I am a civil-structural engineering and have obvious bias for Concrete. Over here in India, literally all houses are built using Concrete and Burnt-Clay-Brick / Fly-Ash-Brick Masonry. I hope Concrete gets promoted more as a building material. They buildings which are professionally designed easily withstand 2500 Year Return Period magnitude earthquakes. Last time I enquired on HN about preference for Wood in US (remote areas) Building Materials, someone said, can't design house venerable to High Seismic Activity. While my exposure to US Building codes is limited, I know for sure, ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) have excellent Earthquake Loading criteria. It should be doable. Perhaps some regulation could help there.
A personal example: Wardrobes are usually made using synthetic-wood over here in India. I went a step ahead, and got it build using Steel-Sheets. So a major chunk of fire potential removed from the house. And it was within 10% of the cost of wood work. Termite free forever as bonus ! Have a look at the photos in google maps listing of the local manufacturer. https://maps.app.goo.gl/7Wrt4rNtcpez53Bm6
Wood is incredibly cheap here in the United States. Estimates I have seen in the past is a stone home will cost 15-25% more per square foot than a wood-framed home in the same location. Making it more resistant to earthquakes (a requirement in California) raises the price even further. At the end of the day, cost will almost always win.
One thing I think about is concrete is a major consumer of energy and contributes a large amount of CO2, something like 8% of the global emission. Whereas wood literally grows on trees while sequestrating said carbon. I realize that there re efforts to make concrete carbon neutral but until that happens building with concrete is not environmentally friendly.
But if you live in a tinderbox like California, that will only get worse from climate change, how long will that sequestration actually last? How much carbon will be emitted rebuilding and replacing?
Adding to that, concrete buildings rely on a lot of steel, which is another major emissions driver, and production of both also leave a lot of toxic waste behind.
Construction should try to use both sustainable materials wherever feasible, and strongly favour refurnishing existing houses over new buildings.
We also build with concrete. In the USA wood is very cheap and it's easier to work with, so you end up with a larger house at half the price of a concrete house. Also wooden houses have a "warmth" that is missing from bricks.
The way Americans look at it is: I can get a house twice as big for less. I'll just get insurance with the money I save.
We just have decades-old housing stock that can kind of be viewed as kindling. So new builds are probably better, but old ones can be renovated to improved methods. There are also things as a homeowner one can do to improve your odds (e.g., cleaning gutters, clearing dry brush, for vented attics have better screens).
Because historically, owning a house has been very affordable and lumber is abundant because the landscape was not denuded for firewood over the course of millennia.
Lumber is not timber. Lumber can be moved about by a single pair of hands and fastened with nails...American construction takes advantage of the industrial revolution and uses commodity nails.
Worth noting that where Americans use concrete and brick, they also use steel reinforcing so that their buildings don't collapse brittle collapse from earthquakes and wind.
Basically the entire eastern part of the US was denuded of trees, which have since grown back when uncompetitive farmland was abandoned.
Lumber is cheap because there's lots of land where we now farm fast growing trees.
Wood frame houses are cheap today because of the invention of the stamped metal framing connector, which has enabled large elements to be made off site in high volume. It's also why houses typically don't have attics anymore.
There are several factors already mentioned, but also b/c it's not really required, given all those factors. From TFA:
TIL about Class A wood. It is as fire resistant as concrete, apparently.
The biggest predictor about what burned: Age
> The architect says that he’s done hundreds of renovations in Southern California to make houses fire-resistant. Driving along a stretch of beach in Malibu this week, Dawson says that he counted five houses left standing; three were his projects. “I haven’t had any house burn that’s been brought up to the latest standard.”
> The orientation and exterior materials, including a metal roof and metal eaves, prevented a fire from sparking inside the roof, which is the way most homes burn down.
We know where fires come from, and under what conditions they spread rapidly in LA - because the santa ana winds blow generally the same direction. You can design neighborhoods and houses to survive that.
We also built right up into the hills, surrounding them with natural vegetation. Pretty, but basically a tinder box.
> TIL about Class A wood. It is as fire resistant as concrete, apparently.
Being in the same category of a rating system does not mean it truly is as fire resistant as concrete. In Europe it would most likely not be classified as A1:
> An A1-Rated material is defined as a material that does not contribute to fire at any stage, including a fully developed fire.
The rating from the US is a bit more vague on the class A wood:
> Class A is the most desirable category for fire-rated plywood as it indicates a flame spread index of 25 or less.
Keep in mind stucco is very common in Southern California. Basically a 7/8” thick layer of concrete on all the exterior walls. It is fire resistant. Many such buildings burned down.
This isn’t the three little pigs where the brick house is the solution. And that wasn’t the moral of the story anyway.
The first house by the forest would probably still be destroyed, however the next one has a much better chance because it’s not next to a large flammable structure.
Because old cities had these kinds of fires constantly (in my city there's still a paiting of a fire from 18th century that destroyed half the Old Town) and usually only stone/brick buildings survived.
This isn't a 0%/100% thing, but it increases the chances by a big margin.
Concrete that can withstand M7-8 is a lot more expensive, mostly limited to commercial buildings. There’s plenty of brick homes in the rest of the country.
Americans are incredibly resistent to change and due to exceptionalism they have this idea that whatever they do is better than what anybody else.
That's the real reason.
Its historically cheap, unlike Europe. More importantly I thought think it buys you much compared to building up to modern standards. Remember most of these homes are old. I think this is one of those European/World memes that America just builds cardboard homes.
