I've lived in Europe for 15 years and immediately noticed that there were almost no firetrucks going to home fires. That is when I realized that most of these homes are built with iron beams, brick, rock and cement with clay roofs. These homes last forever and require minimum maintenance and are handed down to their families from generation to generation.
@@ph3733 In Europe, you generally don't buy more than you need. Everything else is just empty floor space that you don't use, which means you pay a ton of money for nothing but air. It's like buying a massive off-road 4x4 because there are leaves on your driveway sometimes. It's pointless.
Brick and mortar houses also have their problems to be honest. I live in a 70 year old building and just about now all the old aluminium electric wires are givin out. Rewiring a brick and mortar building is hell, you have to literally excavate all the old wires from the walls. But to be honest it has to be done once every two generations maybe. Otherwise water tend to be a problem, pipes breaking inside of walls, ground water coming up in walls etc, but that's quite rare and fixable. Roofs become leaky after 30-40 years mainly at the base of the chimneys. It all depends on build quality of course. We own a 100 year old house which has no problems at all and will be livable for another 100 years after minor renovations. I live in Europe of course.
@@ph3733average in my country in Europe is 2150 square feet houses. I think it is optimum for a family here because we rarely have more than two kids, usually one. My house is too big for two of us now when our daughter moved out. And even when she was here one room was empty except when guests stayed over night. There is really no need for bigger space.
Viorel, some of them had been and get so ashamed of not breaking any wall, that felt the tremendous need to go running naked through Sarmisegetusa, if you recall it, &some mass-media presented it like the greates thing to do if your a VIP.😂😂😂 Expecting now for Mr.&Mrs. Smith to give it a try.😏 In Europe, Eric, we have that kind of entrance doors and windows cause we don't have your trully great Second Amendment. Even so, the theeves get specialised on opening those sofisticated doors, too.
Same in France ! My childhood home had 60cm thick stone walls, build in 1689 and still going strong today ! I don't know who decided to build a house with 60cm x 40cm x 60cm blocks of stone but he had a great idea !
Their major upside is that they are larger, if you care for more room. here in europe, we have less mansions and far more terraced housing. traditionally only the notables and rich farmers had large housing here, all the rest had small working class housing (or even slums if you go back 100 years) I grew up in a large house, but i can't afford it myself, and we only got the house because my dad was a minister (vicar) and that meant you were 'important' and got a large house. when I grew up in modern times the old class system was long gong, but the vicar still got his large house because it was build in 1908 and was still the vicar house obviously. our yard was the size of a football field. A village would never be able to build such a large house today for the clergy, for various reasons, but back then they could. Now i live in a much smaller house
@@Blackadder75cause in europe not everyone needs a big house. we also pay more taxes because land value is higher (most of the time) while in the US the suburbs are subsidized, making is cheaper to buy a big house, but after a couple of years the land value raises and it all becomes unaffordable and also the city needs to start maintaining all the car infrastructure and long distances of underground infrastructure. the Suburbs are a burdening scene for the people.
The lack of internal sound insulation is one thing in a single-family house - but in apartment blocks it contributes significantly to tension and fights between neighbours - there isn't enough awareness of how stressful noise pollution is.
that's what happens when a 7 story building is allowed to be fully constructed out of wood framing. in most parts of the world it's required to build with concrete for buildings those heights.
My father lives in small town in a building, second floor... middle of the building. You can clearly hear what people around you are talking, especially if TV is turned on! Noise is more than annoying and imagine noise all around you, non stop, with muddy deep noise made by neighbours... Concrete or wood - it does not matter. Design matters ;)
you know what? that is a REALLY good point that I have never once thought about. I mean I have always been irritated by annoying noisy neighbors but I have never once considered that it could have been at least minimized by better building.
As a Scandinavian that is what really surprises me. This apparent lack of proper insulation. There's plenty of wood houses here too. And fairly thin plaster walls between rooms inside a house or an apartment are very common. But you'll never hear your neighbors unless they play very loud music or are having a fight or are very noisy in some way.
There's nothing wrong with wood if you do it the right way. Most of northern Europe have wood buildings. These houses are very poorly insulated. In Sweden and Norway, walls on newly constructed houses are usually 25-35 cm (10-14 inches). It costs more but saves alot in heating and cooling. Wood floor in the bathroom is straight up illegal in most European countries, it would be impossible to get home insurance or financing if you did that.
In the case of the bathroom / wet-area: is the issue about the construction of the floor using wood (beams) or only the covering of the floor in wood (panel / strips)? @@renatewest6366
You can absolutely put wooden flooring in the bathroom. Some woods are naturally water resistant. maritime pine, beech, walnut, merbau, teak, etc... wood rich in tannin should be avoided! It's VERY expansive and insurance companies don't like it because a faulty installation or poor maintenance can have serious consequences... There are also very good imitation wood tiles.
It depends on the climate, wood tents to be a rather stable material in colder dry climates, in humid and wet climates it tends to rot fast, and one of the key elements independent of building material is the insulation!
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In Sweden most family houses are built with wood, however there are some significant difference in how the frame is built, the required distance between the houses, and the built in fire resistance in the walls.
Wood framing is becoming popular here in Spain. But the size and quality od the beams, foundations, insulation, windows, fireproofing, plumbing and electrical. The fire and weight stresses and all that, have to match iron and cement. No mattwr how youe house is built in Europe, it has to pass rigurous standards or the builder is sued to obvlivion. That's why it costs 30/40% more to build a house on average.
@@inyobill For sure, but there are different fire classification of the separating walls depending on how close the buildings are to each other. The minimum separation for a stand alone standard house is at least 9 meters to the nearest building on the neighboring property. With that distans your outer walls need to be a so called B30-wall (30 minutes fire resistanse against burn through) Closer than that you need a wall that can withstand fire for a longer time, for instance a B60 or similar. If you have buildnings in chain that share one or more walls, the shared wall(s) probably have to be a fireproof like class A2 or even A1. Everything according to Boverket - the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning.
They make them as cheap as they can... Its kinda sad... Dont get me wrong, some europe houses have some areas I would change as well, but at least they arent built of match sticks. =) Thanks for watching and for your comments. =) Eric
Houses in Europe are made with reinforced concrete structures (the whole house is placed on a big 100% concrete basement) with brick walls and "thermopane" windows and doors (industry term for double- or triple pane windows).
houses are not reinforced concrete everywhere. US houses also have concrete basements and brick walls with 2 panes or sometimes even 3 panes of glass. it really differs based on location, budget, etc
European houses need to be build strong due to the bombings that would come sonner or later. European just LOVE each other. Come on people, got to live like in Romania!!!😁😁😁😁
As a child, I was always impressed by the mighty hurricanes able to lay waste to whole towns just by passing by. It took a while to realize, that its not only the strength of the storm but also those flimsy wooden constructions. Another weakness are those "tin roofs" built from large tightly connected plates. In Europe, a large majority of the houses are constructed from interlocked solid bricks, concrete and steel rebar. Prefab houses started to appear in the 1950s but even their walls are far more solid than what you are showing us. Small but comparably heavy roof tiles can be lifted by a storm but it is far more difficult to generate enough pressure difference between top and bottom to lift the whole roof.
I just want to say something. Thank you for the explanation, it is very helpful and true and because of that i want to add that not all houses are small. I lived with my grandparents, not rich but typical family in a brick house that had 3 rooms because something happened to it. It originally had 5 and most our neighbours had 4 to 7 rooms. Plus sheds for animals, sheds for cereals, basements and so on. Again not rich families, but old houses from grandparents.
Only partially true. Most of a hurricanes damage is done by the storm surge. A wall of water 20 to 30 feet high moving at speed doesn't care how your house is built. It's gone.
in germany nearly every new family home is a solid building made out of bricks (mostly ytong, sandlime or normal bricks). The ceilings are mostly reinforced concrete (or premade parts that are completed on site) and sometimes the outer walls are concrete too.
In the Netherlands too. I work in the building sector and this would not fly in Europe. Especially with the new 2024 regulations that are coming. If you look at the amount of insulation we need it's so much more than the us. The climate is different but still.
@@Adidas_der_schwanger_war Pour reinforced concrete pillars in the corners and more. That's how Balkans do it. Ytong even has a special brick with a hole on one side exactly for this purpose.
There's good reasons for that: the summers in Germany are BRUTAL. You build to your environment, which is smart. Been visiting there are you have such wonderful ideas about how to build houses and the small details that I think should be more common.
I agree with you. I live in a 1954 detached house here in the UK and it is constructed of breeze blocks. It has cavity walls and all interior walls are constructed with breeze blocks. It is immensely solid. One advantage is that sound is very well dampened so the sound of the town or city you are in is greatly reduced in the house. Also as you say sound transmission within the house is greatly reduced.
probably that's why tornados make a total mess in US ...houses literally fly in Europe bricks, concret or stone were most used. recently big developers started to build residential zones like those in US, using cheaper and less durable materials
In America New construction is built to withstand a tornado,the problem is the older construction, that wasn’t built with todays code and specs… Not all homes in America are built only with wood… in the mid west where a lot of tornados happen houses nowadays have all a basement built with reinforced concrete… Honestly I’m a lot more concerned with a fire burning down a home then with tornados
Its not worth to try to reduce tornado damage cos it's so highly improbable, it hits in a narrow area. Houses in Europe will survive better by making the damage area even narrower but in direct path only load bearing wall structures can survive. Reinforced concrete load bearin wall, usually prefab. Concrete frames may survive but the load is on the frame, the wall doesn't get that compression induced strenght bonus and if the wall is breached bye bye. It doesn't have to be breached from outside, just the wind blowing in trough windows and doors ... no compression, no load ... no strenght. It will be inflated like a balloon by wind
Houses are built more cheaply in the USA, but they are easier to buy and usually larger than what you get in Europe. This is why nearly half of Europeans live in apartments. I'd rather have a big, cheap house than a 100-year old apartment.
Nice and interesting video. Here in Poland houses are generally smaller, most of them between 100 - 150 square meters (about 1100 - 1600 sq ft) of living area. On the ground floor there is entrance hall separated from other rooms, usually kitchen is located at the front and living room in the backyard. There is also one bathroom, technical room and often one additional room and garage. Bedrooms and another bathroom are usually located in the attic. Walls are buid of ceramic blocks or AAC blocks (eg. Ytong or similar), wchich are insulated outside with 20 cm (about 8 inches) of EPS (most often) or mineral wool. Foundation is concrete, ceiling of ground floor is reinforced concrete slab or Teriva slab, also made of concrete. In single-store houses ceiling is sometimes made of wood, but there are no additional rooms upstairs then. Roof structure is usually wooden, insulated with 30cm (12 inch) of mineral wool and covered with sheet metal, concrete tiles or ceramic tiles. I often see, that doors and windows in America look weak. Here we use in new and modernized houses 3-pane windows with thicker frame and better locks, which usually open inward and tilt. Doors are also like you said, more robustly constructed with burglar-proof locks, and insulated. I also noticed that heating systems are different, in Poland we use radiators or underfloor heating, which both use hot water. And we don't have AC in most homes
Americans are using forced Air systems, it's the most stupid system out there ever, gap between floors and doors could be up to 30 mm, which in Europe it's 3 mm. Just plain stupid.
Same in Russia but here is more popular light beton like Ytong gasocilicat (газосиликат) and more homea are within 100-120 sq m. BTW I know one polish arch project firm Z500 or smth I built a home by its plan Z7, still good
@@Ivan_the_Ripper with the current situation as right now, I would be ashamed to acknowledge that I come from ruZZnia. Does putler let's you use Internet over there?!
Good thing large earthquakes are rare in northern Europe, eh? Actually, building requirements would be a lot g=different. Frame houses would be more common because of the cost of building masonry that will withstand earthquake forces.
@@RomanTrollanski Forced air systems are generally more common in the southern US states where cooling in the summer is considerably more expensive and important than heating in the winter. Radiant floor heating is common further north. Radiator heating also pretty common. Usually with wood or gas burning stoves as backup.
There is plenty of space for proper insulation in American homes. I live in the northern Midwest, nearly dead center of North America, not far from Canadian border. Winter temperature can occasionally get down to -50 degrees Fahrenheit/ -45 degrees Celsius. The insulation, heating, and air conditioning that every home has can keep the house at the right temperature. In my state I have seen temperatures from -60 degrees to 107 degrees in the same year. Home stayed at a nice 70 degrees year round.
Wood is not as accessible in Europe vs. in the US. That's why masonry is primarily used there. A properly built wood home can last well over 100 years. The problem with many large US home builders is they try to make homes as cheaply as they can to compete with other builders, thus a race to the bottom as far as quality construction. Water management is crucial to preserve wood homes and I've seen many large builder homes with water damage in as little as a year because of cheap windows and poor flashing. Wood homes are better in seismic areas because wood can flex. Not as good, however in wildfire areas, like California, but that's another story - when government refuses to manage forests properly,
Well here in Europe we have houses which are still inhabited which are thousand years old, I rather doubt Wood can stand that, but to be fair, we have 500 year old houses with wood fortification as well! but they are mainly stone with some wood in between!
As a European, my biggest wtf moment about American houses is the fact that they don't have floor drains and floor to ceiling tiles in bathrooms. It's a very logical thing to do in a room where you have water. Don't even get me started on wallpaper in a bathroom.
You can't say "European houses" because the building method in Scandinavia (Denmark/Norway/Sweden/Finland) is so different than houses in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany, and again different from houses in the Mediterranean like Italy, Spain, and Greece. And even within one country, the building method is different. Like northern Germany and Bavaria (southern Germany), France, or Italy... I assume you can find something similar in the US?
@@KAFNOR Polish person here - mine has 2 locks, there are anti-burglary versions to buy on the market but you'd probably have to pay alot more for those.
