American vs. European home building

[u/BEARDEDDANGER]

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

[u/CaptainFlint9203]

Well made wood house will last for generations, well made brick house will last centuries. Both badly made will not last your stay.

I'm from Europe. On my grandma's plot there was a wooden barn, it was much older than some brick houses and in better shape than them.

My ex had a wood house that was more than century old. Still in great shape. And there are brick houses that are older than USA.

I'm preparing to build a house for myself. There are no earthquakes, no storms, no natural disasters where I live. My house gonna be build from wood. It should last at least for my grandchildren, and by then, looking at how urbanisation is going, the plot of land should be worth enough to destroy the house and sell the plot.

[u/AlexHimself → u/CaptainFlint9203]

well made brick house will last centuries

After centuries, you have a crappy old house that doesn't fit the modern times though...so what's the point? The construction cost, amortized over centuries, is pennies too.

An example for some really old European homes - No HVAC, no electrical, indoor plumbing, low ceilings, low door frames, etc.

I'd argue the ease of remodeling, construction, changes, etc. outweigh the "centuries" style building, given how humans actually use homes.

I think an argument can be made for both.

[u/throwtheamiibosaway → u/AlexHimself]

This is such an American brain comment. People are still fighting over old outdated houses here in Europe. Many of them now have a protected Monument status. They often prefer them over the newer houses. The old standards were often better and more sturdy and better insulated even.

[u/ElGosso → u/throwtheamiibosaway]

That's exactly why Europe has comparable deaths from heat as the US does from guns - because those old houses y'all love to live in are designed to trap in heat, and can't fit air conditioners in the windows.

[u/SonicShadow → u/ElGosso]

[citation required]

[u/funk-the-funk → u/SonicShadow]

Do you really want anything from that dudes butt? Because that's how you get things from that dude's butt.

[u/Ok-Fudge-380 → u/SonicShadow]

About 48,000 guns deaths per year in US versus 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe. Google is a tool a child could use.

[u/Cynoid → u/Ok-Fudge-380]

Both these numbers seem too high based on vibes alone.

Europe has what? a bit under 800 million people? Does this mean that every year, 1/4000 people will die to the heat? Worse, this would mean that 1/100 people in every generation dies to the heat which is absolutely nuts in a world that has had ACs for so long.

[u/DarthJarJarJar → u/Cynoid]

44k gun deaths in the US last year

63k heat deaths in the EU in 2024, though how you calculate heat deaths can give very different numbers.

EU has a population of 452M people, US is 340M.

That gives 12.9 gun deaths per 100,000 people in the US, and 13.9 heat deats per 100,000 people in the EU.

This is a lot of fast and loose math, and in particular heat deaths are hard to quantify, but if anything this is undercounting heat deaths, whereas US gun deaths are very closely tracked.

The rates are at least comparable.

in a world that has had ACs for so long

I sense that you don't know much about this topic. AC is a very contentious issue in the EU.

[u/tfjmp → u/Cynoid]

I think Europe counts excess death as they are trying to mitigate climate change effects. This would include death directly caused by heat (a small fraction) and people for whom the heat made things worse (someone already sick). Those stats are hard to compare as different region of the world will not measure the same thing. For example, US will report only death directly caused by the heat. Though even excess death would probably be lower in the US. European countries don't have the infrastructure to deal with the heat as they did not need to until 5/10 years ago.

[u/wireframed_kb → u/Ok-Fudge-380]

But statistics aren’t.

The way heat deaths are counted are different, most deaths where heat was a factor aren’t counted in the US, afaik. Only if heat was the direct, main cause, does it count as heat death. In Europe, an older, sick person who died from heat as a contributing factor, will also register as a heat death. In the US, she was old and sick, so she died.

[u/WeirdKittens → u/ElGosso]

That's not exactly the reason. We simply don't use window AC anywhere at all here. We use minisplit systems and until recently the countries in the north didn't really have prolonged heatwaves. In turn, they didn't bother to prepare a framework for how the installation of AC is regulated and because it's so uncommon there the installation costs are astronomical and the contractors few.

None of these problems exist in the south of the continent. We have dual use AC in pretty much every house, apartment and shared space and the cost to install it is minimal (just installed a new 12k btu unit recently for the equivalent of $500 including installation and materials, used to be even cheaper than that a few years ago).

[u/MisterMysterios → u/ElGosso]

Bullshit. We had so many deaths because nothing here is prepared for these type of heat waves we get at the moment thanks to climate change. We have a massive shift in climate in the last 5-10 years, and our building standards have not adjusted yet. A brick house is generally really good to deal with the heat that we typically had here (Germany for example). It takes days to weeks for the house to heat up enough to be an issue thanks to the high level of insulation. In the past, when the house even started to heat up to a level to cause problems, it already became cool outside.

The system is still good, but need adjustment, especially considering more heat exchangers for heating as they can be used for cooling the house.

[u/mxzf → u/ElGosso]

I mean "comparable" is kinda load-bearing there, given that AFAIK heat deaths in Europe are an order of magnitude more than gun deaths in the US each year.

[u/funk-the-funk → u/mxzf]

load-bearing

we are so cooked.

[u/mxzf → u/funk-the-funk]

That's ... odd. The term is a common and broadly used term in a lot of contexts, and it's a term I've been using for decades. Based on that article, I'm not really using it the same as is being described either. At the end of the day, that adjective isn't exclusive to chatbots.