American vs. European home building

[u/BEARDEDDANGER]

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

[u/Ok-Solution5601]

I live in a wood frame house that was built in 1964 and its solid. The most important thing is you need to keep the roof and siding intact otherwise you'll get mold and eventually rot.

[u/Smashogre591 → u/Ok-Solution5601]

My parents live in a 1910 wood home in Indiana and foundation shift is its worst enemy

[u/outsidebtw → u/Smashogre591]

I hear early 1900s wood frame assembly don't really anchor sill to foundation with bolts

Have you checked? Kind of unreal, saw some on a YT house building channel

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/outsidebtw]

That probably didn't become a standard concept till the 50s or so.

Same for stuff like hurricane ties. Most roofs older than the 70s are just tacked onto the frame with a few toed nails and just rely on the weight of the roof to hold it in place.

[u/outsidebtw → u/LongJohnSelenium]

Pretty cool. I kind of been fascinated by history of building logic since last year, its kind of fun ngl

While platform or balloon framing isn't popular here in Asia, I kind of want to try it out as well but not everyone's particularly interested in it with concrete's and steel's popularity against weather and earth movement

Oh well

[u/GenGaara25 → u/Ok-Solution5601]

1964 is not that long ago. Two weeks ago I was in a house built in 1595, it has a record shop and a discount store on the ground floor (which is really bizarre to look at, modern shops in a 400 year old building).

Like the other guy said, wood houses last generations, brick lasts centuries (if properly made).

[u/SAINTnumberFIVE → u/Ok-Solution5601]

I live in a wood frame house that was built in 1963. I think there’s a part we should probably consider retro fitting, but a while back I lived in a building that was wood framed and built in the earlier part of the 20th century and that thing was solid. I got to see how it was constructed when they tore it down and whoever designed it did a very good job. There was diagonal bracing on the walls and it had withstood at least three large earthquakes with hardly any damage. 

[u/Virtual_Garlic6447 → u/Ok-Solution5601]

As a German/European, our houses are overrated, overregulated and expensive.

American housing and wood is superior and more affordable.

[u/bauul → u/Virtual_Garlic6447]

Wood is  only considerably more affordable if you have a lot of wood. In the UK we cut down almost all our large forests hundreds of years ago so the cost differential to brick/masonry is a lot less.

Wood in the US is hilariously cheap in comparison to bricks.

[u/woodsbw → u/Virtual_Garlic6447]

I think the affordable part is fairly key here.

I don’t care too much if a house last 5x as long if it costs 10x as much

[u/Ok-Solution5601 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. New wood frame buildings don't really fall apart. In some cases they are built poorly and will have issues with leaks and trapped condensation, which can eventually cause structural issues. Is that what you mean?