Exactly! I am in St Petersburg Florida, we have mostly concrete block construction as we are along the coast, on a peninsula. Some builders use wood frame on second floors as it is cheaper but if you are from Florida or lived here for 15-years, you prefer all block construction and hip roofs. The panhandle of Florida and northern Florida used a lot of all frame construction in the past as they mistakenly believed hurricanes don't hit that part of the state, along came a few storms to end that thinking! I was there after Hurricane Michael in 2018 seeing brand new frame construction destroyed while block buildings remained. We cannot flee everything the weather is bad, we need to build so we can stay in place for safety.
Yeah in the US you can get various build types of house. I have a brick on block cape cod (basically cinder blocks with a brick covering exterior) but it was built in 1959. Wood frame is the over whelming majority of modern construction due to price and alot of the time its the same builder building all the houses in a community/subdivision. You can get something other than wood frame, its just gonna cost alot more and have to find a builder to do it.
Wood built does not equal bad. In Finland, we have tons and tons of wood built houses and we have long tradition of living in wooden houses. We're even building giant office buildings out of wood now days. And we still consider them way WAY higher quality than houses in USA. It's about what you do with the wood. But we do NOT live 5 feet of each other, we prefer to live 5 MILES away from each other if possible.
What I noticed in house make overs that there is no insulation in the interior (dry) walls. In France you always put in phonic insulation between the different rooms. Also we use metal structures for dry walls instead of wood.
Well, my first impression was how HUGE everything is! Large rooms. Enormous garages. Plus private area around the houses. Streets wide enough for a highway. It's hard to imagine how much space an average city should take, compared with one built of apartment buildings.
For the last 10 minutes you've been repeating yourself. We haven't seen the inside of a house you keep just saying that the American houses are built with wood and destruction. Yeah, we know that and then you start coding over and get how much we are yard. Space they have for black. And then you show another house just with the frames up. What's the point of your video? I'm not sure. We all know the difference between construction and wood built homes and the difference between the cement home
Exijan mejor calidad en la construcción de sus casas. Les están cobrando mucho por algo que no lo vale y encima no es seguro. No solo es que estén hechas de madera sino que están mal hechas. Parecen un set de película. Pueden quemarse, las balas pueden atravezar las paredes y techos. Y ni siquiera sus puertas son seguras. Con razón hay tanto crimenes.! Totalmente inseguro
there is a lot of hate for wood here, but in reality, American houses are easily reconfigured later. You can't do that with stone. Also, American houses are designed to go up fast. This is important when developing a new area. You talk about things coming into a neighborhood prebuilt like it's a bad thing, but that's super efficient. I want to also point out that what you said about doors depends on the location in the US. Someone in New York City is probably going to have a lot of locks on their door as opposed to someone living in a rural area who probably doesn't even lock their door. I think "better" here is not accurate at all; it's just different.
You seriously have to visit more countries in Europe. In the Nordic countries, we build almost exclusively with wood, except Denmark, where wood is luxury. Countries with big forests will use wood because wood is superior to concrete in all aspects I can think of. If concrete had been better, don't you think we would have used it? It's not like the price is any higher in countries with firest vs. countries without.
Nowadays, basically wood - but back before the 1990's, the Phoenix area used to build in brick and concrete block that was sometimes stuccoed. I had a new-construction house (suburban Phoenix) that was built in 2001 that was a thin veneer of concrete over chicken wire and styrofoam but now I live in a place that's stucco over concrete block (built 1975) The goal here nowadays, of course, is to maximize profits by selling houses that disintegrate right around the time your 30-year mortgage ends and the water runs out, LOL. It should be noted for our European viewers, though, that regions in the US do vary. New desert homes in the US may be different from old desert homes or even new homes in other parts of the country. In Tennessee, for example, many new homes are brick - REAL brick.
In Germany the outside walls with insulation measure 20 inches. They build either bricks with included insulation or concrete/sand-lime brick with insulation on the outside or aerated concrete bricks. The new windows have 3 panes of glass with vacuum in between. They can easily have a weight of 120 pounds. The roof truss is still made from wood, but wood is actually quite expensive in Germany. Most people won't be able to afford new houses and the old ones are also massive but less well insulated, which causes higher heating bills.
Imagine if the Romans built such flimsy structures..................... There would be nothing to see!!! I think it's a sign of a lack of vision and a lack of a future, or even a lack of the sense of present or past when people think it's normal to build your house the same way you would build a shed or a barn.
Depending where you are here in Europe (I'm in the Netherlands) there are plenty areas where the houses where one company has done the build which are basically modular designs. They tend to be fundamentally bricks though and will last a while. In the 70s there were some poorer houses built on estates meant for aspiring working-class and middle-class people, which weren't that great and had a lot of wood construction. Creaky stairs and upper floors. So they felt like a shed. Some of these are already gone. The house I grew up in (in the UK) had a slate roof put on when it was built in 1928 and still has the same roof. Yu wrote this in your description: "So we dont have gaps, or caulking mistakes or screws sticking out.." Well, you do, because I've seen them, though I wouldn't expect them to be standard. It's the same for Europe.
As a 16-year Chandler resident, it wasn't always this way. Greed pushed developers to build more and more in tighter locations. We had a 1/4 acre lot in a 1800 sq. ft. house built in 2001. When we started seeing single family houses built like this, we moved back to the East Coast.
A lot of people dont realize we europeans have been building things for thousands of years, thousands of years of experience, nothing can replace that 😎
I agree 100%. Our standards go to the cheapest builder and the easiest fastest way to make a buck. Its kinda sad. I travel the world most of my days and Europe's houses are 100% better than Americans... You have it right GankMAn. =) Thanks for watching my video. Eric
Americans are europeans that migrated there. Houses are build with materials readily available. Houses in europe are built for multiple generations for their families to live in. While modern Americans focus on ammnidities with cheap resources. Because they often move withing 10-20 years. Houses in the states were often built stronger back in the day.
We are in New Zealand and my husband is a house builder. Its interesting that there are as many similarities as there are differences. We have many timber frame houses as well as steel frames. We also have many different claddings. A lot of what is built is directed by building regulations which have been tightened in the last 30 years. Single, double. Triple glazing is directed by the regulations dependent on location as is insulation. We also have rib raft floors developed specifically because of earthquakes. In the Christchurch earthquake brick houses did not hold up well at all. Timber frames have to have metal strapping, metal joist hangers and plates. Plaster board has to be specified for wet areas, for load bearing. Exterior cladding must be clearly specified as to how it is attached. We also have specified council inspections at specific stages, and they can halt the build if necessary. We also have similar developments, but it is a developer who prepares and markets the land, and it is sold as individual sections. Construction companies may buy multiple sections and build one showhome to market and sell the other sites. Individuals buy sections and get a builder to build or self build. Its usually a mix. The other thing I noticed is how old fashioned the build was especially for the price. The front door handle for example. What about keyless entry? Having one builder means that the houses are all pretty much the same. Thats what it is like with UK group builders too.
Here in Sweden, we got a lot of wood and our stand alone houses are built out of wood. Wood is an excellent material to build houses with if the climate is suitable for it. Stone/Cement houses would be a nightmare to heat here in the cold climate but an excellent choice for hotter climate.
Snacka skit. Stenhus är bättre än trä speciellt nya hus byggda i lättbetong med isolering inuti blocken. På sommaren kyler väggarna ned huset och på vintern värmer det upp.
actually wood is the worst material - it is worse than concrete, clay bricks or aac as a structural material, it is worse than any type of rock wool, xps/fps or cellulose as an insulation, an costs 3-5-10 times more than any other material here.
@@88marome If you want the best indoor climate, use clay for your walls. It not only helps regulating the humidity indoors ( that's what wood does - provided it's actually real wood and nothing which off-gases its glue and fire-blocking chemicals 😜), but clay is also a perfect insulator and on top of that, it doesn't burn (and if you allergic against dust mites, you will LOVE a clay home, because those don't like clay).
Reminds me of a remark by Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian film director ("Andrei Rublov", "Mirror", etc.) He noted in his diary that in American films set decorations, houses specifically, seemed really badly executed, looked wrong on film. But then he visited America and saw that this is what American houses really looked like 🙂
Correct! Russians call drywall plaster-cardboard and never considered it a material to bulid from. It's for decor, maybe for hiding some pipes behind, maybe set/stage fake world. Russians use concrete, bricks, historically - solid timber (whole logs, not 2*4 in) and typically bulid their walls thick. Not long ago, wood like pine was cheaper than plastic or anything, it was your default cheap stuff. Note: we have a BAD climate and don't have earthquakes.
@@annasolovyeva1013 I have seen those concrete monstrosities called apartment buildings in Russia. The look like cold grey sterile prisons. Felt really sorry for the people who had to live in them.
@@braemtes23 the difference is American homes are bulit to SELL good and look good. Cutting costs on their actual structure and facilities. Those apartment blocks are civil engineered for comfortable living in our climate - but not designed using the art of architecture. That's the basis of a commieblock - we don't need our home to be pretty. We need it to be functional. And affordable. And basically - that's it.
Here in Serbia, 25 cm concrete or brick walls are the standard everywhere. Some people build 37-40 cm outer walls of brick or concrete. An average house of 100 square meters without a garage will cost you around 40,000 euros. And the foundations are crazy, usually 1 meter deep, the standard is 700 cm, but my house is built on a 1.4 meter foundation with a 20 cm thick concrete floor as standard. ALL electrical and plumbing are inside the walls with a ceiling of 15 cm concrete as standard but usually 20 cm. Such houses usually last 4-5 family generations.
Well on the flip side in NL you get very little space wise for your money. The quality may be better but for 600k USD / 550 EUR you get a 80-90 m^2 space (perhaps 25%? of the houses here). Quality vs quantity perhaps.
Houses in the UK are traditionally made out of brick. New energy efficient houses are starting to be made out of wood, but they're far more expensive. Windows in the UK have a much larger gap between the two pains to improve the insulation. I'm very surprised at the lack of outdoor space - most British people would rather have a garden than a large garage but I suppose that's just a cultural difference.
It does depend on the development, though, and the region. I'm actually surprised by how little yard space there is in this development as well. In California, you rarely see buildings built out of brick. Some may have a fake brick facade, but this is because actual brick tends to separate at the mortar and collapse in earthquakes. Wood definitely excels in this regard.
Much of Arizona where this town is located is a desert environment. Perhaps the residents may be able to grow a cactus, but not maintain an English-style garden. Summertime temperatures and sunshine often reach a point where you can fry an egg on the top of your automobile.
Lived all over the U.S. and never seen such tiny yards and close neighbors ..these are new constructions in a hot climate, thrown up cheaply and crammed together by greedy developers. They are a poor example of the typical established home here.
Wood being more energy efficient is a myth... Any construction method can be made efficient, is just easier an cheaper to do with brick and cement or clay. (If done well)
Due to the changing climates in the US, WOOD homes are preferred. i live in the pacific NW, bought a new build in 2020. my house expands in the summer when there are days when its between 85-110 and in the winter when it drops to 35-51 degrees. Do i get more paint chips, cracks and nail pops? yes but that taught me how to do my own home maintenance. PNW also means standard gas fireplace, but AC optional. 2264 square feet alley style home, garage in the back with a small side yard runnig the lenght of the house. I absolutely love it! only thing i would change is the layout on the 2nd floor because with 2200 square feet the couldve added a fourth bedroom instead i got 3 and a 50% of a room known as a niche. can't wait to change the layout to get a 4th room upstairs
I'm gonna throw my grain of salt in there. I live in Canada and our homes are built mostly like the american ones. But my in-laws are french, so I visit France often. Yes, building are made of concrete and steel beams and all which is excellent against fire, but some things I noticed in the last few years comparing our house vs my friends and in-laws' is that repairs are way cheaper, less daunting, and less messy with american-style homes than "most" (different countries have different building codes and all, so I'm sure others are easier) european houses built out of concrete. Our homes are also able to withstand water damage "better" (there's still damage, but you see it's there and you can repair it quickly). Whereas almost every region I've been in France so far, buildings have a lot of degratation, a lot of mold and water issues. And since it's costly and messy, people don't want to repair, so they patch things up badly. Or it becomes too big of an issue to correct easily, but since the building was concrete, they failed to see it beforehands. Now, both the american and european builds are constantly being updated; I've seen new european construction with the same framework as the american ones, but in steel. I've also seen european adopt wooden framing for their house. It mostly depends at this point on what's cheaper for each countries and region to build and the meteorological conditions where you live.
I wouldn't say "European" houses. Houses in Spain are built to keep the heat out, while houses in Belgium (where I live) are built to keep the warmth in. Spanish houses usually have smaller windows and often a roof that is wider than the house so you don't get direct sunlight inside the house. The roofs are also flatter (like in your video) because it never snows. But indeed most houses are made of brick walls and concrete ceilings. Only the roof frame is made of wood. The thing is... a house is expensive, so we build it to last ;-) Apart from the houses there is probably more difference between American and European urbanisation. We hardly have purely residential areas with no services whatsoever (shops, cafe, school, ...)
very nice video, thank you. I have been several times in the US for personal and business reasons. Every time I noticed the significantly lower quality of US houses. I work in the building products industry so its quite obvious for me. But I think the reasons are simple. Everything comes with the standards that Governments and authorities impose. I know, Americans do not like rules and regulations from Governmental bodies but as a matter of fact, sometimes its needed and it does good. Europeans don't build houses in higher quality because we are more clever or because we like to spend more money on a house. Higher energy costs and stricter building codes require to build better houses. As simple as that. We exhibited several times at the Int. Builders Show in Las Vegas with our STEICO wall and roof structures that we manufacture. The interest was high but it barely resulted into business because most of the contractors and builders wanted to stick to their simple stick-frame buildings. In Germany I would say its relatively easy nowadays to build a house with a (almost) net-zero energy balance, meaning the house produces as much energy (through solar panels or thermal pumps) as it consumes
Whats sad is that even multi family buildings are constructed this way in the US and it’s no wonder you can hear your neighbors. I lived in a New York City high rise building Solid concrete walls and floors, where my upstairs neighbor had to drop a brick or a heavy dumbbell for us to hear it below. People who only know these wood framed home love dunking on apartment dwellers because they think that their privacy is being sacrificed. They don’t know any better. If an apartment building is built properly your peace and privacy wouldn’t be be an issue. Now that more apartments are being built because homes are unaffordable this problem is just going to multiply.
