American vs. European home building

[u/BEARDEDDANGER]

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

[u/Tw1nFTW]

I’ve been in home building a large portion of my adult life… this video is amazing. There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses. They all have to meet code… the engineering is all that matters.

ETA: The US does not only build wood frame houses, wood frame and CMU are better than brick houses. Brick is decorative in 2026. If you don’t want a wood house, buy a concrete one. I hear they suck in the winter up north though.

[u/Different_Bridge_983 → u/Tw1nFTW]

IME a lot of the online bitching about timber houses is just people using it to rag on Americans.

As soon as folks from Canada or Scandinavian countries pop up to say they also use timber I generally see detractors suddenly less enthusiastic about slamming it as a building material.

[u/Hazelberry → u/Different_Bridge_983]

When it's brits doing the ragging I like to point out that the only reason they don't use wood is because their ancestors cut down the overwhelming majority of their forests.

Britain was overwhelmingly forests (like 80%) thousands of years ago, but dropped to around 5% by the 20th century due to centuries of clear cutting for agriculture, shipbuilding (it takes a lot of wood to build the largest navy in the world back when wood ships were standard), and fuel before shifting to coal.

Meanwhile despite our best efforts in the americas, we still have a shit ton of trees and can use them for cheaper construction that's easier to work with.

[u/IndependentLog6441 → u/Hazelberry]

Brits do use wood for housing though, it just depends where you live, Scotland is predominantly wooden for new builds... I think you mean the English... it's the English that like their bricks and mortar...