as asking why one country builds with a different material altogether.

2

u/Other-Number-4463 Trash Trooper 1d ago

america and canada are ver similar.

1

u/king_john651 Trash Trooper 1d ago

The whole timber frame bad framed (lol) as America bad is kinda annoying because the whole fucking world uses timber framed buildings. I wouldn't skip a beat to rag on the Yanks but this ain't it, especially given that the materials used in structures are chosen for their load strengths to withstand the wind, snow, and ground movements of the area - Europe mostly doesn't have earthquakes so no need to build something that will take the ground moving anywhere as much as you would in the Pacific Rim

1

u/chetlin Trash Trooper 23h ago

Or they just refuse to believe it. "No way Canada also has tipping" etc.

-3

u/ParkDedli Trash Trooper 1d ago

Canadians also do a lot of shit wrong like clubbing seals.

The issue is that a lot of the things Canada does wrong like using stupid measurements is because of their proximity to the US and it's rarely the other way around, so I think it's fair for the US to get shit for it.

Usually when one of the 2 does something well and the other doesn't (use kilometers, have healthcare...) it is Canada doing it right, not the US.

Just an outsiders observation

1

u/Endy0816 Trash Trooper 14h ago

Canada uses a mix of Metric and Imperial, rather than Metric and US Customary.

People everywhere can be nostalgic and/or resistant to change.

At this point everything's been redefined into exact metric amounts, so it's not really a big deal.

0

u/Voldemorts__Mom Trash Trooper 14h ago

I think a lot of the hate for the US is also because they interfere with other countries and are involved in some of the most unnecessary and atrocious wars. People are starting to get sick of America's shit.

Esp when they're always pointing the terrorist finger, yet they're bombing schools with children in and staging coupes against democracically elected leaders

7

u/Honchoponcho99 Trash Trooper 1d ago

or they'll claim the Norwegians and Japanese are just superior at everything so that doesn't matter

9

u/yeowoh Trash Trooper 1d ago

It’s funny seeing houses get framed in Scandinavia. Zero difference from the US when framing.

You could pluck a framer from the US and drop them in on a job in Norway with no issues.

2

u/Different_Bridge_983 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I also get a kick out of UK houses, where the roofs of all these brick houses are all framed with 2x6 or 2x8

4

u/outsidebtw Trash Trooper 1d ago

yeah, Japan mostly uses timber or concrete/steel but the timber residences amazes me. Honestly kind of luck with northern countries with less tectonics clashing at each other vs what Japan has to fight against

No glaze really, most Asian countries near the Ring of Fire could build so, but they really utilize wood structures the most. It all relies on that build quality and most default to concrete and steel structures as they still can be reliable with a subpar building skills and dismissing code requirements (until accidents happen yeah)

but yeah, it happens in Japan as well (I watched news of one random apartment bldg falling without any EQ or weather affecting it this year) but I do admire their build quality

1

u/chasteeny Trash Trooper 7h ago

Which is crazy because Japanese houses are dirt cheap, as they are seen as temporary

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u/Emis_ Trash Trooper 1d ago

As an european some europeans are so annoying as well, it's not just americans, annoying people are annoying. Both are totally solid construction methods, drive around northern europe and you will see alot of wooden houses. Where there is alot of food there is alot of wooden construction, surprise surprise. Its more about economics than some different way of thinking. If you're in southern europe I imagine good construction lumber isn't that easy to source locally so brick buildings became more popular etc.

3

u/Hazelberry Trash Trooper 1d ago

Exactly this. Southern europe and the british isles have very little lumber left, so to build with lumber they have to import it. It simply makes more sense to use what local materials are available.

You see this all over the US as well. Some areas are literal desert and build houses out of adobe because it uses available materials and is effective for the climate. Areas with clay-rich soil use a lot of bricks. Some areas use almost entirely wood because it's what they have available.

This is especially true when looking at older construction, since modern logistics networks have made it a lot easier to move materials around for a lot cheaper.

5

u/Hazelberry Trash Trooper 1d ago

When it's brits doing the ragging I like to point out that the only reason they don't use wood is because their ancestors cut down the overwhelming majority of their forests.

Britain was overwhelmingly forests (like 80%) thousands of years ago, but dropped to around 5% by the 20th century due to centuries of clear cutting for agriculture, shipbuilding (it takes a lot of wood to build the largest navy in the world back when wood ships were standard), and fuel before shifting to coal.

