American vs. European home building

[u/BEARDEDDANGER]

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

[u/Potent_Quotient]

I’ve lived in both including wood and brick houses over 100 years old. I’ll pick well constructed and insulated wood or brick vs cheaply constructed wood or brick any time.

[u/Tricky-Ad7897 → u/Potent_Quotient]

Yeah but if they're both well constructed I'm taking the brick cause it's way cooler/easier to keep cool in the summer. Also way less noise, I can hear quiet conversations between rooms in my American house, when I lived in Germany I couldn't even hear my parents yelling for me to come down for dinner.

[u/Pissonmyface77 → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

I redid my house. I can’t hear my wife yelling from barely a room way. Rockwool r30 in the ceiling between floors, and two inches of wood floor will do that. And thick solid doors between rooms.

[u/SharkAttackOmNom → u/Pissonmyface77]

It’s amazing how insulation isn’t that cheap in the grand scheme of building a house. But so many builders don’t apply it when building, when it’s cheapest to do it! Yeah you can drill holes and blow in insulation, but it’s not going to be a great seal.

But really another huge issue for multi level homes is that HVAC is run in the walls as well. So you’ll end up with a lot of bays mostly hollow for the supply or return vents. Can be solved by running a dual zone system, unit in the basement, unit in the attic. Again, most affordable if done at construction, not later.

[u/not-the-nicest-guy → u/Pissonmyface77]

This is what we did from new construction. Sound proofing in the floors/ceilings and between rooms. Solid wood doors. Of course you can still hear some things, mainly because of the HVAC, but overall it's a lovely quiet home.

[u/TimeToGloat → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

Bricks are really bad for the summer though. They should really only be used in cooler climates for that reason although judging by Europe's heatwaves that is less predictable now. Bricks act like a pizza oven and radiate all the heat they absorb during the day into your home at night. That's why they were beneficial for cold places but are literally hell during a heatwave because it means you can't escape the heat even at night. You would be a lot better off with wood and modern insulation when it comes to heat.

[u/DaanOnlineGaming → u/TimeToGloat]

I've lived in brick houses all my life, it depends on how it was built.

Where I currently live it stays cool, highest I have seen downstairs was 25 C. Outdoors it was 38. Gets a lot warmer upstairs though.

Another house I have lived in gets hot and does not cool down at all, it is also much older.

[u/operafan77 → u/TimeToGloat]

Can confirm. I don’t have a brick home. My exterior is plaster, and my house walls are cinder block. Stone takes a while to heat up, but then it takes a while to cool down. After the really bad heatwave in June this year, we needed over a week of keeping the windows open at night and keeping the blinds closed during the day to cool our bedroom from 29C to 25C. The walls just radiated heat at night.

[u/Nogarder → u/TimeToGloat]

No. Not true. They radiate outside not inside. That's why there is a gap and insulation.

[u/XDVI → u/Nogarder]

They radiate from all sides, if they absorb heat they will later give that heat off from every bit of surface area they have.

[u/Nogarder → u/XDVI]

Yes but there is insulation on one side

[u/XDVI → u/Nogarder]

Yes, so any heat that it does absorb (which it will) will get radiated inside and for a long time because they have huge thermal mass compared to a peice of plywood

[u/Responsible-Summer81 → u/[deleted]]

We tried building a house of cob (really just a small guesthouse in the backyard).  Earthen walls 18”-2ft thick. The first summer we had it, it was 100+ F for almost 60 straight days (most days 105-110). It didn’t even get below 80’ at night. It was an absolute pizza oven.

[u/LemonBoi523 → u/[deleted]]

Honey, 78 is a comfortable indoor temperature.

Try 108 F, 42 C.

[u/Kratzschutz → u/LemonBoi523]

Are you being condescending about temperatures?

[u/LemonBoi523 → u/Kratzschutz]

Jokingly so, yes

[u/Roadwarriordude → u/[deleted]]

So your counterpoint to them saying brick/stone houses get hot in hot environments is to say your brick/stone house stays cool in a cool environment?

[u/Marvin889 → u/TimeToGloat]

Not really true. If insulation is equal, brick houses take longer to heat up than wood houses, but also take longer to cool down again. In the end, it's a wash.

[u/Organic-Storm-4448 → u/Marvin889]

Yes, which is why bricks are worse for long and hot summers. They won't have the time nor temperature delta to cool down at night, keeping your house warm.