I don’t know if it’s the same elsewhere, but where I lived in Mississippi, we had problems with shifting foundations due to it being a former riverbed. Can’t really build concrete houses there as it will just crack the walls over time while wood flexes. Even if things do crack, drywall is much easier to replace. There’s reasons for everything existing and if you have a simple solution, it’s probably wrong. America is a very different beast than Europe, and applying European solutions doesn’t always work here. Not saying Euro houses are bad by any means, just that different areas have different needs and constraints that need to be met.
Videos like these assume that California and Phoenix AZ are where all Americans live. In the upper Midwest we build like our Scandinavian ancestors. Thick concrete for our basements and the walls lined with bricks, not to mention thick insulation to withstand the cold. I’m not sure how to explain it, but we build more sturdily with the wood we use.
Part of the problem is California gets earthquakes, so bricks are an unsafe material to build with here due to their inability to flex. Wood structures have the ability to flex without collapsing.
PS: your garages are also wood framed and have common walls with the rest of the house. In South Africa if you have a garage under the same roof as the house, by law you have to have a double brick firewall between it and the house in case of fire, so if a fire starts in the garage the house won't burn down
The sole benefit of of building houses in the usa is that setting a Wi-Fi app is easy without concrete walls. in the UK in contrast setting up Wi-Fi is quite difficult because the Wi-Fi signal won’t penetrate the concrete walls
You'll see very different houses pending where you are in Europe. Go north and there is plenty of wood used with concrete pour as base and they are great houses with good insulation. If anything I'd say northern countries have been going greener as trend using more wood than before to point even some apartment buildings use wood as their main material today. You can get pretty good noise cancellation even with wood houses as long as you have different density materials layered to absorb some of the sound(or separate noise cancellation panels), but obviously it's an extra expense. It honestly wouldn't even be that big of an expense on houses of that size to invest in inner walls a bit more especially for big construction company, but obviously companies penny pinch where they can while in EU construction standards are generally much higher/stricter. Personally I think EU has gone too far with construction standards today as they don't always account different region elements fairly enough across EU so some places have to go overboard with stuff they realistically don't even need with their environment, but that's just my opinion of course. Part of the problem with modern NA houses is that they aren't built to last. That means more repairs and re-building for companies to sell. I'm sure part of it is just penny pinching in general, but on another hand so much of everything has been done/built in last 20-30 years was made to be consumed(by that I mean stuff is not made to last or not made to be repaired) which has been wicked direction overall so you would just keep buying new whatever item we talk about.
We don't have strong wood in South Africa so wood framed houses are a rarity and frowned on by insurance companies. Most of our homes are brick and concrete with tiled or steel roofs. I've never understood why the US builds such flimsy houses even in hurricane areas, where they just collapse and blow away. Also, our foundations are deep and wide concrete footings with a raised slab on top, usually a few steps higher than ground level in case of floods. American houses look fancy but are actually what we would consider substandard
In Europe we use 2x4 only for non load bearing internal walls, but here the entire house seems to rest on these sticks. Wood is strong and can flex, but still an external wall of just 4 inches isn't much, not enough room to put proper insulation in, poor sound deadening and just a small miscalculation with your sit on lawn mower ends up inside the house. My house from 1932 in the Netherlands is made of 1 foot thick brick cavity walls, so two brick walls with a 4 inch cavity to keep the inner surface dry from the cold and wet winter time. I recently added 5 inches of insulation on the outside which is rendered over, making the total wall thickness almost 18 inches! Thick window frames with tripple glazing are fitted. I live next to a busy highway, but you can barely hear it inside the house when all is totally quiet in the house. It's saves about 60% on my heating bill, and also less need for cooling in the summer. In new houses the external insulation with rendering, panelling or brick slips covering is the standard now across Europe, with the load bearing walls being made either of concrete slabs or blocks, aerated concrete or lime/sand blocks 18-20 inches thick, internal non load bearing walls are mainly made with aerated concrete or gypsum blocks 3,5 or 4 inches thick. In some countries like the UK 2x4 timber stud walls are preferred for internal walls, but sound insulation is compulsory in these, to prevent someone next to the bathroom hearing how large the dump was.
Yeah i knew americans prefer to built this way.. is crazy to me cause cause its very hazardous you got to think long term... i'm romanian and my house is built from ACC (Autoclaved aerated concrete) and its a very common material here it keep the house worm in the harsh winters here and cold in the very hot summers we have. It's fire resistant and only my roof is made of wood, the common temperatures here are 98.6° Fahrenheit in the summer and i don't need an ac for that! just cause the insolation of that material is great and in the winter we have -4 Fahrenheit. Loved the video :D keep them coming !
Hi from Portugal. Loved you video Houses at America have I believe significant advantages on buiding time. Wood per se also possesses very good insulation characteristics. At south of Europe wood rotts easily when exposed to elements, thus the preference for brick and rock. treating wood or dense woods are just too expensive. Inner walls are nowadays mostly drywalls, with exception of structuring walls, still brick walls. The cement slabs on above groung floors weight a lot requiring supporting walls. Regards walls standing forever most houses require a deep recover after ~30 year of use which is is costly, replacement of electrical wiring, piping, insolation... Pre WW2 most houses at Portugal regards having rock outer walls, were made of wood on inner walls, roofs and floors. Thus European houses also have many issues. And concerning threaths a rock may stand better a fire, but are terrible on earthquakes (Morocco and Turkey recently)
European regulations are different frequently driven by insurance cies for example asking an entrance door with at least 3 to 5 security locks, strong insulation are now regulated, ect. The advantage of our strongly built walls it allows us to fix triple or even quadrupled glazed windows.
I will never understand why americans build wooden houses in places that have tornadoes. I get it's cheaper, but even if real building costs twice as much, it's still worth it, because it will stand for generations, given it's properly maintained.
@@DriveforLasermound is not a reason to do it like this. This is a cheap house that’s selling for at least 3x it’s actual value. The construction method is not what’s in question, but the constructed quality of obviously very poor. I would rather solve the mound problem which is usually much much easier than you know.
Our 125 year old House in canada is a brick shell with a wood frame inside that is easy to insulate for the harsh winters here (we insulated it as originally it had 0% insulation and its toasty now). We have a vast abundance of wood here so naturally many of our houses are made from this material. My in laws live in an 1850 stone farmhouse with almost meter thick walls and its a task to keep warm in winter but its nice and cool all summer (our summers ar HOT) We have some Albanian immigrant friends who decided to build their house here but concrete in the albanian style and when its -20c outside that house might as well be a refrigirator. Climate and economics tend to dictate housing styles.
I can't see what you see. To me - this is all perfectly designed and beautiful. You can replace doors if you want (can you?) with better ones, but overall - it all looks great. Design is what I like the most. In Europe, it does not matter concrete walls because everything can be heard through them too. Also I hate buildings and living in them. My personal choice is - exactly your type of houses :-) (p.s. lucky you) :D
It's funny as an American citizen living in the US who as been to Europe and seen the houses there every time I mention to anyone how European houses are better because there made of concrete and steel Americans get offended when you state that fact like a bunch of snowflakes. Like one time my history teacher was saying how it wold be too expensive. It's not true though first of all the price of lumber now in the US is more expensive then concrete thanks to inflation and second of all the real estate industry in the US is a scam just like health care and college cause homes in Europe are actually less expensive and more affordable for people then in the US and yet there built with concrete and steel. It's all about maximizing profits. Another example was when one of my teachers was like "mabye you should move to Europe since you think there houses are better" and I'm like just because I said there houses are built better doesn't mean I want to move there. I could just build my own concrete house here in the US.
Exactly, we have a house from 1780 with 3 foot thick stone walls. It is 9400 sqft and has gone through earthquakes and countless hurricanes. Obviously the roof has been replaced but if you saw the bill for that you could probably buy a house in the USA just for the price of the wood and tiles and a reinforced concrete ring around the top of the walls. Obviously it had to be insulated and there is a membrane underneath. When I made a remark American roofs with shingles are not hurricane proof the vitriol of people (who have no passport for sure) from the USA was just amazing. People were furious whereas like in this video the proof stares them in the face just looking how developers construct on price and not durability and confort. And then there is the argument that there are tornadoes and our shitty little brick houses would collapse as well...true we do not have tornadoes but just looking at some famous hurricanes like Andrew it was clear theses flimsy wooden houses were no match. We had a cat3 hurricane here a few years back and except for a bunch of uprooted trees and some missing tiles on the roof all was well. We are at living on the Azores, plenty of North Atlantic storms pass here so people have to fork out more money to construct a house but they can last a very long time.
@@laurentiusmetaal2333 your safer in a tornado too because it may be an Ef5 and the concrete gets blown away but the interior room may still hold on for dear life and you may surprise as apposed to everything being whipped completely off the foundation and you wouldn't survive even in the interior room of the wooden house.
@@mattdaddy_888 Note that our house is made of rocks of very large sizes, mud, lime, horse hair, and only a concrete rendering which is more recent. That is how they constructed these days.
Those houses are very similar to Australian houses. The only difference with Australian houses is that they have bricks around them on the outside walls and the roofs are tiled, either terracotta or cement tiles. Similar though.
South Africa is not a tornado country but we build our houses with bricks and cement. I'm glad we adopted the European and Australian way of construction 😁👍🏾
Though passiv haus German type construction is gaining popularity in Australia. Air tight, heat pumps, double glazed and very well insulated, they deal amazingly well with extremes of temperature.
With an unlimited budget everyone would be living in homes that would last 500+ years. Sustainable wood is actually more environmentally sound than heavily polluting concrete. If you have structural issue with a masonry or concrete house the repair can be quite a process. Alternatively to a subdivision house you could go out and buy a piece of land and then build any way you like as long as it meets the local building codes. American homes are not the only ones being built from wood.
I live in a multi family home in Germany. The building was finished. The load bearing walls are concrete at the very bottom But bricks above the ground floor. All non load bearing walls are drywall. Thy didn't use 2x4s for the drywall but thin metal struts and the walls and the surface is plasterboard instead of the wood seen in us homes, but it's much more cost effective than using bricks for all walls. The inner walls have some sound insulation as well though. Completely wooden homes aren't unheard off in Germany and they to have their advantages.
(1) Stucco is not used in most of America. That is reserved for the desert regions: California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Far West Texas, Colorado, etc. The South: Central Texas through Georgia, S. Carolina north to Maryland, Tennessee, Missouri, (oh heck the whole Midwest) use wood, frames and wood siding or brick and stone siding. Another thing, stucco is like concrete. The scratch coat might as well be concrete, then the brown coat is applied. While it is not structural, it is concrete like. A lot of the older homes, 80 + years old have plaster interior walls not drywall. There are a number of cinder block wall houses. You are generalizing and there are a number of exceptions. Many are now using steel frame construction for their homes in the U.S. 23 years as a construction estimator.
I'm not an expert since I never lived in a house, but still, my two cents here: USA: Cheap energy, lots of cheap wood, no "Castle complex", Europe: Expensive energy (we don't have oil and very little gas), expensive wood (population density is too big to manage immense forests except in Scandinavia, which has wooden houses just as the USA), "Castle complex", the idea that if you build a home, it has to be built once and for all, like the castles that the local Lords would make the commoners build, maintain, and transform for them over time. There is really this idea that a house must live for centuries. I prefer the American idea that a house lives just as long as its owners, cheap enough to be bought by almost everyone, beautiful and neat, even if quite flimsy by European standards. But it's totally impossible, your big houses are energy monsters, the large surface, and the lack of thermal insulation, make them impossible to make in Europe. I've been told that your single windows are as thin as can be, when here in Europe double windows are standard in even the poorest places.
It seems there is a big difference between homes in Germany and the US. The homes built in the US can vary depending on where in the US you live. Most of the homes in Ohio in the mid-west have finished basements, very few homes across the south don't have basements. Homes on the east coast are different from home in Colorado and the Rocky Mountains.
Another Slavic connection: King Casimir III the Great of Poland (14th century) was one of those rulers who made their country prosperous. And every child in Poland knows the saying about that king, originally written by a 15th-century historian: "He [Casimir] came to Poland made of wood and left it made of brick". This is an example of how old and strong the concept of the house made of brick is in Europe. The fact that most of the continent has four seasons and no earthquakes helps somewhat.
I lived in Germany six years. True most houses are masonry, including interior walls. It was explained that wood is very expensive there. Now in the United States around 1900 up until the late fifties some home were Terracotta structural block. I own one and every wall is block and plaster. The interior walls are bricked all the way from the ground up. The block is 6' deep with six cell in the block. The floor joist are hung onto the walls. Really solid. However a PITA to remodel. Much of the original wiring is embedded in the plaster. Too much to explain in this comment of how we remodeled and updated. The place is solid as can be. Quite, easy to heat and cool. A safe place in bad storm. Now that I know what the block appearance is from the outside, I still see a few older Terracotta structural block homes still in use in older areas of towns and cities. I found in the library doing research home insurance companies pushed this type of construction in the early part of the 1900's.
