[Sandwich]

I just watched the MythBusters episode where they test if the doorframe is the safest place to be during an earthquake. They concluded that while that was true for old-style masonry buildings which don't adhere to current US Building Code (since the doorframe was usually reinforced with rebar), it actually wasn't the safest place to be in an all-wood house built to code*; instead, the "drop, cover, and hold on" tactic of getting beneath a sturdy desk or table is preferable.

* Their "excuse" about it not being safe was that the mannekin mounted in the doorframe kept on getting "spanked" by the door swinging back and forth, and eventually fell over. Please.

But fine, whatever - the issue I want to bring up is entirely different. I understood from that episode that US Building Code mandates homes be constructed out of wood, not masonry, to... better withstand earthquakes (? Perhaps other reasons as well?), right? Ok, so let's see how many people have died in US earthquakes over the years. Going back to 1812, we have a grand total of 4,032 deaths in 46 quakes over 202 years (mostly in California, too - yikes!).

So wooden homes withstand earthquakes far better than masonry, as MythBusters confirmed beyond any doubt. However, do you see the glaring problem with this concept yet?

Wood catches fire. Masonry doesn't catch fire. Hmm.... how many deaths in the US are due to house fires over the years? Well, the data I found only goes back to 1977, not 1812, so take that into consideration when I reveal that in the mere 36 years the table covers, there have been over 140 THOUSAND deaths from house fires.

Ok, so your turn: please explain to me the logic in mandating that homes be built from flammable wood instead of fire-proof masonry.

[Bobboau]

dis an inlluminatus plowt!

[pecenipicek]

I just watched the MythBusters episode where they test if the doorframe is the safest place to be during an earthquake. They concluded that while that was true for old-style masonry buildings which don't adhere to current US Building Code (since the doorframe was usually reinforced with rebar), it actually wasn't the safest place to be in an all-wood house built to code*; instead, the "drop, cover, and hold on" tactic of getting beneath a sturdy desk or table is preferable.

* Their "excuse" about it not being safe was that the mannekin mounted in the doorframe kept on getting "spanked" by the door swinging back and forth, and eventually fell over. Please.

But fine, whatever - the issue I want to bring up is entirely different. I understood from that episode that US Building Code mandates homes be constructed out of wood, not masonry, to... better withstand earthquakes (? Perhaps other reasons as well?), right? Ok, so let's see how many people have died in US earthquakes over the years. Going back to 1812, we have a grand total of 4,032 deaths in 46 quakes over 202 years (mostly in California, too - yikes!).

So wooden homes withstand earthquakes far better than masonry, as MythBusters confirmed beyond any doubt. However, do you see the glaring problem with this concept yet?

Wood catches fire. Masonry doesn't catch fire. Hmm.... how many deaths in the US are due to house fires over the years? Well, the data I found only goes back to 1977, not 1812, so take that into consideration when I reveal that in the mere 36 years the table covers, there have been over 140 THOUSAND deaths from house fires.

Ok, so your turn: please explain to me the logic in mandating that homes be built from flammable wood instead of fire-proof masonry.

Cost. Not neccesarily for the owner.

Spoiler:

Not in the USA, no knowledge, speaking from what i'm roughly know whats going on there

Btw, i do believe that the codes are more like "minimum safety standards" than "HOUSES MUST BE MADE OF WOOD."

[Phantom Hoover]

I find it really hard to believe that it's illegal to build a stone house in the US, and the Googling I've done makes me very sceptical of the idea.

[Mongoose]

You should be, as there's nothing illegal about it at all.  It's just that building a home out of masonry of some sort is prohibitively expensive for most people, unless you like living in a 9-square-meter concrete bunker.

[karajorma]

But why? In the UK we build almost exclusively out of masonry and I don't see anyone building in wood to save money. And it's not just fires that are the problem, every time I look at tornado and hurricane damage I wonder why in an area known to suffer from high winds, they choose to build a house that they know the big bad wolf could defeat.

[Mongoose]

In hurricane-prone coastal regions, newer construction requires more stringent building codes, primarily around securing the roof and siding.  Even a wood-frame house doesn't necessarily have much trouble standing up against your average hurricane's wind field (unless you take a direct hit from the eye, maybe): it's usually the storm surge that wreaks the most havoc, and stone or brick won't stand up much better than wood to that.  As for Tornado Alley, while I personally wouldn't be caught dead living in a wood-framed house there, it's far cheaper to construct an underground storm shelter than an entire reinforced structure.  Plus, once tornadoes get strong enough, what your building is made out of really doesn't matter much in the end.

As for the more general question, it's something I've honestly never stopped to consider, and some random Googling brings up all sorts of interesting speculation, from the fact that wood-framed houses allow for better insulation strategies to the more farfetched idea that Americans never had to worry about invading feudal armies storming about pillaging towns.  The historical possibility that makes the most sense to me is that, when the first European settlers arrived here, North America had a lot of forests.  Like, a LOT a lot.  From the very beginning pretty much everything was built out of wood, with only the wealthiest getting stone or brick houses (minus a few regional anomalies where stone would have been more plentiful).  Home builders' experience was always with wood, and the trend has stuck to this day, when we still have decently-huge forests.  In more modern terms, the huge suburban boom which began after WWII has never really subsided, and new home construction is big business, so being able to build them more cheaply and much more quickly is very advantageous.  Americans tend to go for larger homes than most Europeans, so most people will try to get more bang for their buck; in addition, the housing crisis nonwithstanding, home ownership is seen as something that pretty much everyone aspires to, so being able to build them cheaply enables that.  And not that I have any sources on it, but I saw several people comment that as a rule, European families tend to stay relatively more settled, whereas Americans move more frequently; the former case would place more value on a house that's likely to be in good shape for a century or more.