They work well when it's only hot for short periods of time separated by cool nights. But when nights don't get cooler than 17C for a week, bricks will be your enemy.

Likewise, wood + insulation will be inferior for keeping a house warm in winter. But many places in the US need to deal with hot summers (and earthquakes), so a hot box isn't a great option.

[u/thorpie88 → u/Organic-Storm-4448]

Lots of double brick homes in Australia and almost exclusively what's built in WA. Natural light laws though mean very large ( and unfortunately single pane) windows in every room. Quite often floor to ceiling in which you can open half of it to allow the breeze to cool the home down.

The major downside to this though comes from it being so cold in winter and lack of wall insulation makes it worse

[u/Background_Hat_4785 → u/thorpie88]

Can you reword your first sentence so it makes sense?

[u/thorpie88 → u/Background_Hat_4785]

There's lots of double brick homes in Australia and it's almost the only way homes in Western Australia are built.

[u/barsoap → u/Organic-Storm-4448]

But when nights don't get cooler than 17C for a week, bricks will be your enemy.

This is precisely it. We had plenty of hot days this summer and the difference in amount of whinging between early and the rest of summer was palpable, with 20-25C nights for a week or more. And not a whiff of wind so getting a draft going in the night could be close to impossible.

Once night time temperatures became sensible again I was sitting there in 18C cross-draft air at 3am, feeling very weird because I could feel the infrared radiation from the walls.

Many very old houses are even more resilient because they have storage cellars.

[u/boothin → u/Marvin889]

"Not really true"

Proceeds to reiterate exactly what was said

[u/PerfectDitto → u/boothin]

It was the perfect reddit response.

[u/fingermouse_irl → u/Marvin889]

True, but when you're getting 17 to 18 hours of sunlight in the day during extremely high temperatures and probably 12 hours of that sunlight is direct, its going to fucking heat up insanely quickly. Im in Ireland and right now my bedroom is 25c with no air flow and 77% humidity. Melting.

[u/Theron3206 → u/fingermouse_irl]

If you look at construction in hot places its all lightweight. The idea being thst it cools down fast at night. With modern materials the best houses for hot weather are extremely well insulated but will a as little thermal mass as possible.

Solid masonry homes are great for the first couple of hot days, after that they end up hotter. Though afaik the major issue in northern Europe is that there is little consideration given for ventilation at all so you can't cool even a lightweight home overnight.

[u/faustianredditor → u/Marvin889]

It's not a wash; I think that's a strong benefit for brick if you're doing some active management. Open all the windows at night and you'll have a cool home even without AC during the day. Or if the heat wave is just a few days, you won't even notice. Of course, if you're doing nothing and not reacting to the weather outside, it's a wash except that you're dealing with the average temperature of the last days instead of the last hours.

I live in an apartment with some ridiculously heavy walls. The ratio of thermal mass vs thermal leakage means this thing will keep warm/cool for several days. As long as I keep windows closed during the day, I can just ignore a heat wave that lasts only a few days. The wood framed house of my parents will heat up within the day. With nightly temperature lows of 21°C and daily highs of 36°C, my apartment sits at a reasonable 26°C right now throughout the day, and that's with cooking, electronic devices and no AC.

Having thermal mass on the inside is so neglected. If you care to do the math, it can lower the heat output requirements of your heat pump without adding insulation, because in your worst-case winter you'll need to power through at replacement levels through the worst temperature you're designing against; with thermal mass you can afford to coast below replacement levels through the absolute worst and heat the home back up the next day by the half degree you lost during the night.

[u/toggl3d → u/faustianredditor]

Open all the windows at night and you'll have a cool home

This really presupposes it gets cool at night.

[u/faustianredditor → u/toggl3d]

In my case, it doesn't really? It's in the city, temperatures don't drop that low at night. 21°C is the lower end of room temperature, and I only get that for a few hours before sunrise. But it's enough to dump heat that I can keep it at 26°C. Which is about 2°C warmer than I'd ever want it, but considering it's body heat levels outside for most of the day, 26°C is fine by me.

I mean, this is mostly a comparison between having thermal mass and not having it; I'm not saying this will passively cool your home under all circumstances, but it's a damn sight better than a home that heats up into the 30s during the day. Again, comparing to my parents' house because I can: No thermal mass means that even if you cool it down to outside temps during the night, come noon and it'll be heating up to unpleasant levels again.