Yeah I think those houses are much much better built than the stick houses in America. And I think in America they do everything they can to make them as cheap as possible so there is more profit in the house. They dont even put ply wood up around the entire house. Only in engineered corners where it is required by law. Also, I love most of Europe's doors and windows. They are soooo rock solid. In America you could lean on it hard enough and it would break and open. =) Thanks for watching my videos. =) Eric
My house has concrete ceiling and flooring reinforced with steel rods with brick walls 40cm thick and corners are concrete beams reinforced with steel rods. my house foundation is 60cm below ground level and 60cm above ground level. my house stays fresh during summer time and warm during winter time.
Wooden houses look more light and fancy. With concrete building it is better to keep them simple and symmetric in order to build a good looking house. In Poland we build houses mostly from ceramic blocks or aerated concrete however the process is very complex, takes a lot of time. New houses are pretty "warm". You spend about a 1000 dollars a year for heating and cooling of 200m2 house. In our climate where we have pretty cold and wet winters and very hot summers it is better to have a house which accumulates energy. Plus wood is pretty expensive because we export most of it abroad. Concreate is cheaper. Plus there are some customs. After the WW2 most of the wooden houses were burned. When Germans burned house of my grandma she came there after 2 days and she cooked a meal on the wooden ruins of her house. Such stories shape peoples minds. People here build concreate houses because they think they can last longer and they can give it to children one day.
Inside wall insulation is an added cost if you want it and every house I’ve had had bathrooms and bedrooms soundproofed with Roxul insulation done by builder or myself. Exterior walls are all 2x6 not 2x4 studs.
Detached homes in Northern Europe are built basically the same as those in US, but the exterior walls are atleast twice as thick and windows are triple pane with integrated shades and ventilation. Typical exterior wall structure in Finland: wallpaper, gypsum board, 2x4”/5” & 8+”glass wool, gypsum board or some other board with some water proof lining outside, 0.5-1” ventilation space, exterior wall of wood panels or bricks&mortar. Interior walls are 2x4” with hefty drywall (no plywood) on both sides and maybe some insulation. Sound proofing depends mostly on quality of interior doors. Exterior doors only have 1 sturdy lock usually but the doors are very heavy and difficult to break. We also have homes built out of cinder blocks and logs, which are the most expensive ones. Cement is terrible for insulation and has other problems. Concrete elements are mostly used for apartment buildings due to structural strength and economics. South European countries get away with them in detached homes due to latitude, and Romania and other ex-USSR countries take the pain and live in bunkers because they’re still relatively poor.
Almost all homes in Florida are built with concrete blocks because of hurricanes. I think they are the best built homes in America. My home is super quiet and super solid thanks to this Contsruction method.
@@izoyt as a person who lives here I have to respectfully disagree. Almost all homes built in the last 20 years are built with concrete block, sure there are older homes that are stick built. Florida’s building codes have gotten stricter over that time.
I think a lot of the differences can be traced back to the rapid colonization. Wood was essentially free and plentiful, so it got used extensively. The legacy of this is that wood is the norm even if there are better materials for some uses. Truth is, well engineered wood used with good design and construction methods can make a very long lasting, safe and comfortable home. Will they last 500 years? Probably not, but 100 years is a reasonable expectation for something like the perfectwall system. If you use LVL lumber, zip sheathing and decking, a metal roof and fiber-cement exterior siding there is no good reason why it will not last 100 years with minimal maintenance if you get your flashing and foundation right. But on the subject of sound insulation, you are right on the money. Noise is one reason why I might build with concrete. I hate how much noise some of my neighbors make, but it is the price of cheap houses on small lots. Perhaps active noise canceling for houses will become a thing...
When I lived in Switzerland, I tried hanging up a shelf on the wall. 8 hours and an insane amount of noise later, I had drilled 8 holes in the cement to hang four measly shelves. Had I known the walls were concrete, I may have used adhesive!
Most Norwegian and Swedish houses (probably Finland too) are also made out of wood, but they all are made to sustain the weather. Another thing is that coastal houses (also wood) are built even stronger because of the wind from the sea. Usually in Norway at least, 2 story houses have the 1st floor reinforced, that could be with concrete or just stronger wood. It actually varies a bit, but in the end they all works against the elements.
No way a coastal house made out of wood can last. Sorry. Maybe there's something specific about Norway geography that shelters them. The fjords or something . The preference for wood is probably linked to difficulty to build out of heavy materials on incline specific to that geography. In alpine areas in my country it's mostly wood also. But you won't find a single one near the sea. And it's not north sea, it's black sea that has friendlier climate. It's about building fast and in difficult terrain more then about some qualities of wood vs masonry
@@georgeyoutube7580 Well travel here yourself then. I live here, so I see them daily. Just look at pictures if you really think that we build most of our houses with concrete by the sea. If you don't know what to look up try these: Lillesand, Grimstad, Lofoten, Risør, Lista, Mandal, or just "Norwegian coastal cities / towns" Only larger structures are made out of concrete or something similar. Even our oldest structures (Stave churches) is made out of wood, and they still stand, and they're from the Viking age.
@@Carlium it hit me now. Wood does not rot at low temperatures. So the exterior, even beaten by waves and sea mist can last more then in a warmer climate. So you are right. Anyway there has to be a major factor at play other then ... Our wood is longer and we use it better. I'm sure that's a factor but not the major factor to why your wooden houses last better
@@georgeyoutube7580 uhhh, wood here do in fact rot, but with good maintenance things can last for a very long time. Also drenching wood in salty water does actually make it last longer, because of the salt. We have a few techniques to make wood last longer, we're also using stronger wood that's been growing for years. Nowadays, we import some wood from Siberia, because that wood is extremely good and strong, it's so strong that it's almost maintenance free. I don't really know what you mean by "we have longer wood and use it better than you", that just sounds really arrogant, you didn't even explain how.... You also didn't explain what type of "wood". If you're talking about the human's "third leg", then yeah, sure.
Most higher end houses are built with some kind of masonry in Finland. Wooden framed houses are typically in the cheaper end of the the spectrum and I would never dare to buy one. There are so many horror stories. The only wooden construction that is safer from potential mold issues is [massive] log.
This is what shocks me on every single business trip to the USA - how third-world-style all houses are there, even in seemingly highly developed places like California. These houses are basically huts made of cardboard (nicknamed “drywall”) and wooden planks. No proper walls, no proper insulation (noise / thermal) etc. Quite often the insulation is so bad that you can see both AC and heating in use, both *on* *the* *very* *same* *day* as the weather changes. To me it looks as if those houses were engineered like PET bottles, to only last for one usage cycle and then be disposed of. They are designed to last for only a few decades between the time someone buys them and the time they die. Such houses are not meant to provide a long-term value to multiple generations of owners, let alone to the community around them. They just clutter humongous areas of misused land with worthless “architecture”, forming a car-dependent hellscape where people too young or too old to drive are trapped, where one can’t just walk to work or take (nonexistent) public transportation. But OTOH, everyone has a garage for 3+ cars … built out of de facto cardboard (“drywall”) and wooden planks. The more I see this, the more grateful I am for living in a place made of concrete and bricks, surrounded by shops and restaurants and covered by public transportation.
OTOH, my estimate on the price of a house like the one shown around 11:00 (supposedly for $600k), if it was to be built where I live, using proper materials like concrete and bricks, with a proper basement underneath etc. etc., would be around $2.5M+. So at least 4 times more. Yeah, it would be of a way higher quality overall, but then by convention mortgages don’t last only until the end of one’s life but also way past it. (Ask me how I know. 😆) As always, everything has its pros and cons.
I can guarantee the insulation works well enough that my home stays 70 degrees (room temperature) even when the winter temps have reached -50 degrees (-45 Celsius).
FYI, they make a higher quality drywall called sheet rock that has a sound dampening version. I think the maker of this video looked for the lowest quality mass produced homes possible. Any person in America can hire a construction company to build a home as solid and insulated as they are willing to pay for. We have every type of house you can imagine at every level of quality.
I was just in Sweden and you are right... I think its the builder and the money put into the house. In America, we are usually cheap and do things for as little as possible (myself included). It doesnt make for good houses usually. Not something that will last 200 years.... Thanks for the words and for watching my videos. Eric
Problem is what he’s showing as “typical US” isn’t “typical” of all of the US. That’s a development of cheap trash tract homes built as cheaply as possible, as fast as possible to maximize the developers profits. Higher end construction is the US is of a lot higher quality, features more brick, stone & much heavier lumber or in some cases steel frame construction. Our home built in 2000 features post and beam construction, concrete & stone foundation, standing seam metal roof, high end doors and windows, plastered walls (yeah, not punching a hole in those), solid wood interior doors, stone counters. Not all the US is tract home suburbia, our contractor was an old order Amish family that’s been building homes for over a century. The cabinets were all handmade as was a lot of the post & beam pieces & joint tenons. The iron brackets where made by a blacksmith, structural artwork.... home is 23 years old now, been thru several hurricane / tropical storm events and a derecho that featured near 100mph winds - no damage
Yes I always get aggravated by the American "diy" home modifications channels, demonstrating how easy it is to add for example some new wiring. I live in a concrete apartment building, every wall is concrete, exterior walls are heavy rebar reinforced concrete. Nailing something to a wall was done in the old days with something similar to a shotgun that was shooting a high grade steel nail into the wall. Today we have concrete drills that do the job but rewiring an apartment is usually extremely difficult at best. You also need a very good drill, I had a semiprofessional Black& Decker that gave up after 10 holes in such walls. Now I use a 2kwatt drill instead.
houses are still manufactured in the EU with a wooden frame. but also concrete blocks or cross-glued wood. wooden boards varying in thickness from 80 mm to 200 mm 3 meters high and 10-12 meters long. . the inner walls are mostly insulated to dampen sound
You're very courageous to walk around a building in construction. I once broke one of my feet's metatarsal bones by waling on a surface that wasn't ready, so my leg fell down through the floor
Our home was started in 1892. It is timber framed but this is hard wood, and the joints are strapped and bolted. I am glad to hear you like me insulate every wall. This helps with our heating and cooling 42C today and summer has not got here yet (Western desert, Western Australia). All windows are cyclone rated (5mm plate glass or better) with security deadlocks. I find it unbelievable your prices. We sold a lovely beachside home some time ago in Perth WA for $A675,000. Why do Americans pay so much for something that probably has a 25 year life span? The home I was brought up in was built in 1937 as is good today as then, although being in London is probably in the million pound range. The homes you showed us are lovely but rubbish!!
it depends when the house was built in the USA and also the developer. My Grand father's house was built in the 1920's and is solid as a rock. and has things like pantry, dining room, living room, reception room, porch, breakfast room, linen closet etc etc..... The houses built today have none of that, dont even have an entryway, or a coat closet. Now they put the kitchen in the living room so they dont have to build walls or pay for doors. They are even getting rid of bathtubs.
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I've lived in Europe for 15 years and immediately noticed that there were almost no firetrucks going to home fires. That is when I realized that most of these homes are built with iron beams, brick, rock and cement with clay roofs. These homes last forever and require minimum maintenance and are handed down to their families from generation to generation.
But they are sooo tiny.
@@ph3733 In Europe, you generally don't buy more than you need. Everything else is just empty floor space that you don't use, which means you pay a ton of money for nothing but air. It's like buying a massive off-road 4x4 because there are leaves on your driveway sometimes. It's pointless.
Brick and mortar houses also have their problems to be honest. I live in a 70 year old building and just about now all the old aluminium electric wires are givin out. Rewiring a brick and mortar building is hell, you have to literally excavate all the old wires from the walls. But to be honest it has to be done once every two generations maybe. Otherwise water tend to be a problem, pipes breaking inside of walls, ground water coming up in walls etc, but that's quite rare and fixable. Roofs become leaky after 30-40 years mainly at the base of the chimneys. It all depends on build quality of course. We own a 100 year old house which has no problems at all and will be livable for another 100 years after minor renovations. I live in Europe of course.
@@ph3733average in my country in Europe is 2150 square feet houses. I think it is optimum for a family here because we rarely have more than two kids, usually one. My house is too big for two of us now when our daughter moved out. And even when she was here one room was empty except when guests stayed over night. There is really no need for bigger space.
Steel houses and concrete houses are available in the US, but you would have to be your own contractor.
In american movies we can see actors fighting and breaking walls with fists and legs .We invite them in România to break our brick walls 😂
Viorel, some of them had been and get so ashamed of not breaking any wall, that felt the tremendous need to go running naked through Sarmisegetusa, if you recall it, &some mass-media presented it like the greates thing to do if your a VIP.😂😂😂 Expecting now for Mr.&Mrs. Smith to give it a try.😏
In Europe, Eric, we have that kind of entrance doors and windows cause we don't have your trully great Second Amendment. Even so, the theeves get specialised on opening those sofisticated doors, too.
@@claudiatalmaciu8906 😂😂😂
Same in France ! My childhood home had 60cm thick stone walls, build in 1689 and still going strong today ! I don't know who decided to build a house with 60cm x 40cm x 60cm blocks of stone but he had a great idea !
I invite them to break the roman walls in Italy that survived 2000 years of war and earthquakes.
Mor lol 😂
Compared to the way houses are built in northern Europe, US houses are glorified construction sheds.
Their major upside is that they are larger, if you care for more room. here in europe, we have less mansions and far more terraced housing. traditionally only the notables and rich farmers had large housing here, all the rest had small working class housing (or even slums if you go back 100 years) I grew up in a large house, but i can't afford it myself, and we only got the house because my dad was a minister (vicar) and that meant you were 'important' and got a large house. when I grew up in modern times the old class system was long gong, but the vicar still got his large house because it was build in 1908 and was still the vicar house obviously. our yard was the size of a football field.