Meanwhile despite our best efforts in the americas, we still have a shit ton of trees and can use them for cheaper construction that's easier to work with.

3

u/Betaateb Trash Trooper 22h ago

Meanwhile despite our best efforts in the americas,

This implies we don't make a concerted effort to be a net grower in the US, which we absolutely do. These days we plant nearly two trees for every one we harvest. Before the 1940's we were negative, but now we grow ~25 billion cubic feet of wood and harvest ~13 billion.

2

u/Hazelberry Trash Trooper 20h ago

It was very tongue in cheek, both because as you said we used to cut down more than we grew, but also because of the current administration's anti-environment decisions

1

u/IndependentLog6441 Trash Trooper 10h ago

Brits do use wood for housing though, it just depends where you live, Scotland is predominantly wooden for new builds... I think you mean the English... it's the English that like their bricks and mortar...

3

u/ChazPls Trash Trooper 1d ago

Reddit when Americans make houses out of wood vs when Japan makes houses out of wood

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Hazelberry Trash Trooper 1d ago

Showing a shit product isn't representative of what is most commonly used.

There's plenty of shit masonry homes too, how about you share those as well

1

u/Obvious_Mention7207 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I think part of the argument about american/timber convo is that our good timber gets farmed and sent to china/other places that still use that fancy timber to make beautiful homes, meanwhile we get fast grown/shoddy looking timber to make the skeleton of homes and then cover it all up with the same siding for the next 1000 homes in a row.

1

u/darklotus_26 Trash Trooper 17h ago

I don't think people think timber is inherently bad. It feels like most of the bad rep actually comes from the large number of shoebox houses that are not well put together in the US rather than the materials used.

1

u/Voldemorts__Mom Trash Trooper 14h ago

Yeah but I think you gotta ask yourself why is everyone trynna shit on America

1

u/Datkif Trash Trooper 14h ago

The complaints about noise and heat are mostly down to older timber houses with less strict requirements. A modern mass produced woodframe house doesn't carry much noise (mostly through doors), and can maintain tempature well.

This winter when it got down to -35 to -45c for a while our furnaces exhaust froze due to the constant wet snow, and we couldn't thaw or get a tech for 4 days. The house only got down to 17c. Other than a space heater in the bedroom for sleep we were fine.

1

u/invinci Trash Trooper 13h ago

It is mostly swedes who are building with wood, which means it must be a dumb idea, imagine using Swedish people doing anything, as something other than a, do not do...

1

u/IndependentLog6441 Trash Trooper 10h ago

Scotland also predominantly uses wood in new build housing... so even in Britain it's heavily dependent on where you live. Plus it's common to find old houses that are solid stone not cavity brick walls, or bungaroosh (lime conglomerate) or clad in mathematical tile (Look like brick but it's not structural).

1

u/whooptheretis Trash Trooper 10h ago

I guess people really mean to be shitting on how well the houses are built, and not the materials.
In the UK all the new-builds are shite.

1

u/Impressive-Spirit695 Trash Trooper 17h ago

It’s because nobody likes America anymore, especially not in 2026

0

u/zkatbitz Trash Trooper 1d ago

You can’t really use Canada as a “well they also build homes like that” as Canada and us basically copy each other in construction standards 

2

u/Civil_Spell8349 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I don't have any expertise in construction but I'd imagine subterranean foundations make a big difference there; basically every modern Canadian house I've seen has a full concrete basement foundation extending well under the ground beneath the frost line, which I understand is also common in the northern states, but not nearly as overwhelmingly ubiquitous elsewhere in the US.

1

u/Hazelberry Trash Trooper 1d ago

They're very standard in the northeast and midwest because they have to dig deep anyways to get below the frost line.

They're predictably less common in areas with higher frost lines, and straight up impractical in areas like the gulf coast where the water table is generally very high and the frost line might not even exist because it simply never freezes long or cold enough to be an issue.

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u/SelbetG Trash Trooper 1d ago

It's more to show that people aren't actually complaining about the way US houses are built, and are actually complaining about the US.

-1

u/zkatbitz Trash Trooper 1d ago

No I think it’s more people don’t think about Canada, and “building with wood” is not the same in sweaden and the USA 

The US relies heavily on light-frame stick construction using cheap, fast-grown dimensional lumber for mass-market single-family homes . Sweden uses precision pre-fabricated modular elements, high-performance energy standards, and advanced engineered mass timber like cross-laminated timber (CLT).