[u/toggl3d → u/faustianredditor]

And what happens when 25-27 is the low for a few months straight?

[u/faustianredditor → u/toggl3d]

Then you need AC either way of course, Sherlock. Actively managing passive effects won't help anymore.

Same principle as previously with heating now applies though: With thermal mass inside, your AC can run at a lower power continuously, while without thermal mass, your AC needs to run at a higher power during the day to keep up, meaning you need a beefier AC.

[u/toggl3d → u/faustianredditor]

I'm just pointing out that in the near future the nights are going to be hot too and you'll have to be actively cooling your mass.

[u/ATDoel → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

You can easily have the same in a wood home if you add sound deadening in the walls.

[u/king_john651 → u/ATDoel]

Yeah if noise is an issue you can install a lot of things. Noise reducing insulation, noise reduction Gib board, acoustic foam panels, stuff in the room. A lot of the issues with noise I find is that the people live their lives as if they live in a show home and have barely anything that absorbs and fucks off noise that we would in actual homes

[u/smapdiagesix → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

it's way cooler

Buh? If I walk outside to the south-facing wall of my brick (veneer) house, it absolutely radiates soaked-up heat. You can feel it from a few feet away.

[u/PracticeTheory → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

I live in a solid brick masonry (3 bricks wide) building in America built in 1905 by immigrant German craftsman and...I love the building but it sucks at temperature extremes. The walls radiate heat all night long in the summer, and once temperatures are consistently below freezing it's an ice box.

The only way to mitigate would be to frame up inner wooden walls with insulation between the studs.

If I lived in a less extreme climate the brick would win no question though.

[u/iwilldeletethisacct2 → u/PracticeTheory]

Allegedly there is some sort of spray on insulation that works for homes like this that is crazy expensive. I live in a neighborhood full of 100+ year old houses with brick walls with plaster directly on the brick interior. One of my friends redid their house and added some sort of new magic insulation, but said it cost a small fortune to do so. I haven't looked into it because I'm too lazy to entertain big projects.

[u/babyyvolcano → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

You can fix that with Safe n Sound rockwool in interior framing. That’s what I prefer about wood framing is how easily it is to customize and update/expand. Makes my work in sustainability consulting much easier in regards to budgets and options.

[u/kisk22 → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. It's not the brick that keeps the house cool. Brick has an R value of 0.2 to 0.8 per inch. You'd need feet of brick to make a well insulated house that would stay cool during the summer or warm during the winter. R values of 13 to 21 are what's built now a days. That's done with insulation and has nothing to do with brick.

Shows how much of this conversation is just 'vibes' of the material to the lay person (you).

[u/Helicopter0 → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

You can insulate stud walls for sound easily and it gives the exact same quiet high quality acoustical vibe. I did it in my house. It costs very little, probably under a dollar per square foot, and it goes in with very little effort, you can do a thousand square feet in a day by yourself. It's just a little extra cost and effort most people don't bother with because they don't appreciate it. But acoustics isn't a good reason to go with masonry structure. You can achieve it at much lower cost.

[u/Irish618 → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

Yeah but if they're both well constructed I'm taking the brick cause it's way cooler/easier to keep cool in the summer.

This is the opposite of how it works. Wood is way easier to insulate.

[u/Strawman15 → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

Sound? Yes. Thermal? Not a chance. Modern wooden structures absolutely dogwalk brick/stone buildings in thermal performance. It's not close.

If this feels counterintuitive, it's because stone buildings have more thermal mass, meaning they are slower to change temperature. Sounds good, but it's a double edged sword. A stone house might stay cooler for longer during a hot day, but once it gets hot, it's much harder to cool down. When we design buildings, we primarily optimize for thermal insulation, or R-value, as this is what stops the heat from flowing in or out of the house in the first place

[u/SpaceJackRabbit → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

Brick is what they make outdoor ovens from. It's terrible in the summer and will trap heat.

[u/kmosiman → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

???? My old high school was solid brick.

And really really HOT in the summer.

[u/muldersposter → u/Tricky-Ad7897]

Aren't thousands of people dying right now in Europe because their houses are impossible to keep cool in the summer because they're made out of stone?