USA Vs British Building Style

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TeeDee

Full Member
Nov 6, 2008
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Just watching an American Tv prog involving a couple 'flipping' run down properties by strip them down to their bare bones and then either doing up or extending.

What becomes very obvious is that the amount of wood stick'n'frame type structure there are in America even with the newer builds and newer technologies.
I know in the UK we tend to build predominately in Brick and Block but I'm seriously wondering why we don't build HERE as our cousins do THERE. ?? If we are talking sustainable , fast and more importantly CHEAP doesn't Timber beat Brick n Block??

So can any builder types tell me Why we don't?? are there valid reasons that I don't see for us in sticking to our building choice??



Also Basements - Every basement in the UK I've been in within the UK has tended to be damp and cold , yet visiting friends in Canada ( where seemingly everyone has a basement ) they tend to be as much part of the home , as in usable living space , as any other room. Again , what gives???

Maybe a question for the builders here or the various people that have lived in different countries and experienced differing building methods.
 

swotty

Full Member
Apr 25, 2009
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Somerset
I work in theatre building scenery and years ago a work friend moved to America and got work in construction, he said it was basically the same principles as building scenery! Hopefully the buildings last longer than a set in a four week run in rep!

Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk
 
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Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
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Don't forget that the UK has been through it's timber frame building period and moved on :) (I live in a Cruck framed barn - it's hard to keep the draughts out!).

Interestingly though, there's a new push for using timber framed building using welsh wood - the Government is supporting a kind of 'prefab' build structure using wood.
 
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Toddy

Mod
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Jan 21, 2005
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A primal termite knocked on wood,
Tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlour floor today.
 
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TLM

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Nov 16, 2019
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Vantaa, Finland
Timber frames tend to have some limitations in moist climates, termites are sometimes a concern. In Fennoscandia timber works well because the heating dries the walls. Denmark is just so and so.

Basement and dry is really just a question of ground water levels and draining it away. Sometimes it is just not practical.
 

Trig

Nomad
Jun 1, 2013
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Scotland
Other than the odd one off build, ive not seen any housing sites doing brick and block here (west of scotland), everything is timber framing and brick skin. Only houses older than about the 80's is brick and block. Maybe its just this area though, i dont know any figures, just assumed the rest of country was mainly wooden frame now also. Is brick and block more common elsewhere?


Been viewing a few houses over the past 3 or 4 years, and there is also quite a difference in size between houses from 60's-70's to the 80's, and getting smaller and smaller as you move into the 90's and beyond. Hopefully we all start growing smaller over the next 20 years or i dont know how we're gonna fit in.
 
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Bishop

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Jan 25, 2014
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Mixed feelings over the feel of wooden houses, many moons ago rented one of the historic flats at "Tudor Gallery" Newent. When the front door slammed the house did not shake, it vibrated. Anything dropped in the kitchen would roll to the pantry and the uphill walk from the living room door to the front window could convince the most sober of individuals that they were drunk. The constant battle against cold drafts and fungus in the chimney, the chatter of birds nesting in eves and worst of all tourists trying to get in because they thought it was a museum.
 

TeeDee

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Other than the odd one off build, ive not seen any housing sites doing brick and block here (west of scotland), everything is timber framing and brick skin. Only houses older than about the 80's is brick and block. Maybe its just this area though, i dont know any figures, just assumed the rest of country was mainly wooden frame now also. Is brick and block more common elsewhere?

Ok , my bad - I didn't mean Outer Brick skin - I meant weather board /sidings(?) on a breathable waterproof membrane on wood. It seems that's still a completely acceptable way to build and yet here I hardly see it used at all but I assume ( maybe incorrectly ) that its far far cheaper? and from an impact on the environment vs brick outer ( brick , cement , sand ) its surely more sustainable.


Been viewing a few houses over the past 3 or 4 years, and there is also quite a difference in size between houses from 60's-70's to the 80's, and getting smaller and smaller as you move into the 90's and beyond. Hopefully we all start growing smaller over the next 20 years or i dont know how we're gonna fit in.

I know what you mean - My first house was a 1980 end terrace , from that I jumped to a Big Victorian terrace property with a very large hallway and porch are , whenever I went back to visit the 1st property ( we turned it into a rental ) I forever after felt 'squeezed - God knows how an ever expanding population is going to cope with smaller living spaces.