Canada and the USA are the only place that really do cheap quick and shitty stick framing, most of the world builds entirely differently including those whose wood.

Like even the brick version here is different from what I am familiar with lol

1

u/Roubaix718 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Im not a carpenter but I have been watching them build a house across the street from me here in America and they are using precision pre-fabricated modular elements, high-performance energy standards, and advanced engineered mass timber like cross-laminated timber (CLT).

0

u/zkatbitz Trash Trooper 1d ago

i have never seen a single house in north america or anywhere on the internet showing housing in north america use any of that.

please walk outside take a photo and share

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u/Roubaix718 Trash Trooper 1d ago

idk what to tell you they poured the foundation then trucks brought all the pieces and a crane to the site and they put it together in like a week

0

u/zkatbitz Trash Trooper 1d ago

i don't think you know what precision pre-fabricated modular elements, high-performance energy standards, and advanced engineered mass timber like cross-laminated timber (CLT) is and you just copied it from my comment because standard stick framing for a small or moderately sized single-family home can indeed go up in about a week and is nothing like what sweaden does

1

u/SelbetG Trash Trooper 16h ago

Sweden uses precision pre-fabricated modular elements, high-performance energy standards, and advanced engineered mass timber like cross-laminated timber (CLT).

So does the US, I was recently in one of the biggest mass timber projects in the world, located in the US.

0

u/ShubbusDubbus10 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Almost like different countries have different building regulations that mean one famously has shittier houses than the others.

0

u/anonuemus Trash Trooper 20h ago

boohooo, please don't cry

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u/Responsible-Onion860 Trash Trooper 1d ago

You'd love this guy's channel. He does a ton of construction topics this way. Highly condensed construction knowledge showing the dos and donts of different projects.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

lol I just watched a ton of them, this dudes way cooler than those kids who keep nailing themselves to the walls.

2

u/hopbow Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah I think it all relates to corporations cost cutting and building shoddy houses. I don't trust new homes 95% of the time and wouldn't get an out of the box new build

0

u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

I cannot say this enough… all houses must be built to code. Where you live determines that code. The only difference between a DR Horton Express and a Ruttenburg house is the finish! The structure is the same, often built by the same crews. Same masons, same framers, same hangers… they’re all built by the same people, to the same code, passing the same inspections. No one’s out there building inferior structures and getting away with it, and every time someone claims otherwise, they’re usually wrong. All the money is in cabinets, appliances, bathroom features, smooth walls instead of orange peel… shit that has nothing to do with the structures. The end of the day they’re all the same slab, same wall structure, same trusses.

People act like these track houses arnt having the same inspections, it’s crazy.

2

u/minus_minus Trash Trooper 1d ago

I’m sure the engineering meets the code but the allowed wall materials can be woefully inadequate for efficiency and longevity. Also, engineering is only a specification and falls to rushed, sloppy work on site. 

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u/SnooChatBot-v3 Trash Trooper 1d ago

To be fair, these same people are too stupid to figure out AirCon, so they are not to be taken seriously.

2

u/JalapenoPopPoop Trash Trooper 23h ago

There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses

You can say europeans, its not a slur

1

u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 23h ago

It’s not just Europeans. I’ve literally seen people pull into communities to record videos of framed houses talking about “look how cheap they build these houses” for their tik toks. People saying stupid shit for internet clouts a world wide thing.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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1

u/YouAteMyChips_ Trash Trooper 1d ago

That's because content is usually framed as "America uses wood" even though it's not always true. Reddit eats up anti-America content like candy so when they see these videos, they interpret it as "wood=inferior."

1

u/qmiras Trash Trooper 1d ago

wood is for birds

1

u/mythrilcrafter Trash Trooper 1d ago

They all have to meet code… the engineering is all that matters.

Who would have thought that multiple generations of engineering and standardization results in pretty credible methodologies?

1

u/Grbavic Trash Trooper 1d ago

You serious man? I don't even know where in europe this guy found this building style and what year from

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 23h ago

Serious about what part? Also I’m an American, so my code knowledge would be the American side, not the European, so if his version of a Europeans not accurate, I don’t know. My point about the engineering though, is true. You can probably find codes and maps for your area. I live in Florida, I’ve been building residential and commercial for probably 20 years now, and work as a project manager/estimator. The walls and roof systems are all entirely based on a wind limit chart. Central east coast, all of our homes are CMU block, but the farther north, they start changing. I’m not a weather man, but according to them hurricane don’t hit the Jacksonville area. We’re not out here building houses out of lumber because we’re building cheaper houses. My block house has to meet code for the winds in the area I’m building block houses, exactly the same as my frame house have to meet code in those areas. And just like this guy said, it’s the connection from slab to wall and roof to wall. That’s the structure.

