[adventured]

The US has, for practical purposes, an unlimited supply of cost effective, renewable timber (domestically + Canada). It makes tremendous economic sense.

Also consider the renewable + cost + timber supply factor, when it comes to population. Germany's population has barely increased since 1970. The US population has increased by ~55% in that time, adding over 100 million people. Rarely building new structures for a stagnate population base is a very different consideration vs building for a population that has been quite expansive for over a century. Just on the environmental concerns alone, I don't think you want the US to rebuild all of its housing with concrete.

The median US house is between 50% and 100% larger than the median house in developed Europe, at half the price or less per sq metre. The median US house is generally the first or second largest in the world.

Maintenance is not dramatic for wood structures, assuming they're properly built. Once they're enclosed, if properly maintained, you should have to do relatively little work to the core structure of the building over many decades. As it pertains to heating & cooling, high quality insulation today means there's little concern for external weather, whether you're in New Hampshire or Arizona.

[montrose]

Historically, most people have built as much of their houses out of wood as they could, because it was easier to work with. Where wood was rare, only roofs were made out of it. Where wood was exceptionally rare, even roofs were vaulted.

Wood didn't last long, but until surprisingly recently, houses weren't meant to last. In Northern Europe, for example, even as late as the Iron Age, houses were rebuilt every few decades.

Exception: rich builders, like the church in Europe, and later on (roughly the thirteenth century) rich individuals, built out of stone.

[hobofan]

That only answers one half of the question, doesn't it? Germany should also have the same unlimited supply of timber (it has the same percentage of forests of their land area), so why don't Germans build wood houses?

[adventured]

There's actually an extraordinary gap between the two.

Having the same percentage of forests is not the same thing as having the same supply of renewable timber. You're forgetting about population density. The US has vastly more timber supply vs population, than Germany does.

US territory size is something like 26x the size of Germany, with just 4x the population difference.

304 million hectares of forests vs 330 million people in the US. A near 1 ratio for hectares per person.

11 million ha of forests vs 82 million people in Germany. A 0.13 ratio.

Now throw in Canada, which is an almost comical 347 million ha (and their modest domestic needs for 36 million people).

edit: adjusted the US figure to hectares

[Tepix]

Stone houses last longer.

Whenever I see a report about a tornado or a hurricane in the US I wonder what the damage would be like if people had stone houses instead of wooden houses that disintegrate during a storm and then in turn damage other houses. It reminds me of the Kessler Syndrome.

[maxerickson]

Wood structures built to current code will survive most hurricanes just fine.

[Amezarak]

Most of the damage during a hurricane occurs due to the storm surge, which is a wall of water that is pushed up on land and then drains back out.

Even if the structure remains intact - and storm surges have no problem washing concrete and stone away - the house has to be ripped apart. The flooding ruins sheetrock, furniture, carpet, etc and mold growth is a huge issue.

The wind is usually not that big a deal unless you have a tornado during the hurricane. I have a 100 year old wood framed house that has been though many hurricanes, including Katrina. Generally the worst case wind-wise for most people is that you see some minor roof damage and little else unless a tree falls on the house. Wooden houses certainly do not "disintegrate" during storms.

[peterwwillis]

Depends on whether you're in a flood zone. A lot of Florida isn't in flood zones, so storm surge isn't a cause for most of the damage there, it's trees and wind and debris. However, flood zones around the world are growing.

[Amezarak]

You don't need to be in a flood zone to be impacted by a storm surge. You just have to live within ~30ft of sea level. The majority of the gulf coast is pretty flat. Flood-zone maps do get redrawn after every major hurricane, but that's not so much a matter of climate change so much as exactly where the storm hits. Places that have never flooded in a hundred years will flood if a hurricane makes land in the right place, simply because it pushes a couple dozen feet of water ahead of it.

Debris doesn't cause a lot of damage, particularly if you've prepped for the hurricane (by boarding up windows, garaging cars, etc.) The biggest factors are definitely trees and storm surge.

[Retric]

The roof in a brick house would still get ripped off, as would the windows and doors. Depending on wind speed the walls might or might not survive but the house would cost just about as much to repair.

[Tepix]

I'm not sure if the roof construction is the same in the US and in Germany.

Pitched roofs do well against storms (30° roof slope is best).

Luckily, we don't have deadly hurricanes.

[Amezarak]

Nearly all house roofs are pitched, at least in the southeast. I have never seen one that wasn't. Very sharp pitches are more common in newer homes, though, in my experience.