A village would never be able to build such a large house today for the clergy, for various reasons, but back then they could.
Now i live in a much smaller house
@@Blackadder75cause in europe not everyone needs a big house. we also pay more taxes because land value is higher (most of the time) while in the US the suburbs are subsidized, making is cheaper to buy a big house, but after a couple of years the land value raises and it all becomes unaffordable and also the city needs to start maintaining all the car infrastructure and long distances of underground infrastructure. the Suburbs are a burdening scene for the people.
Houses in Europe are overbuilt because they go to war with each other periodically.
Concrete makes it so easy to change them NOT!
@@bradjohnson4787change what?
The lack of internal sound insulation is one thing in a single-family house - but in apartment blocks it contributes significantly to tension and fights between neighbours - there isn't enough awareness of how stressful noise pollution is.
that's what happens when a 7 story building is allowed to be fully constructed out of wood framing. in most parts of the world it's required to build with concrete for buildings those heights.
My father lives in small town in a building, second floor... middle of the building. You can clearly hear what people around you are talking, especially if TV is turned on! Noise is more than annoying and imagine noise all around you, non stop, with muddy deep noise made by neighbours... Concrete or wood - it does not matter. Design matters ;)
you know what? that is a REALLY good point that I have never once thought about. I mean I have always been irritated by annoying noisy neighbors but I have never once considered that it could have been at least minimized by better building.
No wonder when tornado strikes the houses were totally destroyed.
As a Scandinavian that is what really surprises me. This apparent lack of proper insulation. There's plenty of wood houses here too. And fairly thin plaster walls between rooms inside a house or an apartment are very common. But you'll never hear your neighbors unless they play very loud music or are having a fight or are very noisy in some way.
There's nothing wrong with wood if you do it the right way. Most of northern Europe have wood buildings. These houses are very poorly insulated. In Sweden and Norway, walls on newly constructed houses are usually 25-35 cm (10-14 inches). It costs more but saves alot in heating and cooling. Wood floor in the bathroom is straight up illegal in most European countries, it would be impossible to get home insurance or financing if you did that.
Wood flooring is not recommended in Australia in were areas. Need to choose ceramic tile, laminate or vinyl flooring.
@@renatewest6366You might have trouble with insects in Australia? We don't have that in Scandinavia. It's just too cold, they wouldn't survive.
In the case of the bathroom / wet-area: is the issue about the construction of the floor using wood (beams) or only the covering of the floor in wood (panel / strips)? @@renatewest6366
You can absolutely put wooden flooring in the bathroom. Some woods are naturally water resistant. maritime pine, beech, walnut, merbau, teak, etc...
wood rich in tannin should be avoided!
It's VERY expansive and insurance companies don't like it because a faulty installation or poor maintenance can have serious consequences...
There are also very good imitation wood tiles.
It depends on the climate, wood tents to be a rather stable material in colder dry climates, in humid and wet climates it tends to rot fast, and one of the key elements independent of building material is the insulation!
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In Sweden most family houses are built with wood, however there are some significant difference in how the frame is built, the required distance between the houses, and the built in fire resistance in the walls.
building codes in the US also require fireproof insulation and drywall in houses though.
The same here in Norway.
Wood framing is becoming popular here in Spain. But the size and quality od the beams, foundations, insulation, windows, fireproofing, plumbing and electrical. The fire and weight stresses and all that, have to match iron and cement. No mattwr how youe house is built in Europe, it has to pass rigurous standards or the builder is sued to obvlivion. That's why it costs 30/40% more to build a house on average.
THere are standards for house separation in the U. S. Most European nations, I suspect Sweden to be no different, have lots of row housing.
@@inyobill
For sure, but there are different fire classification of the separating walls depending on how close the buildings are to each other.
The minimum separation for a stand alone standard house is at least 9 meters to the nearest building on the neighboring property. With that distans your outer walls need to be a so called B30-wall (30 minutes fire resistanse against burn through) Closer than that you need a wall that can withstand fire for a longer time, for instance a B60 or similar.
If you have buildnings in chain that share one or more walls, the shared wall(s) probably have to be a fireproof like class A2 or even A1. Everything according to Boverket - the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning.
Finally an American with common sense. This video addressed so many questions I had about North American houses and also validated my concerns
They make them as cheap as they can... Its kinda sad... Dont get me wrong, some europe houses have some areas I would change as well, but at least they arent built of match sticks. =)
Thanks for watching and for your comments. =)
Eric
The houses in US are like film sets; they are just for appearence, to look good on camera and in the eyes of the neighbours.
Houses in Europe are made with reinforced concrete structures (the whole house is placed on a big 100% concrete basement) with brick walls and "thermopane" windows and doors (industry term for double- or triple pane windows).
houses are not reinforced concrete everywhere. US houses also have concrete basements and brick walls with 2 panes or sometimes even 3 panes of glass. it really differs based on location, budget, etc
European houses need to be build strong due to the bombings that would come sonner or later. European just LOVE each other. Come on people, got to live like in Romania!!!😁😁😁😁
Little to no steel tension elements in walls. I have seen lintels with no steel installed.
As a child, I was always impressed by the mighty hurricanes able to lay waste to whole towns just by passing by. It took a while to realize, that its not only the strength of the storm but also those flimsy wooden constructions. Another weakness are those "tin roofs" built from large tightly connected plates. In Europe, a large majority of the houses are constructed from interlocked solid bricks, concrete and steel rebar. Prefab houses started to appear in the 1950s but even their walls are far more solid than what you are showing us. Small but comparably heavy roof tiles can be lifted by a storm but it is far more difficult to generate enough pressure difference between top and bottom to lift the whole roof.
I just want to say something. Thank you for the explanation, it is very helpful and true and because of that i want to add that not all houses are small. I lived with my grandparents, not rich but typical family in a brick house that had 3 rooms because something happened to it. It originally had 5 and most our neighbours had 4 to 7 rooms. Plus sheds for animals, sheds for cereals, basements and so on. Again not rich families, but old houses from grandparents.
Only partially true. Most of a hurricanes damage is done by the storm surge. A wall of water 20 to 30 feet high moving at speed doesn't care how your house is built. It's gone.
Properly constructed frame houses fare just fine in hurricanes. My brother's frame house has been through a number of major storms with _no_ damage.
in germany nearly every new family home is a solid building made out of bricks (mostly ytong, sandlime or normal bricks). The ceilings are mostly reinforced concrete (or premade parts that are completed on site) and sometimes the outer walls are concrete too.
Good luck trying to survive an earthquake in a concrete house
@@KennyboyGM there are no earthquakes here. If they were you can build earthquake proof.
In the Netherlands too. I work in the building sector and this would not fly in Europe. Especially with the new 2024 regulations that are coming. If you look at the amount of insulation we need it's so much more than the us. The climate is different but still.
@@Adidas_der_schwanger_war Pour reinforced concrete pillars in the corners and more. That's how Balkans do it. Ytong even has a special brick with a hole on one side exactly for this purpose.
There's good reasons for that: the summers in Germany are BRUTAL. You build to your environment, which is smart. Been visiting there are you have such wonderful ideas about how to build houses and the small details that I think should be more common.
I agree with you. I live in a 1954 detached house here in the UK and it is constructed of breeze blocks. It has cavity walls and all interior walls are constructed with breeze blocks. It is immensely solid. One advantage is that sound is very well dampened so the sound of the town or city you are in is greatly reduced in the house. Also as you say sound transmission within the house is greatly reduced.
probably that's why tornados make a total mess in US ...houses literally fly
in Europe bricks, concret or stone were most used. recently big developers started to build residential zones like those in US, using cheaper and less durable materials
LOL A joke in America is that we never had Tornados until we invented trailers and stick houses. LOL =)
Thanks for watching.
Eric
Bro tornados will destroy everything a brick wall is not gonna stop it
That scene in jhon wick 1 were he shoots thru his wall to kill someone would definatly not work here in europe
In America New construction is built to withstand a tornado,the problem is the older construction, that wasn’t built with todays code and specs…
Not all homes in America are built only with wood… in the mid west where a lot of tornados happen houses nowadays have all a basement built with reinforced concrete…
Honestly I’m a lot more concerned with a fire burning down a home then with tornados
Its not worth to try to reduce tornado damage cos it's so highly improbable, it hits in a narrow area. Houses in Europe will survive better by making the damage area even narrower but in direct path only load bearing wall structures can survive. Reinforced concrete load bearin wall, usually prefab. Concrete frames may survive but the load is on the frame, the wall doesn't get that compression induced strenght bonus and if the wall is breached bye bye. It doesn't have to be breached from outside, just the wind blowing in trough windows and doors ... no compression, no load ... no strenght. It will be inflated like a balloon by wind
Here from Twitter and South Africa!
Thanks so much for watching and sharing my travels with me. =)
Eric
Houses are built more cheaply in the USA, but they are easier to buy and usually larger than what you get in Europe.
This is why nearly half of Europeans live in apartments. I'd rather have a big, cheap house than a 100-year old apartment.
Nice and interesting video.
Here in Poland houses are generally smaller, most of them between 100 - 150 square meters (about 1100 - 1600 sq ft) of living area. On the ground floor there is entrance hall separated from other rooms, usually kitchen is located at the front and living room in the backyard. There is also one bathroom, technical room and often one additional room and garage. Bedrooms and another bathroom are usually located in the attic.
Walls are buid of ceramic blocks or AAC blocks (eg. Ytong or similar), wchich are insulated outside with 20 cm (about 8 inches) of EPS (most often) or mineral wool. Foundation is concrete, ceiling of ground floor is reinforced concrete slab or Teriva slab, also made of concrete. In single-store houses ceiling is sometimes made of wood, but there are no additional rooms upstairs then. Roof structure is usually wooden, insulated with 30cm (12 inch) of mineral wool and covered with sheet metal, concrete tiles or ceramic tiles.
I often see, that doors and windows in America look weak. Here we use in new and modernized houses 3-pane windows with thicker frame and better locks, which usually open inward and tilt. Doors are also like you said, more robustly constructed with burglar-proof locks, and insulated.
I also noticed that heating systems are different, in Poland we use radiators or underfloor heating, which both use hot water. And we don't have AC in most homes
Americans are using forced Air systems, it's the most stupid system out there ever, gap between floors and doors could be up to 30 mm, which in Europe it's 3 mm. Just plain stupid.
Same in Russia but here is more popular light beton like Ytong gasocilicat (газосиликат) and more homea are within 100-120 sq m. BTW I know one polish arch project firm Z500 or smth I built a home by its plan Z7, still good
@@Ivan_the_Ripper with the current situation as right now, I would be ashamed to acknowledge that I come from ruZZnia. Does putler let's you use Internet over there?!
Good thing large earthquakes are rare in northern Europe, eh? Actually, building requirements would be a lot g=different. Frame houses would be more common because of the cost of building masonry that will withstand earthquake forces.
@@RomanTrollanski Forced air systems are generally more common in the southern US states where cooling in the summer is considerably more expensive and important than heating in the winter. Radiant floor heating is common further north. Radiator heating also pretty common. Usually with wood or gas burning stoves as backup.
Did the Americans not learn about the 3 little pigs. House of sticks gets blown down.
There is plenty of space for proper insulation in American homes. I live in the northern Midwest, nearly dead center of North America, not far from Canadian border. Winter temperature can occasionally get down to -50 degrees Fahrenheit/ -45 degrees Celsius. The insulation, heating, and air conditioning that every home has can keep the house at the right temperature. In my state I have seen temperatures from -60 degrees to 107 degrees in the same year. Home stayed at a nice 70 degrees year round.
Wood is not as accessible in Europe vs. in the US. That's why masonry is primarily used there. A properly built wood home can last well over 100 years. The problem with many large US home builders is they try to make homes as cheaply as they can to compete with other builders, thus a race to the bottom as far as quality construction. Water management is crucial to preserve wood homes and I've seen many large builder homes with water damage in as little as a year because of cheap windows and poor flashing.
Wood homes are better in seismic areas because wood can flex. Not as good, however in wildfire areas, like California, but that's another story - when government refuses to manage forests properly,
Well here in Europe we have houses which are still inhabited which are thousand years old, I rather doubt Wood can stand that, but to be fair, we have 500 year old houses with wood fortification as well! but they are mainly stone with some wood in between!
No way a wooden house will last more than 50 years. You buy a house to leave to your son and by the time he inherits it it's scrap.
@@gplusgplus2286 Depends on how it's built. There are 2 million homes in the US over 100 years old, so you obviously are wrong.
Basically, in Europe, if you can get through it with an axe, that is not a house by definition.
As a European, my biggest wtf moment about American houses is the fact that they don't have floor drains and floor to ceiling tiles in bathrooms. It's a very logical thing to do in a room where you have water. Don't even get me started on wallpaper in a bathroom.
You can't say "European houses" because the building method in Scandinavia (Denmark/Norway/Sweden/Finland) is so different than houses in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany, and again different from houses in the Mediterranean like Italy, Spain, and Greece. And even within one country, the building method is different. Like northern Germany and Bavaria (southern Germany), France, or Italy... I assume you can find something similar in the US?
And I've never seen multiple locks on front doors here in Norway. My door has one sturdy keylock beneath the handle.
@@KAFNOR Polish person here - mine has 2 locks, there are anti-burglary versions to buy on the market but you'd probably have to pay alot more for those.
Exactly! I am in St Petersburg Florida, we have mostly concrete block construction as we are along the coast, on a peninsula. Some builders use wood frame on second floors as it is cheaper but if you are from Florida or lived here for 15-years, you prefer all block construction and hip roofs. The panhandle of Florida and northern Florida used a lot of all frame construction in the past as they mistakenly believed hurricanes don't hit that part of the state, along came a few storms to end that thinking! I was there after Hurricane Michael in 2018 seeing brand new frame construction destroyed while block buildings remained. We cannot flee everything the weather is bad, we need to build so we can stay in place for safety.