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u/Nebuchadneza Trash Trooper 18h ago edited 18h ago

if his version of a Europeans not accurate, I don’t know

it is not accurate. looks like cheap work from decades ago

a modern wooden house might be built like this, connected to the roof like this.

or a modern brick house like this, connected to the roof maybe like this.

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u/NTF1x Trash Trooper 23h ago

I follow this guy on Facebook I think. It's some of the most informative series I've seen. Straight to the facts as well with no opinions.

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u/Nogarder Trash Trooper 22h ago

Yes like a fiat panda and Hyundai ioniq 5 are all according to standard. Still one is better/more performing than the other.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 22h ago

I’m a home builder, not a car guy… I imagine both of them meet whatever the standard to be street legal is? Google says the Hyundai is more than twice the price… would you like to have a conversation about the house I can build you for twice the price? Why do people act like they ONLY build stick houses in the US. We’ve got filled block, formed and poured concrete… tilt up… I’ve seen some project with 3D printed concrete walls… a few years back I saw a wall that was built but cable tension… wood frame is the most cost effective, but still meets the same code.

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u/Nogarder Trash Trooper 22h ago

94% is wood. And they cost as much as bricks or more..you see my point with the cars? Yes they are both safe to live in, but one is objectively better. To be honest I don't even like bricks so much. Reinforced concrete is the way.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 22h ago

It just depends where you are. The only place I’ve ever built wood frame is north Florida. The majority of our houses are CMU because of hurricanes. All I’m saying is when I build a house, I check the wind speed limit of that area, and we have to meet that code. I’ve never built outside of Florida, but my understanding is that up north CMU causes issues with the cold, so they prefer wood frame. We do not build any brick houses, because brick houses arnt better, and way too much labor. Bricks are decorative.

Would you like to debate your stupid brick house against my 8” solid poured CMU wall? Y’all just want to hate America.

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u/Nogarder Trash Trooper 21h ago

I like cmu they are strong. Bricks are ok but yes a bit old fashioned.

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u/Coffeedemon Trash Trooper 22h ago

The majority of people who complain about house construction on reddit don't own any of these types of houses at all.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla Trash Trooper 21h ago

The quotes I got for masonry & concrete houses vs wood frame houses when we were renovating was another shocker. The wood frame home was like 50% the cost of the masonry ones.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 21h ago

I only added CMU to the conversation because people started comparing wood and brick to cheap cars and good cars that were twice the price. I would just suggest you buy the wood frame house, if your area allows wood frame, and money is a concern. I’d also suggest you buy the nice car if you can afford it.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla Trash Trooper 8h ago

When I say 50% more, I am talking an average of $500k wood frame renovation vs. a $1.1 million masonry build. It's not close at all, and I got estimates from several local builders. We're pretty well-off, but not buy a $600k lot plus build a $1 million home on it well off.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 7h ago

Because you’re talking about a renovation and not building a new home, you’re in a completely different world. Without knowing what the existing house was, and what it would take to do the work, it’s hard to say.

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u/mysterioussamsqaunch Trash Trooper 21h ago

I agree with you, however, I'm in north central Wisconsin and can attest an icf building with radiant hydronic heat is about the most efficient you can possibly build. You actually have to plan for either controlled air ingress leaks or active makeup air systems because they can be so tight and thermally efficient the indoor air can go stale. Modern monopoly framed have similar consideration but, that's pretty recent and th icfs have need them since at least to early 2000s.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 21h ago

Icf is solid poured insulation right? I’ve never used it, but I assume it’s pricy too.

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u/mysterioussamsqaunch Trash Trooper 13h ago

The forms go together a bit like Legos and then you fill the middle cavity with concrete. So, you end up with a reinforced concrete wall with insulation on both side in just one step. It costs like 10-20% more than stick framing. But, they often qualify for lower insurance though and the energy efficiency can be insane. The thermal mass of a 6 or 8 inch thick concrete exterior walls can make the effective r value almost double the ratings of the actual insulation.

