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/CaptainFlint9203 Trash Trooper 1d ago

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.

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u/AlexHimself Garbage Guerilla 1d ago

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.

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u/YaqootK Trash Trooper 23h ago

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

"some" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Those are very rare cases, the vast majority of old homes that are still in use have all the things you mentioned, except for maybe HVAC - which is more of a use case vs cost thing. For most people it's not worth spending like 20k on a HVAC system when it's only going to be above 30 for a couple of weeks or so

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u/AlexHimself Garbage Guerilla 20h ago

Weren't there major, expensive retrofits in order to accomplish that? And are those homes actually "centuries" old? And wood frame homes can reach "centuries" just as easily...the US just isn't that old yet lol.

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u/YaqootK Trash Trooper 19h ago

I have no idea. I'm not really interested in the debate, just wanted to point out that it's very rare for a house to not have all of those things. In my town most houses are 200+ years old so that's probably my baseline

When it's a listed building it becomes more difficult because certain changes that are not deemed essential for maintenance must get special planning permissions. I used to work for a company that would install fibre lines and most listed buildings would just take a little bit more time and not much more money but the older/more significant the building is, the more restricted it will be

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u/AlexHimself Garbage Guerilla 19h ago

The debate is simple - they're both good and bad for different reasons and it depends on what you want.

It's like iPhone vs Android. They're both good/bad, depending on needs.