@@KAFNORhere in Spain with crime paranoia fed by the media, you can start to see them, plus videosurveillance.
Yeah in the US you can get various build types of house. I have a brick on block cape cod (basically cinder blocks with a brick covering exterior) but it was built in 1959. Wood frame is the over whelming majority of modern construction due to price and alot of the time its the same builder building all the houses in a community/subdivision. You can get something other than wood frame, its just gonna cost alot more and have to find a builder to do it.
Wood built does not equal bad. In Finland, we have tons and tons of wood built houses and we have long tradition of living in wooden houses. We're even building giant office buildings out of wood now days. And we still consider them way WAY higher quality than houses in USA. It's about what you do with the wood.
But we do NOT live 5 feet of each other, we prefer to live 5 MILES away from each other if possible.
What I noticed in house make overs that there is no insulation in the interior (dry) walls. In France you always put in phonic insulation between the different rooms. Also we use metal structures for dry walls instead of wood.
Well, my first impression was how HUGE everything is! Large rooms. Enormous garages. Plus private area around the houses. Streets wide enough for a highway. It's hard to imagine how much space an average city should take, compared with one built of apartment buildings.
For the last 10 minutes you've been repeating yourself. We haven't seen the inside of a house you keep just saying that the American houses are built with wood and destruction. Yeah, we know that and then you start coding over and get how much we are yard. Space they have for black. And then you show another house just with the frames up. What's the point of your video? I'm not sure. We all know the difference between construction and wood built homes and the difference between the cement home
Exijan mejor calidad en la construcción de sus casas. Les están cobrando mucho por algo que no lo vale y encima no es seguro. No solo es que estén hechas de madera sino que están mal hechas. Parecen un set de película. Pueden quemarse, las balas pueden atravezar las paredes y techos. Y ni siquiera sus puertas son seguras. Con razón hay tanto crimenes.! Totalmente inseguro
reason for houses made of wood is that they are way way cheaper than same house made of bricks, plus climat in us allow build that way
there is a lot of hate for wood here, but in reality, American houses are easily reconfigured later. You can't do that with stone. Also, American houses are designed to go up fast. This is important when developing a new area. You talk about things coming into a neighborhood prebuilt like it's a bad thing, but that's super efficient. I want to also point out that what you said about doors depends on the location in the US. Someone in New York City is probably going to have a lot of locks on their door as opposed to someone living in a rural area who probably doesn't even lock their door. I think "better" here is not accurate at all; it's just different.
I just moved from an apartment built in 1801 to an apartment built in 2018. Not even the non-bearing walls in the old apartment was this thin.
You seriously have to visit more countries in Europe. In the Nordic countries, we build almost exclusively with wood, except Denmark, where wood is luxury. Countries with big forests will use wood because wood is superior to concrete in all aspects I can think of. If concrete had been better, don't you think we would have used it? It's not like the price is any higher in countries with firest vs. countries without.
Nowadays, basically wood - but back before the 1990's, the Phoenix area used to build in brick and concrete block that was sometimes stuccoed. I had a new-construction house (suburban Phoenix) that was built in 2001 that was a thin veneer of concrete over chicken wire and styrofoam but now I live in a place that's stucco over concrete block (built 1975) The goal here nowadays, of course, is to maximize profits by selling houses that disintegrate right around the time your 30-year mortgage ends and the water runs out, LOL. It should be noted for our European viewers, though, that regions in the US do vary. New desert homes in the US may be different from old desert homes or even new homes in other parts of the country. In Tennessee, for example, many new homes are brick - REAL brick.
You help people understand why the Terminator could go through walls in USA easily.
In Germany the outside walls with insulation measure 20 inches. They build either bricks with included insulation or concrete/sand-lime brick with insulation on the outside or aerated concrete bricks.
The new windows have 3 panes of glass with vacuum in between. They can easily have a weight of 120 pounds.
The roof truss is still made from wood, but wood is actually quite expensive in Germany.
Most people won't be able to afford new houses and the old ones are also massive but less well insulated, which causes higher heating bills.
Imagine if the Romans built such flimsy structures..................... There would be nothing to see!!!
I think it's a sign of a lack of vision and a lack of a future, or even a lack of the sense of present or past when people think it's normal to build your house the same way you would build a shed or a barn.
Depending where you are here in Europe (I'm in the Netherlands) there are plenty areas where the houses where one company has done the build which are basically modular designs. They tend to be fundamentally bricks though and will last a while. In the 70s there were some poorer houses built on estates meant for aspiring working-class and middle-class people, which weren't that great and had a lot of wood construction. Creaky stairs and upper floors. So they felt like a shed. Some of these are already gone. The house I grew up in (in the UK) had a slate roof put on when it was built in 1928 and still has the same roof.
Yu wrote this in your description: "So we dont have gaps, or caulking mistakes or screws sticking out.." Well, you do, because I've seen them, though I wouldn't expect them to be standard. It's the same for Europe.
As a 16-year Chandler resident, it wasn't always this way. Greed pushed developers to build more and more in tighter locations. We had a 1/4 acre lot in a 1800 sq. ft. house built in 2001. When we started seeing single family houses built like this, we moved back to the East Coast.
Where on the east coast are houses built further apart?
A lot of people dont realize we europeans have been building things for thousands of years, thousands of years of experience, nothing can replace that 😎
I agree 100%. Our standards go to the cheapest builder and the easiest fastest way to make a buck. Its kinda sad. I travel the world most of my days and Europe's houses are 100% better than Americans... You have it right GankMAn. =)
Thanks for watching my video.
Eric
Americans are europeans that migrated there. Houses are build with materials readily available. Houses in europe are built for multiple generations for their families to live in. While modern Americans focus on ammnidities with cheap resources. Because they often move withing 10-20 years. Houses in the states were often built stronger back in the day.
We are in New Zealand and my husband is a house builder. Its interesting that there are as many similarities as there are differences. We have many timber frame houses as well as steel frames. We also have many different claddings. A lot of what is built is directed by building regulations which have been tightened in the last 30 years. Single, double. Triple glazing is directed by the regulations dependent on location as is insulation. We also have rib raft floors developed specifically because of earthquakes. In the Christchurch earthquake brick houses did not hold up well at all. Timber frames have to have metal strapping, metal joist hangers and plates. Plaster board has to be specified for wet areas, for load bearing. Exterior cladding must be clearly specified as to how it is attached. We also have specified council inspections at specific stages, and they can halt the build if necessary. We also have similar developments, but it is a developer who prepares and markets the land, and it is sold as individual sections. Construction companies may buy multiple sections and build one showhome to market and sell the other sites. Individuals buy sections and get a builder to build or self build. Its usually a mix. The other thing I noticed is how old fashioned the build was especially for the price. The front door handle for example. What about keyless entry? Having one builder means that the houses are all pretty much the same. Thats what it is like with UK group builders too.
Here in Sweden, we got a lot of wood and our stand alone houses are built out of wood. Wood is an excellent material to build houses with if the climate is suitable for it. Stone/Cement houses would be a nightmare to heat here in the cold climate but an excellent choice for hotter climate.
Snacka skit. Stenhus är bättre än trä speciellt nya hus byggda i lättbetong med isolering inuti blocken. På sommaren kyler väggarna ned huset och på vintern värmer det upp.
actually wood is the worst material - it is worse than concrete, clay bricks or aac as a structural material, it is worse than any type of rock wool, xps/fps or cellulose as an insulation, an costs 3-5-10 times more than any other material here.
@@EasyGameEhkey Word Is here. Diferent conditions diferent needs, diferent solutions.
Wood is better for health. It makes a better indoor climate.
@@88marome If you want the best indoor climate, use clay for your walls. It not only helps regulating the humidity indoors ( that's what wood does - provided it's actually real wood and nothing which off-gases its glue and fire-blocking chemicals 😜), but clay is also a perfect insulator and on top of that, it doesn't burn (and if you allergic against dust mites, you will LOVE a clay home, because those don't like clay).
Reminds me of a remark by Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian film director ("Andrei Rublov", "Mirror", etc.) He noted in his diary that in American films set decorations, houses specifically, seemed really badly executed, looked wrong on film. But then he visited America and saw that this is what American houses really looked like 🙂
Correct! Russians call drywall plaster-cardboard and never considered it a material to bulid from. It's for decor, maybe for hiding some pipes behind, maybe set/stage fake world.
Russians use concrete, bricks, historically - solid timber (whole logs, not 2*4 in) and typically bulid their walls thick.
Not long ago, wood like pine was cheaper than plastic or anything, it was your default cheap stuff.
Note: we have a BAD climate and don't have earthquakes.
@@annasolovyeva1013 I have seen those concrete monstrosities called apartment buildings in Russia. The look like cold grey sterile prisons. Felt really sorry for the people who had to live in them.
@@braemtes23 the difference is American homes are bulit to SELL good and look good. Cutting costs on their actual structure and facilities.
Those apartment blocks are civil engineered for comfortable living in our climate - but not designed using the art of architecture.
That's the basis of a commieblock - we don't need our home to be pretty. We need it to be functional. And affordable. And basically - that's it.
@@braemtes23😅 comunist apartments are great actualy and they build neighbourhood with everything, school, market 😊
Here in Serbia, 25 cm concrete or brick walls are the standard everywhere. Some people build 37-40 cm outer walls of brick or concrete. An average house of 100 square meters without a garage will cost you around 40,000 euros. And the foundations are crazy, usually 1 meter deep, the standard is 700 cm, but my house is built on a 1.4 meter foundation with a 20 cm thick concrete floor as standard. ALL electrical and plumbing are inside the walls with a ceiling of 15 cm concrete as standard but usually 20 cm. Such houses usually last 4-5 family generations.
Commonly called it bricks and mortar in the UK
Well on the flip side in NL you get very little space wise for your money. The quality may be better but for 600k USD / 550 EUR you get a 80-90 m^2 space (perhaps 25%? of the houses here). Quality vs quantity perhaps.
Why have a solid front door? Easier to be kicked in by the police, HOA or tax collector. It's not like the house is actually YOURS or anything.
Houses in the UK are traditionally made out of brick. New energy efficient houses are starting to be made out of wood, but they're far more expensive. Windows in the UK have a much larger gap between the two pains to improve the insulation. I'm very surprised at the lack of outdoor space - most British people would rather have a garden than a large garage but I suppose that's just a cultural difference.
It does depend on the development, though, and the region. I'm actually surprised by how little yard space there is in this development as well. In California, you rarely see buildings built out of brick. Some may have a fake brick facade, but this is because actual brick tends to separate at the mortar and collapse in earthquakes. Wood definitely excels in this regard.
Much of Arizona where this town is located is a desert environment. Perhaps the residents may be able to grow a cactus, but not maintain an English-style garden. Summertime temperatures and sunshine often reach a point where you can fry an egg on the top of your automobile.
Lived all over the U.S. and never seen such tiny yards and close neighbors ..these are new constructions in a hot climate, thrown up cheaply and crammed together by greedy developers. They are a poor example of the typical established home here.
Wood being more energy efficient is a myth... Any construction method can be made efficient, is just easier an cheaper to do with brick and cement or clay. (If done well)
Due to the changing climates in the US, WOOD homes are preferred. i live in the pacific NW, bought a new build in 2020. my house expands in the summer when there are days when its between 85-110 and in the winter when it drops to 35-51 degrees. Do i get more paint chips, cracks and nail pops? yes but that taught me how to do my own home maintenance. PNW also means standard gas fireplace, but AC optional. 2264 square feet alley style home, garage in the back with a small side yard runnig the lenght of the house. I absolutely love it! only thing i would change is the layout on the 2nd floor because with 2200 square feet the couldve added a fourth bedroom instead i got 3 and a 50% of a room known as a niche. can't wait to change the layout to get a 4th room upstairs
I'm gonna throw my grain of salt in there. I live in Canada and our homes are built mostly like the american ones. But my in-laws are french, so I visit France often.
Yes, building are made of concrete and steel beams and all which is excellent against fire, but some things I noticed in the last few years comparing our house vs my friends and in-laws' is that repairs are way cheaper, less daunting, and less messy with american-style homes than "most" (different countries have different building codes and all, so I'm sure others are easier) european houses built out of concrete. Our homes are also able to withstand water damage "better" (there's still damage, but you see it's there and you can repair it quickly). Whereas almost every region I've been in France so far, buildings have a lot of degratation, a lot of mold and water issues. And since it's costly and messy, people don't want to repair, so they patch things up badly. Or it becomes too big of an issue to correct easily, but since the building was concrete, they failed to see it beforehands.
Now, both the american and european builds are constantly being updated; I've seen new european construction with the same framework as the american ones, but in steel. I've also seen european adopt wooden framing for their house. It mostly depends at this point on what's cheaper for each countries and region to build and the meteorological conditions where you live.
I wouldn't say "European" houses. Houses in Spain are built to keep the heat out, while houses in Belgium (where I live) are built to keep the warmth in. Spanish houses usually have smaller windows and often a roof that is wider than the house so you don't get direct sunlight inside the house. The roofs are also flatter (like in your video) because it never snows. But indeed most houses are made of brick walls and concrete ceilings. Only the roof frame is made of wood. The thing is... a house is expensive, so we build it to last ;-)
Apart from the houses there is probably more difference between American and European urbanisation. We hardly have purely residential areas with no services whatsoever (shops, cafe, school, ...)
very nice video, thank you.