[thorin]

In the UK you struggle to get a mortgage on a wooden construction so have to be cash rich, you'd also struggle to get conventional housing insurance cover.

[willyt]

Nope thats not it. Many houses built in the UK now have a timber structure with a (mostly) non load bearing brick or blockwork skin on the outside. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a new build house that is timber or masonry structure, once it has been sheeted out inside. Timber cladding externally is less common.

[iguy]

I believe exterior timber was banned in London after the fire of 1666, and in many other towns not so long after that. A brick skin just gives you much more time to stop a fire from spreading. Even when the exterior walls are load-bearing brick, a lot of internal structure may still be in wood.

[willyt]

That's not strictly true, the rules [0] on what fire tests a cladding material must conform to are quite complicated and depend on how close adjoining buildings are and whether there are any windows in them.

[0] http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Built-Environment/Building/Buildi...

[iguy]

Right, I'm sure the modern rules are very detailed. But at some rough level of walking around & looking at buildings, there's a step change right after the great fire.

[tpetry]

Wood houses are slowly coming to Germany too, but there seems to be a cultural refusal to them. Maybe it's because of WW2 and the bombing of the cities? Maybe a solid concrete house is feeling more safe in german heads?

[crote]

It goes back a quite a lot longer, actually. Over the years, many cities have outlawed wooden buildings due to fire risk. It wasn't uncommon for an entire city to burn down to the ground. It may be possible to build fire-proof buildings nowadays, but the safety of stone is now a part of the culture.

[cgh]

Germany has less than 5% of Canada's land area and more than double the population. You could pretty much drop the entire country into a Canadian forest.

[bitexploder]

US building standards are pretty good for our wood frame houses these days. These houses can withstand pretty much anything but tornado or earthquake. Proper maintenance of the external facing structures of the house (roof, paint, siding, windows) mean it can last a very long time (100 years). We also insulate houses more or less depending on where they are. New homes are quite energy efficient.

[philipps]

I grew up in Germany and 100 years does not sound like a long time for a house to last. Maybe that’s they main difference: expectation of longevity. Which is surprising because while my hometown Cologne is in fact more than 2000 years old, many of its buildings were destroyed in various wars. I’m not sure where the cultural expectation that houses should last forever originates.

[bitexploder]

That was just an example. I think they can last pretty much indefinitely with maintenance. I know we have wood frame houses built in the 1700s and 1800s that still stand in New England and other places.

[whatusername]

Americans think 100 years is a long time; and Europeans think 100 kilometers is a long distance.

(As an Australian - we completely fall on the American side of that remark)

[fsloth]

"I’m not sure where the cultural expectation that houses should last forever originates."

Probably partly from ownership of buildings transitioning form wealthy capitalists to middle class. For the capitalist the house is an investment since they get rent from it, but for the middle class family who own their house the house constitutes a huge portion of their wealth. Banks are the main winners, as they profit from loaning money to middle class to purchase the house.

The second factor is the rise of cities. As more people come closer together, the value of land naturally rises. Hence, the "natural" portion of the houses price does not come from the structure itself, but from the value of the land, and the market forces demand for the building.

If the building becomes... defunct, a huge portion of the middle class familys wealth disappears (sans the land - but, often the land is rented from someone).

Hence it's nice to imagine buildings last forever, while paying back your 50 year loan on the house.

[toomanybeersies]

Wooden framed houses tend to survive earthquakes better than any other construction technology, as wooden frames are flexible, especially as they're constructed with nails, which lend the frame a lot of give.

Wooden houses can (from experience) survive magnitude 6-7 earthquakes.

[peterwwillis]

This is highly dependent on the design and the size. The larger a wooden building is, the more likely a lower floor will soften and pancake during an earthquake, and structural elements need to be added to stiffen it against lateral movement.

Japanese pagodas have very interesting designs that keep them from toppling. My favorite is the Horyu-ji pagoda. Each floor is not connected to the one above it - they're just stacked, loosely. The floors shift independently during an earthquake. A gigantic central beam in the middle acts as a tuned mass damper, preventing them from sliding off entirely. One person can make the central beam sway. https://gizmodo.com/5846501/how-japans-oldest-wooden-buildin...

Tō-ji pagoda's design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG37gQSvrf4

Design really is everything.

[spraak]

It doesn't scale in terms of efficiency, though. There are much more suitable climate specific building types for e.g. Arizona and New Hampshire, of which most don't need any/much lumber.

[tgb]

What are you thinking of for New Hampshire? I'm assuming adobe or similar for Arizona.