Aside from what others have mentioned - maintenance/upgradability. I own a home in Costa Rica, which is basically all concrete. Try upgrading your building with Cat6 ethernet when you have concrete (vs wood/sheetrock).
Unreinforced masonry is illegal in most of California- it essentially fractures into a swarm of heavy projectiles during an earthquake- which is a bigger risk than fires here. Brick homes are very common on the east coast where they don’t have frequent earthquakes.
Commercial style construction with steel beams and reinforced concrete is extremely expensive, and not very warm/classic looking. It is used in a tiny fraction of extremely high end custom homes for wealthy people that like modern and brutalist style homes.
Good time to run a fire resistant cladding company (or passivehaus design company) in the LA area -- I can only imagine, at least for those that can afford it, it's a no brainer if you're going to stay in the area
Sucker's bet. They almost certainly do. The question is more would the homeowners have actually been better off if the homes were more damaged requiring being rebuilt? Based on anecdotes from the Hawaii fires... the answer is: Maybe. Combustion products are notoriously hard to remediate. Just living in those houses post fire could be the equivalent of giving yourself smoke inhalation issues.
Readit News
[1] - https://archive.is/AVDKU
A personal example: Wardrobes are usually made using synthetic-wood over here in India. I went a step ahead, and got it build using Steel-Sheets. So a major chunk of fire potential removed from the house. And it was within 10% of the cost of wood work. Termite free forever as bonus ! Have a look at the photos in google maps listing of the local manufacturer. https://maps.app.goo.gl/7Wrt4rNtcpez53Bm6
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Construction should try to use both sustainable materials wherever feasible, and strongly favour refurnishing existing houses over new buildings.
The way Americans look at it is: I can get a house twice as big for less. I'll just get insurance with the money I save.
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* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZe-TlYxm9g
Some video sources in the description:
* "CAL FIRE / IBHS Demonstration Burn Timelapse": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvwogREEk4
* "Your Home Can Survive a Wildfire" (from NFPA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM
It's fairly well-known how to deal with wildfires:
* https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/wildfire/firewis...
We just have decades-old housing stock that can kind of be viewed as kindling. So new builds are probably better, but old ones can be renovated to improved methods. There are also things as a homeowner one can do to improve your odds (e.g., cleaning gutters, clearing dry brush, for vented attics have better screens).
Lumber is not timber. Lumber can be moved about by a single pair of hands and fastened with nails...American construction takes advantage of the industrial revolution and uses commodity nails.
Worth noting that where Americans use concrete and brick, they also use steel reinforcing so that their buildings don't collapse brittle collapse from earthquakes and wind.
Lumber is cheap because there's lots of land where we now farm fast growing trees.
Wood frame houses are cheap today because of the invention of the stamped metal framing connector, which has enabled large elements to be made off site in high volume. It's also why houses typically don't have attics anymore.
TIL about Class A wood. It is as fire resistant as concrete, apparently.
The biggest predictor about what burned: Age
> The architect says that he’s done hundreds of renovations in Southern California to make houses fire-resistant. Driving along a stretch of beach in Malibu this week, Dawson says that he counted five houses left standing; three were his projects. “I haven’t had any house burn that’s been brought up to the latest standard.”
> The orientation and exterior materials, including a metal roof and metal eaves, prevented a fire from sparking inside the roof, which is the way most homes burn down.
We know where fires come from, and under what conditions they spread rapidly in LA - because the santa ana winds blow generally the same direction. You can design neighborhoods and houses to survive that.
We also built right up into the hills, surrounding them with natural vegetation. Pretty, but basically a tinder box.
Being in the same category of a rating system does not mean it truly is as fire resistant as concrete. In Europe it would most likely not be classified as A1:
> An A1-Rated material is defined as a material that does not contribute to fire at any stage, including a fully developed fire.
The rating from the US is a bit more vague on the class A wood:
> Class A is the most desirable category for fire-rated plywood as it indicates a flame spread index of 25 or less.
"or less" isn't zero.
Keep in mind stucco is very common in Southern California. Basically a 7/8” thick layer of concrete on all the exterior walls. It is fire resistant. Many such buildings burned down.
This isn’t the three little pigs where the brick house is the solution. And that wasn’t the moral of the story anyway.
This isn't a 0%/100% thing, but it increases the chances by a big margin.
Concrete that can withstand M7-8 is a lot more expensive, mostly limited to commercial buildings. There’s plenty of brick homes in the rest of the country.
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Because concrete and bricks are more expensive and for most places wood construction is perfectly adequate.
It's really very intuitive.
Reinforced concrete is used most of time only for the structure.
The walls themselve are masonry.
Commercial style construction with steel beams and reinforced concrete is extremely expensive, and not very warm/classic looking. It is used in a tiny fraction of extremely high end custom homes for wealthy people that like modern and brutalist style homes.
Contrary to common American percepctions, there are other places in the world with Earthquakes.
> Along a stretch near Saddle Peak in the Santa Monica Mountains, some homes were destroyed while others were undamaged by the Palisades Fire.
The homes may not look damaged, but I bet they have a lot of smoke damage.
Far fewer resources for those whose homes weren't destroyed but insurance should still cover the smoke damage remediation.
Both of her neighbor's houses burned down, but hers survived. Newer build / renovation / luck.
But regardless, they had to tear it down as the smell of the smoke was inside of the insulation and you can not get that out ever.
Edit: houses, not hoses.
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