In short, I dunno really.  Just basic cultural differences I guess.  Our own house was built by a kinda-shady developer, but almost 25 years later it's still hanging in there.  And with the amount of settling it's done over the years, we'd probably have huge gaping cracks all over the place if it was built of masonry.

[z64555]

Eh, wood's probably a bit more renewable than clay, lime, gravel, etc. needed to build masonry houses. Although, I see nothing wrong with having like a concrete/brick low wall on the outside that's then filled in with wood.

There's some newer masonry techniques that are actually faster than wood building in some instances, I'm talking about where they build entire reinforced walls with concrete and a removable Styrofoam cast. Some casts can actually double as insulation, too.

Also, to be clear, Building codes vary widely between State, County, and even City political influences. We've got a dumb-ass building code around here that mandates the front door (and only the front door) of trailer houses to be supported under both sides of the door frame. Should ever the foundation shift (it always does) you instantly have problems opening the thing. Supposedly the politics going up to the legalization of that code was so that emergency responders could safely knock down the door without worrying about knocking down an entire wall (which I find dubious).

[swashmebuckle]

My guesses:

1) We've always had a surplus of unskilled immigrant workers who can be payed at or less than minimum wage and who have high turnover, so contractors have a big incentive to go with the cheap 'n easy stuff.

2) I think compared to other places we might tend to build housing in trendy styles that become dated very quickly and make people want to knock the place down and build a new one when they buy the property. The house I grew up in is unmistakably a 70's house even though my parents tragically removed the original orange shag carpet. No one would build a house like that anymore, and probably if my folks ever sold it someone would replace it with something more modern which would then look even worse 10 years later. By contrast, in Europe I hear the only way to tell the difference between a building that's 10 and one that's 1000 years old is how big of a crap clogs up the plumbing. Maybe someone here can confirm that?

[pecenipicek]

By contrast, in Europe I hear the only way to tell the difference between a building that's 10 and one that's 1000 years old is how big of a crap clogs up the plumbing. Maybe someone here can confirm that?

Idk for the rest of europe, i can tell you croatia for example is not like that. While i was in ireland 3 years ago however, it seemed to be so. the house i was housed in had this horrible thing where the plumbing from the toilets goes on the outside of the walls which kinda horrifies me. Even on new houses... I have no clue why this is so. Supposedly because they dont get freezing temps much...

[FlamingCobra]

Please explain to me the logic behind being one of the only 3 nations in the world that still does not use the metric system.

Please explain to me the logic behind  being one of the only 3 nations in the world that does not require paid maternity leave by law.

[Scotty]

Please explain to me how either of those two things are related to this topic.

[Mars]

Metric system is prevalent in the US, but so is imperial. Most things I have to deal with in my day to day life as a property manager have both metric and imperial bolts for example. It's not exactly as simple as it could be, but the honest truth is that it's not really a big deal to have most things be a combination of the two when tools, directions, and conversions between the two systems are readily available and not really that expensive. It's approximately as expensive to have both torx and hex drivers for example; the world could decide on one sure, but frankly they both get the job done and both are in things that will be around for the next twenty years, so insisting that we standardize doesn't really accomplish anything.

I strongly suspect that there are a surprising number of imperial screws in Europe and Asia that no one really notices.

[qwadtep]

As an aside:

I just watched the MythBusters episode where they test if the doorframe is the safest place to be during an earthquake. They concluded that while that was true for old-style masonry buildings which don't adhere to current US Building Code (since the doorframe was usually reinforced with rebar), it actually wasn't the safest place to be in an all-wood house built to code*; instead, the "drop, cover, and hold on" tactic of getting beneath a sturdy desk or table is preferable.

Clearly the solution is to hide under a desk under a doorframe. You'll actually come out of the experience more alive than before.

[Sandwich]

Maybe Ikea should release a line of furniture specifically for California where the desks could be topped with doorframes instead of those silly shelves!

[MP-Ryan]

Wood construction vs masonry, particularly as compared to UK, is easy to explain.

In North America, good quality wood in the necessary cuts is ubiquitous and cheap. Concrete, stone, and brick are not. Wood is also considerably faster and easier to work with.  Even commercial construction where wood is less common use poured concrete over masonry.

North America also features much larger average sized homes, which emphasizes the above factors

As it happens, my house has steel studs in the basement, but the remainder of the framing is wood, while the entire foundation is solid concrete.

[Sandwich]

I wonder how much of the "wood is plentiful and inexpensive" reason is due to it being the primary building material. Of course it's cheap - there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure dedicated towards making sure that it is cheap to harvest, process, and transport.

[z64555]

I wonder if it's more about demolishing and less harmful debris from severe storms like a hurricane? Not that a 6' x 6' x 8' beam of wood traveling at 120mph isn't dangerous...

[WeatherOp]

In a tornado, CMU and brick houses are actually lower than wood houses in a good percentage of the time as far as the EF scale is concerned. It is mostly due to many of the brick houses are unanchored and mostly just the outside which adds a ton of weight. I remember when an EF3 tornado hit outside of Birmingham. A three story brick house was blew away and everyone was shocked when the tornado was rated EF3. Turns out the house just blew over from the weight of the brick. Now a well anchored brick house on the other hand is no doubt stronger.

[Phantom Hoover]

I wonder how much of the "wood is plentiful and inexpensive" reason is due to it being the primary building material. Of course it's cheap - there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure dedicated towards making sure that it is cheap to harvest, process, and transport.

I mean, Europe has been densely populated for a very long time. There isn't that much forest left for lumber. I imagine the same is even more true of Israel. America still has ****loads of forests, I can believe that they use wood in houses because it's just much easier to get.