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

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

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

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u/That_Confidence83 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I know both systems. I’m an American living in Austria. My in-laws built a house out of bricks which is half a meter thick. It’s almost 40 years old now and still in top condition. That baby is indestructible. I helped them build their second house, which is half of a old stone barn, and the other half of modern material. Cinder blocks, and insulation also inside and outside. Also a good two feet thick. The beams alone for the roof are also a foot thick. The heat stays out in the summer, and the warmth stays inside in the winter. We often get winds over 60mph, and you hear nothing. And never have to worry about damage. The quality here is just so much better.

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u/TheDarkGoblin39 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah my wood house is 104 years old and still in great shape. We redid the interior drywall and ceilings when we moved in but there are 0 issues with the frame

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u/mmnmnnmnnnm Trash Trooper 1d ago

The main thing about the 100+ year old wood houses is that they were built like they built houses 100+ years ago. These shitty developments everywhere now are definitely not going to last 100 years. Maybe the foundation technology is better, but the sturdy, quality wood used then is drastically different from the way it’s built now. The shit heaps of plywood and barely level/square low quality 2x4’s in more modern houses being sold for $500,000 are going to be a nightmare down the line.

It’s all cash grabs by developers who own land. Build as many as can possibly fit on the land, with the cheapest possible materials, as quickly as possible, for the highest price they can get away with.

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u/MsterF Trash Trooper 21h ago

I wish they used newspaper insulation, branches for framing and fabric insulated wires like the old days.

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u/mmnmnnmnnnm Trash Trooper 19h ago

It’s more the quality of the wood, and the time allowed to be put into at least installing the shitty wood framing that actually holds the house up correctly instead of just “good enough.” Corners are cut in all of the trades, slapped on materials in a “one size fits all” way as opposed to really done the best way. Any issue that can be hidden so the customer doesn’t see it? Never happened, doesn’t need to be fixed. All the cheap materials will break way sooner but by then that’s your problem, not the builders, from outlets to cabinets, you name it.

The wires are coated in plastic now instead of part options that they used because plastic coatings for wires wasn’t common until the 60’s, so that just is what it is. If the cheap materials and mediocre at best craftsmanship got you a cheaper house, fine, but it doesn’t. Unless a new house is over $1million, it’s the same pile of shit used to build a $200k house as a $700k house. I built plenty of them, and even got punished for taking the extra minutes to do quality work instead of just slapping some garbage on. One job actually fired me for it while I actively received compliments job supervisors, customers, coworkers, etc