I have been several times in the US for personal and business reasons. Every time I noticed the significantly lower quality of US houses. I work in the building products industry so its quite obvious for me. But I think the reasons are simple. Everything comes with the standards that Governments and authorities impose. I know, Americans do not like rules and regulations from Governmental bodies but as a matter of fact, sometimes its needed and it does good.
Europeans don't build houses in higher quality because we are more clever or because we like to spend more money on a house. Higher energy costs and stricter building codes require to build better houses. As simple as that.
We exhibited several times at the Int. Builders Show in Las Vegas with our STEICO wall and roof structures that we manufacture. The interest was high but it barely resulted into business because most of the contractors and builders wanted to stick to their simple stick-frame buildings.
In Germany I would say its relatively easy nowadays to build a house with a (almost) net-zero energy balance, meaning the house produces as much energy (through solar panels or thermal pumps) as it consumes
Whats sad is that even multi family buildings are constructed this way in the US and it’s no wonder you can hear your neighbors. I lived in a New York City high rise building
Solid concrete walls and floors, where my upstairs neighbor had to drop a brick or a heavy dumbbell for us to hear it below. People who only know these wood framed home love dunking on apartment dwellers because they think that their privacy is being sacrificed. They don’t know any better. If an apartment building is built properly your peace and privacy wouldn’t be be an issue. Now that more apartments are being built because homes are unaffordable this problem is just going to multiply.
Thank you for sharing this video. I had no idea what firemen meant by 'light construction'. The cement Volvo sounds much better now.
I don’t know if it’s the same elsewhere, but where I lived in Mississippi, we had problems with shifting foundations due to it being a former riverbed. Can’t really build concrete houses there as it will just crack the walls over time while wood flexes. Even if things do crack, drywall is much easier to replace.
There’s reasons for everything existing and if you have a simple solution, it’s probably wrong. America is a very different beast than Europe, and applying European solutions doesn’t always work here. Not saying Euro houses are bad by any means, just that different areas have different needs and constraints that need to be met.
Videos like these assume that California and Phoenix AZ are where all Americans live. In the upper Midwest we build like our Scandinavian ancestors. Thick concrete for our basements and the walls lined with bricks, not to mention thick insulation to withstand the cold. I’m not sure how to explain it, but we build more sturdily with the wood we use.
Part of the problem is California gets earthquakes, so bricks are an unsafe material to build with here due to their inability to flex. Wood structures have the ability to flex without collapsing.
I like the american style, but I woun´t like to pay their heating bill with European prices for natural gas. ^^
PS: your garages are also wood framed and have common walls with the rest of the house. In South Africa if you have a garage under the same roof as the house, by law you have to have a double brick firewall between it and the house in case of fire, so if a fire starts in the garage the house won't burn down
The sole benefit of of building houses in the usa is that setting a Wi-Fi app is easy without concrete walls. in the UK in contrast setting up Wi-Fi is quite difficult because the Wi-Fi signal won’t penetrate the concrete walls
You'll see very different houses pending where you are in Europe. Go north and there is plenty of wood used with concrete pour as base and they are great houses with good insulation. If anything I'd say northern countries have been going greener as trend using more wood than before to point even some apartment buildings use wood as their main material today. You can get pretty good noise cancellation even with wood houses as long as you have different density materials layered to absorb some of the sound(or separate noise cancellation panels), but obviously it's an extra expense. It honestly wouldn't even be that big of an expense on houses of that size to invest in inner walls a bit more especially for big construction company, but obviously companies penny pinch where they can while in EU construction standards are generally much higher/stricter. Personally I think EU has gone too far with construction standards today as they don't always account different region elements fairly enough across EU so some places have to go overboard with stuff they realistically don't even need with their environment, but that's just my opinion of course. Part of the problem with modern NA houses is that they aren't built to last. That means more repairs and re-building for companies to sell. I'm sure part of it is just penny pinching in general, but on another hand so much of everything has been done/built in last 20-30 years was made to be consumed(by that I mean stuff is not made to last or not made to be repaired) which has been wicked direction overall so you would just keep buying new whatever item we talk about.
We don't have strong wood in South Africa so wood framed houses are a rarity and frowned on by insurance companies. Most of our homes are brick and concrete with tiled or steel roofs. I've never understood why the US builds such flimsy houses even in hurricane areas, where they just collapse and blow away. Also, our foundations are deep and wide concrete footings with a raised slab on top, usually a few steps higher than ground level in case of floods. American houses look fancy but are actually what we would consider substandard
In Europe we use 2x4 only for non load bearing internal walls, but here the entire house seems to rest on these sticks.
Wood is strong and can flex, but still an external wall of just 4 inches isn't much, not enough room to put proper insulation in, poor sound deadening and just a small miscalculation with your sit on lawn mower ends up inside the house.
My house from 1932 in the Netherlands is made of 1 foot thick brick cavity walls, so two brick walls with a 4 inch cavity to keep the inner surface dry from the cold and wet winter time.
I recently added 5 inches of insulation on the outside which is rendered over, making the total wall thickness almost 18 inches! Thick window frames with tripple glazing are fitted.
I live next to a busy highway, but you can barely hear it inside the house when all is totally quiet in the house.
It's saves about 60% on my heating bill, and also less need for cooling in the summer.
In new houses the external insulation with rendering, panelling or brick slips covering is the standard now across Europe, with the load bearing walls being made either of concrete slabs or blocks, aerated concrete or lime/sand blocks 18-20 inches thick, internal non load bearing walls are mainly made with aerated concrete or gypsum blocks 3,5 or 4 inches thick. In some countries like the UK 2x4 timber stud walls are preferred for internal walls, but sound insulation is compulsory in these, to prevent someone next to the bathroom hearing how large the dump was.
Yeah i knew americans prefer to built this way.. is crazy to me cause cause its very hazardous you got to think long term... i'm romanian and my house is built from ACC (Autoclaved aerated concrete) and its a very common material here it keep the house worm in the harsh winters here and cold in the very hot summers we have. It's fire resistant and only my roof is made of wood, the common temperatures here are 98.6° Fahrenheit in the summer and i don't need an ac for that! just cause the insolation of that material is great and in the winter we have -4 Fahrenheit. Loved the video :D keep them coming !
In America, a very hot summer is between 110-120 degrees and a very cold winter is 60 degrees below 0. Your insulation would not be sufficient here.
Hi from Portugal. Loved you video
Houses at America have I believe significant advantages on buiding time. Wood per se also possesses very good insulation characteristics.
At south of Europe wood rotts easily when exposed to elements, thus the preference for brick and rock. treating wood or dense woods are just too expensive.
Inner walls are nowadays mostly drywalls, with exception of structuring walls, still brick walls. The cement slabs on above groung floors weight a lot requiring supporting walls.
Regards walls standing forever most houses require a deep recover after ~30 year of use which is is costly, replacement of electrical wiring, piping, insolation...
Pre WW2 most houses at Portugal regards having rock outer walls, were made of wood on inner walls, roofs and floors.
Thus European houses also have many issues. And concerning threaths a rock may stand better a fire, but are terrible on earthquakes (Morocco and Turkey recently)
We do like wooden houses in Northern Europe. The fire alarm system and insulattion materials are important.
European regulations are different frequently driven by insurance cies for example asking an entrance door with at least 3 to 5 security locks, strong insulation are now regulated, ect. The advantage of our strongly built walls it allows us to fix triple or even quadrupled glazed windows.
I will never understand why americans build wooden houses in places that have tornadoes. I get it's cheaper, but even if real building costs twice as much, it's still worth it, because it will stand for generations, given it's properly maintained.
Not really I have house in Europe and USA
European Houses have problems with mold cold walls I would prefer American Houses any time 👍
@@DriveforLaser Install some thermal insulation then
@@DriveforLasermound is not a reason to do it like this. This is a cheap house that’s selling for at least 3x it’s actual value. The construction method is not what’s in question, but the constructed quality of obviously very poor.
I would rather solve the mound problem which is usually much much easier than you know.
Our 125 year old House in canada is a brick shell with a wood frame inside that is easy to insulate for the harsh winters here (we insulated it as originally it had 0% insulation and its toasty now). We have a vast abundance of wood here so naturally many of our houses are made from this material. My in laws live in an 1850 stone farmhouse with almost meter thick walls and its a task to keep warm in winter but its nice and cool all summer (our summers ar HOT) We have some Albanian immigrant friends who decided to build their house here but concrete in the albanian style and when its -20c outside that house might as well be a refrigirator. Climate and economics tend to dictate housing styles.
I can't see what you see. To me - this is all perfectly designed and beautiful. You can replace doors if you want (can you?) with better ones, but overall - it all looks great. Design is what I like the most. In Europe, it does not matter concrete walls because everything can be heard through them too. Also I hate buildings and living in them. My personal choice is - exactly your type of houses :-) (p.s. lucky you) :D
Our apartment in Bucharest (Romania) has 3-pane-windows. It is becoming a thing in newer, better constructions.
The best description I've heard for this kind of houses is McMansions.
It's funny as an American citizen living in the US who as been to Europe and seen the houses there every time I mention to anyone how European houses are better because there made of concrete and steel Americans get offended when you state that fact like a bunch of snowflakes. Like one time my history teacher was saying how it wold be too expensive. It's not true though first of all the price of lumber now in the US is more expensive then concrete thanks to inflation and second of all the real estate industry in the US is a scam just like health care and college cause homes in Europe are actually less expensive and more affordable for people then in the US and yet there built with concrete and steel. It's all about maximizing profits. Another example was when one of my teachers was like "mabye you should move to Europe since you think there houses are better" and I'm like just because I said there houses are built better doesn't mean I want to move there. I could just build my own concrete house here in the US.
Exactly, we have a house from 1780 with 3 foot thick stone walls. It is 9400 sqft and has gone through earthquakes and countless hurricanes. Obviously the roof has been replaced but if you saw the bill for that you could probably buy a house in the USA just for the price of the wood and tiles and a reinforced concrete ring around the top of the walls. Obviously it had to be insulated and there is a membrane underneath. When I made a remark American roofs with shingles are not hurricane proof the vitriol of people (who have no passport for sure) from the USA was just amazing. People were furious whereas like in this video the proof stares them in the face just looking how developers construct on price and not durability and confort. And then there is the argument that there are tornadoes and our shitty little brick houses would collapse as well...true we do not have tornadoes but just looking at some famous hurricanes like Andrew it was clear theses flimsy wooden houses were no match. We had a cat3 hurricane here a few years back and except for a bunch of uprooted trees and some missing tiles on the roof all was well. We are at living on the Azores, plenty of North Atlantic storms pass here so people have to fork out more money to construct a house but they can last a very long time.
@@laurentiusmetaal2333 your safer in a tornado too because it may be an Ef5 and the concrete gets blown away but the interior room may still hold on for dear life and you may surprise as apposed to everything being whipped completely off the foundation and you wouldn't survive even in the interior room of the wooden house.
@@mattdaddy_888 Note that our house is made of rocks of very large sizes, mud, lime, horse hair, and only a concrete rendering which is more recent. That is how they constructed these days.
I have a house from oak planks, blue wool and polished diorite. But my basement is stone bricks and cobblestone. Enchanting table included.
Eww, what kinda combination is blue wool and diorite and then the worst wood.
Those houses are very similar to Australian houses. The only difference with Australian houses is that they have bricks around them on the outside walls and the roofs are tiled, either terracotta or cement tiles. Similar though.
American houses are like that too my guy it depends upon where. Generally in tornado country you'll get more Brick houses.
South Africa is not a tornado country but we build our houses with bricks and cement. I'm glad we adopted the European and Australian way of construction 😁👍🏾
And both get bad termite problems. Way worse in Australia though I think.
Though passiv haus German type construction is gaining popularity in Australia. Air tight, heat pumps, double glazed and very well insulated, they deal amazingly well with extremes of temperature.
With an unlimited budget everyone would be living in homes that would last 500+ years. Sustainable wood is actually more environmentally sound than heavily polluting concrete. If you have structural issue with a masonry or concrete house the repair can be quite a process. Alternatively to a subdivision house you could go out and buy a piece of land and then build any way you like as long as it meets the local building codes. American homes are not the only ones being built from wood.
I live in a multi family home in Germany. The building was finished. The load bearing walls are concrete at the very bottom But bricks above the ground floor. All non load bearing walls are drywall. Thy didn't use 2x4s for the drywall but thin metal struts and the walls and the surface is plasterboard instead of the wood seen in us homes, but it's much more cost effective than using bricks for all walls.
The inner walls have some sound insulation as well though.
Completely wooden homes aren't unheard off in Germany and they to have their advantages.
(1) Stucco is not used in most of America. That is reserved for the desert regions: California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Far West Texas, Colorado, etc. The South: Central Texas through Georgia, S. Carolina north to Maryland, Tennessee, Missouri, (oh heck the whole Midwest) use wood, frames and wood siding or brick and stone siding.
Another thing, stucco is like concrete. The scratch coat might as well be concrete, then the brown coat is applied. While it is not structural, it is concrete like. A lot of the older homes, 80 + years old have plaster interior walls not drywall. There are a number of cinder block wall houses. You are generalizing and there are a number of exceptions. Many are now using steel frame construction for their homes in the U.S.
23 years as a construction estimator.
Europe is better - But I feel Singapore is the best.
4:45 same in South America as well, most houses are made of cement or masonry... just an all around more durable material
I'm not an expert since I never lived in a house, but still, my two cents here: USA: Cheap energy, lots of cheap wood, no "Castle complex", Europe: Expensive energy (we don't have oil and very little gas), expensive wood (population density is too big to manage immense forests except in Scandinavia, which has wooden houses just as the USA), "Castle complex", the idea that if you build a home, it has to be built once and for all, like the castles that the local Lords would make the commoners build, maintain, and transform for them over time. There is really this idea that a house must live for centuries. I prefer the American idea that a house lives just as long as its owners, cheap enough to be bought by almost everyone, beautiful and neat, even if quite flimsy by European standards. But it's totally impossible, your big houses are energy monsters, the large surface, and the lack of thermal insulation, make them impossible to make in Europe. I've been told that your single windows are as thin as can be, when here in Europe double windows are standard in even the poorest places.
