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History of American homes (mentalfloss.com)

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[–]confusedpurple 2ポイント3ポイント  (12子コメント)

One thing that always gets me about a lot of the designs and builds of American houses is how they just dont appear to be as well structured.

I mean, take a typical British brick built house. They're built to last hundreds of years, not tens. Is there a reason that US houses for example are seemingly not brick built in many places, and opt for a cladding type material? I remember seeing a ton of posts about people having to reclad their houses after hurricanes. Surely if they were brick built from the begining, this wouldn't be needed.

Even roof tiles. It's very rare to ever need to touch them on British style houses, yet, again, there seems to be a lot of American style house builds that use really thin tiling that damages way easier than it should.

I get that a lot of housing needs to be put up quickly, but in big neighbourhoods why are they not built to last?

[–]M3nt0R 10ポイント11ポイント  (3子コメント)

Major cost difference. My solid granite stone block house in Spain cost about 200k to build. Easily over a million in the northeast where I live in the us.

You see a lot of brick decorated FRONT of homes here but it's for decorative purposes mostly.

[–]shea241 13ポイント14ポイント  (2子コメント)

That was a smooth subtle brag, while being informative and entirely correct. A+ would be jealous again.

[–]SkepticalJohn 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Is brick veneer an abomination or is it just my smug superior attitude? Is it me? "No, it's the children who are wrong."

[–]shea241 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think it looks pretentious BUT it does serve a purpose -- stone is much better at dampening sound than plywood / foamboard / drywall.

Also, it's much cheaper than real stone, but still kind of expensive.

[–]spikeyfreak 9ポイント10ポイント  (2子コメント)

In places that experience earthquakes, bricks are a bad choice. The house will just collapse.

In hurricane prone places, you will find a lot of houses with 3 sides that are bricks. It helps to keep the house from taking wind damage. My back wall is siding, and I guess it's just a cost saving choice, but the two longer sides are brick and the front is brick.

[–]marmalade_ 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm in Florida, and my house was built in 1960 of cinder block on all 4 sides with a low roof. This thing is not going anywhere.

It's just a typical ranch style with attached garage but it's here for forever, dammit.

[–]selfhatingyank 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

There are houses outside Miami that were built like that and survived a direct hit from Andrew, a category 5, in the early nineties.

[–]shea241 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

I've wondered that myself, so I'd been looking up this stuff for a while. In this area, wood timber construction really is the best choice.

  • Wood has good thermal properties, and doesn't lead to much thermal bridging from the exterior on cold winter nights.
  • It's flexible, light, and can take a lot of stress.
  • Wood is an abundant resource here. Suitable stone materials are much less abundant and thus much more expensive (plus heavier, further haul).
  • Wood frame houses are very easy to repair.
  • The term "homeowner" is nearly synonymous with "DIY" here. Talk to a few homeowners, and you'll find quite a few of them have knocked down entire walls to create new rooms, or done similar expansions / large renovations themselves. Wood frame or modular beams make this much easier, and cater to this DIY culture.
  • Earthquake building codes have pretty much removed the possibility of stone structures from large swaths of the country.
  • Knocking down an old house and building a new one in its place will be enticing to people no matter how well built the old one is. It's another cultural thing, maybe -- people are perfectly happy tearing down an old structurally-sound house to build their own instead. Some people do it all themselves.
  • Just because it's not stone doesn't mean it won't last a very long time. Likewise, just because it's stone doesn't mean it won't crack, sink, or be otherwise compromised.

As for roof tiles, I don't know what traditional British construction typically uses, but there are three popular types here: asphalt shingle (probably what you're referencing), ceramic tile, and raised-seam metal. None of the three are automatically better than the others, it all depends on context.

tl;dr: it depends, everything depends. life is complicated.

[–]sohcgt96 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

That seems pretty comprehensive to me.

I'm from the middle of well... farmland from hundreds of miles each direction. There aren't a lot of good stone quarries nearby, and if you want any, you're digging. You'll get some sandstone/limestone around here but those weather easily.

Permanence is the bigger factor though. When homes are built, they're not intended to be there forever, they're intended to be there for about a century max and during that time its likely they'll seem major rennovation/floorplan changes.

[–]selfhatingyank 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

It more has to do with the lack of large forests in the UK. Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Estonia are all full of forests and American-looking wood houses. If it wasn't for the tile and slate roofs, Bergen in Norway could almost pass for Newport or Salem.

[–]dodgesbullets 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Nobody really wants that.

The construction costs are too high and they're harder to update. I see pictures online of older English homes that still have two spouts for water. Plus, or country isn't that old the state I live in is barely 100 years old and the settlers weren't building for longevity.

Most people don't want to live in the house their great grandparents built, they want something modern and new.

[–]triedtostayaway 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The UK simply doesn't experience the type of severe weather the US does. Add to it how much cheaper wood is in the US than brick and you obviously are going to have a lot of wooden constructions. It's ironic there's this perception of American houses being poorly built because, while there certainly will be variation in quality depending on the contractor, the building codes in most states are far stricter as to the safety regulations than in the UK. Sure most houses in the UK are brick, but they use cheap, shitty mortar that fails under minimal stresses, houses are significantly smaller, fewer people own homes and few new homes are built in comparison to the US. It's just one of those perceptions versus reality thing since brick looks nice.