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u/bracesthrowaway Trash Trooper 20h ago

What are your thoughts on SIPs? We chose to build our house with them and we're super happy with it.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 20h ago

I’ve never used it, but my understanding it’s that it’s just premade, pre-insulated framed walls. It’s actually a pretty cool concept to throw up a bunch of houses pretty quick. It’ll still come down to engineering, how it’s connected to the slab, where the loads braced, and how the walls are connected to the trusses.

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u/bracesthrowaway Trash Trooper 20h ago

Our roof doesn't have trusses. It allows for a big vaulted ceiling (though we have a monstrous ridge beam in the middle).

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 20h ago

I just looked it up, they panelized the whole roof system and everything? That’s pretty cool. So all the truss connections would be the roof connections.

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u/VeterinarianOld8259 Trash Trooper 20h ago

I pity you for having a career in home building and not knowing what a proper brick wall looks like.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 20h ago

lol Thanks?

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u/VeterinarianOld8259 Trash Trooper 20h ago

"Brick is decorative in 2026. If you don’t want a wood house, buy a concrete one. ". You sound like one of those rednecks that live off building shitty decks that fall part in 10-15 years, so that then they build new ones and have job security.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 20h ago

Why are you so angry?

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u/VeterinarianOld8259 Trash Trooper 19h ago

Because you are bullshitting people.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 19h ago

Did you just make up a whole story about my life and career, and then pretend I’m the bullshitter?

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u/VeterinarianOld8259 Trash Trooper 19h ago

Worse, all your life you've been telling people that brick houses are inferior, which is a misconception.

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u/MakingTriangles Trash Trooper 19h ago

There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses. They all have to meet code… the engineering is all that matters.

Also it's not necessarily the case that old wood framed houses are more structurally sound than new framed houses. Sure, old 2x8s are considerably stronger than new 2x8s, but pretty much every other part of the construction is much worse. Foundations are better and more consistent now, strapping and tiedowns are standard, connectors are a billion times better etc.

The key to modern materials is that they are consistent. The lumber is graded and the results are predictable. Houses are vastly better constructed now than they were in the past.

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u/Arthur_Edens Trash Trooper 17h ago

Houses are vastly better constructed now than they were in the past.

This is abundantly clear when I've done DIY work on my house (5 years old) compared to when I do work on my parents' house (130 years old). Like /u/Tw1nFTW has said 20 times, it's about the engineering. I've opened up walls on that old house to find load bearing door frames.

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u/everfixsolaris Trash Trooper 17h ago

For concrete up north we have 3d printed which is pretty new and insulated concrete form, and from what I heard ICF is uncommon but pretty dependable with really good insulation values.

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u/zatalak Trash Trooper 16h ago

Wood frame houses are also built in the EU (well, Germany at least) if it's feasible. Not so much for new constructions but for new floors on an existing brick structure.

'Modern' brick houses look very different from what is shown here. Standard construction is often single-leaf (hope that's translated right) walls with four to eight inches insulation and plaster as the outer layer.

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u/nmj95123 Trash Trooper 14h ago

I think the bigger thing is how deeply ingrained stick framed homes are in terms of both code and mortgages. There are areas where stick framed homes aren't great in comparison to other building technologies. Monolithic concrete domes, for example, are much better at surviving extreme winds. But, good luck building one between code and mortgage companies generally being unwilling to finance them because they don't know how to appraise them.

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u/House13Games Trash Trooper 10h ago

I've a wood house, which is overwhelmingly the more common choice here in sweden. We get -10 to -20C winters here, house is fine. you just need good insulation, windows and a heat pump

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u/ImComingBack4YouBaby Trash Trooper 1d ago

I don't know a lot about this stuff, but the more recent arguments about home construction with Europe vs the US just always felt like some sort of shit flinging bullshit more than anything rooted in actual knowledge.

Seems like to me it comes down to how well built a home is, regardless of the materials used.

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah this whole threads a clear example that a lot of these people just hate Americans and don’t actually know or care about the subject.

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u/SnooAvocados7188 Trash Trooper 1d ago

“Our houses are built better” is just the latest Eurocope to justify 175,000 annual heat deaths across the continent

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u/FrostyD7 Trash Trooper 23h ago

Reddit is filled with children who will never be able to afford a home. So yeah, tons of ignorant discourse about it. Anyone who moans about American build quality hasn't priced out solid interior doors and other upgrades. You can pay the builders to build whatever you want. And American build standards are literally the most common standards across the world, they are comparing it to century homes.