It seems there is a big difference between homes in Germany and the US. The homes built in the US can vary depending on where in the US you live. Most of the homes in Ohio in the mid-west have finished basements, very few homes across the south don't have basements. Homes on the east coast are different from home in Colorado and the Rocky Mountains.
You have basement because water is under 10 meters
Another Slavic connection: King Casimir III the Great of Poland (14th century) was one of those rulers who made their country prosperous. And every child in Poland knows the saying about that king, originally written by a 15th-century historian: "He [Casimir] came to Poland made of wood and left it made of brick". This is an example of how old and strong the concept of the house made of brick is in Europe. The fact that most of the continent has four seasons and no earthquakes helps somewhat.
I lived in Germany six years. True most houses are masonry, including interior walls. It was explained that wood is very expensive there. Now in the United States around 1900 up until the late fifties some home were Terracotta structural block. I own one and every wall is block and plaster. The interior walls are bricked all the way from the ground up. The block is 6' deep with six cell in the block. The floor joist are hung onto the walls. Really solid. However a PITA to remodel. Much of the original wiring is embedded in the plaster. Too much to explain in this comment of how we remodeled and updated. The place is solid as can be. Quite, easy to heat and cool. A safe place in bad storm. Now that I know what the block appearance is from the outside, I still see a few older Terracotta structural block homes still in use in older areas of towns and cities. I found in the library doing research home insurance companies pushed this type of construction in the early part of the 1900's.
Yeah I think those houses are much much better built than the stick houses in America. And I think in America they do everything they can to make them as cheap as possible so there is more profit in the house. They dont even put ply wood up around the entire house. Only in engineered corners where it is required by law. Also, I love most of Europe's doors and windows. They are soooo rock solid. In America you could lean on it hard enough and it would break and open. =)
Thanks for watching my videos. =)
Eric
My house has concrete ceiling and flooring reinforced with steel rods with brick walls 40cm thick and corners are concrete beams reinforced with steel rods. my house foundation is 60cm below ground level and 60cm above ground level. my house stays fresh during summer time and warm during winter time.
Nice. Where do you live?
I bought a house in Serbia last year. House is 40 years old and I am 3rd owner. And yet, it needed almost no work.
Houses here are built to last.
Wooden houses look more light and fancy. With concrete building it is better to keep them simple and symmetric in order to build a good looking house. In Poland we build houses mostly from ceramic blocks or aerated concrete however the process is very complex, takes a lot of time. New houses are pretty "warm". You spend about a 1000 dollars a year for heating and cooling of 200m2 house. In our climate where we have pretty cold and wet winters and very hot summers it is better to have a house which accumulates energy. Plus wood is pretty expensive because we export most of it abroad. Concreate is cheaper. Plus there are some customs. After the WW2 most of the wooden houses were burned. When Germans burned house of my grandma she came there after 2 days and she cooked a meal on the wooden ruins of her house. Such stories shape peoples minds. People here build concreate houses because they think they can last longer and they can give it to children one day.
Inside wall insulation is an added cost if you want it and every house I’ve had had bathrooms and bedrooms soundproofed with Roxul insulation done by builder or myself. Exterior walls are all 2x6 not 2x4 studs.
Detached homes in Northern Europe are built basically the same as those in US, but the exterior walls are atleast twice as thick and windows are triple pane with integrated shades and ventilation.
Typical exterior wall structure in Finland: wallpaper, gypsum board, 2x4”/5” & 8+”glass wool, gypsum board or some other board with some water proof lining outside, 0.5-1” ventilation space, exterior wall of wood panels or bricks&mortar.
Interior walls are 2x4” with hefty drywall (no plywood) on both sides and maybe some insulation. Sound proofing depends mostly on quality of interior doors. Exterior doors only have 1 sturdy lock usually but the doors are very heavy and difficult to break.
We also have homes built out of cinder blocks and logs, which are the most expensive ones.
Cement is terrible for insulation and has other problems. Concrete elements are mostly used for apartment buildings due to structural strength and economics. South European countries get away with them in detached homes due to latitude, and Romania and other ex-USSR countries take the pain and live in bunkers because they’re still relatively poor.
Almost all homes in Florida are built with concrete blocks because of hurricanes. I think they are the best built homes in America. My home is super quiet and super solid thanks to this Contsruction method.
i've been in florida (i'm from eu) and i can definitely say that's not true, at east for older houses.
@@izoyt as a person who lives here I have to respectfully disagree. Almost all homes built in the last 20 years are built with concrete block, sure there are older homes that are stick built. Florida’s building codes have gotten stricter over that time.
@@davidwelty9763 this is what i said. older houses are not build with concrete blocks exterior walls. could be i wasn't staying in rich enough area..
I think a lot of the differences can be traced back to the rapid colonization. Wood was essentially free and plentiful, so it got used extensively. The legacy of this is that wood is the norm even if there are better materials for some uses. Truth is, well engineered wood used with good design and construction methods can make a very long lasting, safe and comfortable home. Will they last 500 years? Probably not, but 100 years is a reasonable expectation for something like the perfectwall system. If you use LVL lumber, zip sheathing and decking, a metal roof and fiber-cement exterior siding there is no good reason why it will not last 100 years with minimal maintenance if you get your flashing and foundation right. But on the subject of sound insulation, you are right on the money. Noise is one reason why I might build with concrete. I hate how much noise some of my neighbors make, but it is the price of cheap houses on small lots. Perhaps active noise canceling for houses will become a thing...
When I lived in Switzerland, I tried hanging up a shelf on the wall. 8 hours and an insane amount of noise later, I had drilled 8 holes in the cement to hang four measly shelves. Had I known the walls were concrete, I may have used adhesive!
You would need the right drill ;)
Just get the proper drill and drill bit.
Buy, or rent, a pneumatic hammer with sds drills.
You would need the perforator drill.
adhesive in lieu of fasteners is a terrible idea for anything that has zero bearing surface
Most Norwegian and Swedish houses (probably Finland too) are also made out of wood, but they all are made to sustain the weather.
Another thing is that coastal houses (also wood) are built even stronger because of the wind from the sea.
Usually in Norway at least, 2 story houses have the 1st floor reinforced, that could be with concrete or just stronger wood. It actually varies a bit, but in the end they all works against the elements.
No way a coastal house made out of wood can last. Sorry. Maybe there's something specific about Norway geography that shelters them. The fjords or something . The preference for wood is probably linked to difficulty to build out of heavy materials on incline specific to that geography. In alpine areas in my country it's mostly wood also. But you won't find a single one near the sea. And it's not north sea, it's black sea that has friendlier climate. It's about building fast and in difficult terrain more then about some qualities of wood vs masonry
@@georgeyoutube7580 Well travel here yourself then. I live here, so I see them daily.
Just look at pictures if you really think that we build most of our houses with concrete by the sea.
If you don't know what to look up try these:
Lillesand, Grimstad, Lofoten, Risør, Lista, Mandal, or just "Norwegian coastal cities / towns"
Only larger structures are made out of concrete or something similar. Even our oldest structures (Stave churches) is made out of wood, and they still stand, and they're from the Viking age.
@@Carlium it hit me now. Wood does not rot at low temperatures. So the exterior, even beaten by waves and sea mist can last more then in a warmer climate. So you are right. Anyway there has to be a major factor at play other then ... Our wood is longer and we use it better. I'm sure that's a factor but not the major factor to why your wooden houses last better
@@georgeyoutube7580 uhhh, wood here do in fact rot, but with good maintenance things can last for a very long time. Also drenching wood in salty water does actually make it last longer, because of the salt. We have a few techniques to make wood last longer, we're also using stronger wood that's been growing for years. Nowadays, we import some wood from Siberia, because that wood is extremely good and strong, it's so strong that it's almost maintenance free.
I don't really know what you mean by "we have longer wood and use it better than you", that just sounds really arrogant, you didn't even explain how....
You also didn't explain what type of "wood". If you're talking about the human's "third leg", then yeah, sure.
Most higher end houses are built with some kind of masonry in Finland. Wooden framed houses are typically in the cheaper end of the the spectrum and I would never dare to buy one. There are so many horror stories. The only wooden construction that is safer from potential mold issues is [massive] log.
How are american homes heated/cooled? Do you use any paint over construction timber to protect it against fire, mold, insects?
Amerykanie nie cztali bajki o 3 świnkach i wilku co zdumuchiwal im domy.
Cardboard houses, asking price 1.2m. what a joke.
This is what shocks me on every single business trip to the USA - how third-world-style all houses are there, even in seemingly highly developed places like California. These houses are basically huts made of cardboard (nicknamed “drywall”) and wooden planks. No proper walls, no proper insulation (noise / thermal) etc. Quite often the insulation is so bad that you can see both AC and heating in use, both *on* *the* *very* *same* *day* as the weather changes. To me it looks as if those houses were engineered like PET bottles, to only last for one usage cycle and then be disposed of. They are designed to last for only a few decades between the time someone buys them and the time they die. Such houses are not meant to provide a long-term value to multiple generations of owners, let alone to the community around them. They just clutter humongous areas of misused land with worthless “architecture”, forming a car-dependent hellscape where people too young or too old to drive are trapped, where one can’t just walk to work or take (nonexistent) public transportation. But OTOH, everyone has a garage for 3+ cars … built out of de facto cardboard (“drywall”) and wooden planks. The more I see this, the more grateful I am for living in a place made of concrete and bricks, surrounded by shops and restaurants and covered by public transportation.
OTOH, my estimate on the price of a house like the one shown around 11:00 (supposedly for $600k), if it was to be built where I live, using proper materials like concrete and bricks, with a proper basement underneath etc. etc., would be around $2.5M+. So at least 4 times more. Yeah, it would be of a way higher quality overall, but then by convention mortgages don’t last only until the end of one’s life but also way past it. (Ask me how I know. 😆) As always, everything has its pros and cons.
I can guarantee the insulation works well enough that my home stays 70 degrees (room temperature) even when the winter temps have reached -50 degrees (-45 Celsius).
FYI, they make a higher quality drywall called sheet rock that has a sound dampening version. I think the maker of this video looked for the lowest quality mass produced homes possible. Any person in America can hire a construction company to build a home as solid and insulated as they are willing to pay for. We have every type of house you can imagine at every level of quality.
I think you might want to go on a trip to Sweden, most stand alone houses are made from wood, but in a better and more robust way than in the US.
I was just in Sweden and you are right... I think its the builder and the money put into the house. In America, we are usually cheap and do things for as little as possible (myself included). It doesnt make for good houses usually. Not something that will last 200 years....
Thanks for the words and for watching my videos.
Eric
Problem is what he’s showing as “typical US” isn’t “typical” of all of the US. That’s a development of cheap trash tract homes built as cheaply as possible, as fast as possible to maximize the developers profits.
Higher end construction is the US is of a lot higher quality, features more brick, stone & much heavier lumber or in some cases steel frame construction. Our home built in 2000 features post and beam construction, concrete & stone foundation, standing seam metal roof, high end doors and windows, plastered walls (yeah, not punching a hole in those), solid wood interior doors, stone counters.
Not all the US is tract home suburbia, our contractor was an old order Amish family that’s been building homes for over a century. The cabinets were all handmade as was a lot of the post & beam pieces & joint tenons. The iron brackets where made by a blacksmith, structural artwork.... home is 23 years old now, been thru several hurricane / tropical storm events and a derecho that featured near 100mph winds - no damage
Yes I always get aggravated by the American "diy" home modifications channels, demonstrating how easy it is to add for example some new wiring. I live in a concrete apartment building, every wall is concrete, exterior walls are heavy rebar reinforced concrete. Nailing something to a wall was done in the old days with something similar to a shotgun that was shooting a high grade steel nail into the wall. Today we have concrete drills that do the job but rewiring an apartment is usually extremely difficult at best. You also need a very good drill, I had a semiprofessional Black& Decker that gave up after 10 holes in such walls. Now I use a 2kwatt drill instead.
can you do a house with your own design or you can only buy it?
houses are still manufactured in the EU with a wooden frame. but also concrete blocks or cross-glued wood. wooden boards varying in thickness from 80 mm to 200 mm 3 meters high and 10-12 meters long. . the inner walls are mostly insulated to dampen sound
You're very courageous to walk around a building in construction.
I once broke one of my feet's metatarsal bones by waling on a surface that wasn't ready, so my leg fell down through the floor
Our home was started in 1892. It is timber framed but this is hard wood, and the joints are strapped and bolted. I am glad to hear you like me insulate every wall. This helps with our heating and cooling 42C today and summer has not got here yet (Western desert, Western Australia). All windows are cyclone rated (5mm plate glass or better) with security deadlocks. I find it unbelievable your prices. We sold a lovely beachside home some time ago in Perth WA for $A675,000. Why do Americans pay so much for something that probably has a 25 year life span? The home I was brought up in was built in 1937 as is good today as then, although being in London is probably in the million pound range. The homes you showed us are lovely but rubbish!!
it depends when the house was built in the USA and also the developer. My Grand father's house was built in the 1920's and is solid as a rock. and has things like pantry, dining room, living room, reception room, porch, breakfast room, linen closet etc etc..... The houses built today have none of that, dont even have an entryway, or a coat closet. Now they put the kitchen in the living room so they dont have to build walls or pay for doors. They are even getting rid of bathtubs.
Please make a follow up video on how these houses are heated and cooled.