Although interestingly enough the design and use of Shipping containers as living accom interests me greatly.
 

Trig

Nomad
Jun 1, 2013
275
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Scotland
No problem, i did wonder if you meant that but wasnt sure. Brick and block usually means an outer skin of brick with blockwork forming the inner wall in place of timber frame, though the phrase may be used in other ways elsewhere, but thats all i know it as here.

But no its true, dont see many houses here done with weatherboard, but i dont know the reasons for it. There is one i pass on my way to work, and it is a tidy looking finish.

I would have guessed it to be cheaper to use wooden cladding, but after a quick google out of curiosity i found this.
Not sure how accurate it is, but not much difference between Brick+Block or cladding at the cheaper end, though cladding shown as more expensive.

What is surprising is it shows brick and timber frame as being the most costly low end price. I would have assumed that it works out the cheapest option simply because the housebuilders do mostly do it that way. Being that they cut corners and use the cheapest materials they can get for everything else.

For the american builders i guess it maybe works out cheaper to use wood as they have better access to big areas of forestry as opposed to us?
 
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oldtimer

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Sep 27, 2005
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Vernacular building depends upon the ready available building material. My 1750s cottage is made of stone quarried locally. I moved here from Essex where I lived in a timber framed w wattle and daub walled cottage also built in the 1750s. All round the world houses were, and sometimes still are, made of local material. Hence the preponderance of timber framed and clad houses in those parts of the US where timber is plentiful. In the South West of the U.S. however, adobe brick was the norm.

The late 19th and early 20th century fashion in brick building all over has resulted in full uniformity and the pollution caused by transporting building materials instead of using local resources.

When I was a child in 1950s Portsmouth, many people lived in prefabs built to replace the
homes lost in the wartime bombing. These were eventually replaced by other housing solutions. I frequently wonder why these are not used today instead expensive brick. I suspect there is more profit in permanently disfiguring the countryside.

the
 

Trig

Nomad
Jun 1, 2013
275
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Scotland
Look quite tidy Broch.

All i want is for them to loosen planning restrictions a bit for a self build, or make it clearer who you have to bribe.
Houses going up in the greenbelt all over the place by developers, but when you look, absolutely no way you could get permission for yourself for a single building out of sight.
 
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Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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Until the housing building boom in the 1920's all the houses round here were built of sandstone. Three halfpence a block it cost from the quarries said my Uncle who minded it still being quarried between the wars.
Those houses are still sound, still in good order :)
1920's onwards are double layers of brick, as is ours which was built in 1977. Roughcast on the outside, heavy tiles on the roofs instead of Ballachuilish slate.
This century and there's housing going up on every wee patch of land around us :sigh: it seems to be timber framed and two layers of brick, but the foundations are those blocks not bricks.

M
 

TeeDee

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Ok , I understand why we built ( past tense ) in a variety of ways using local materials - I get it.

As Trig has indicated , its that modern buildings with access to more modern materials ( weatherboarding ) that has me flummoxed a little. Near to me is the New Town of Cranbrook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranbrook,_Devon , all of which has at least an outer brick façade.
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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Afaik insurance companies here aren't happy to cover timber buildings covered with plastic siding and asphalt tiles on their roofs....not as houses anyway, and planning consent isn't usually given for folks to live in glorified sheds.

They used to be really unhappy at covering timber houses here. There are some up the hill from us, built just after WW2, and for years the folks living there couldn't get buildings insurance on them. Their contents insurance cost them a lot more than other houses of the same size as well.
 

demographic

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 15, 2005
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There's a lot more timber framed houses going up nowadays and done right they can be very efficient.
Currently there's a lot of UK housebuilders who don't fully understand how to weatherseal them fully around the openings which I can see will be a problem in 20 or so years time.
Its not that it's impossible, just that its not properly understood by the architects and building companies so the plans are often wrong or they don't have the right materials on site.

Then Building Control has been relaxed so the main contractor often has their own bloke doing it for them, theres a total conflict of interests with that because if you're paid directly by the main contractor theres the temptation to go easy on them otherwise they go to someone else who will.

For a good example see Persimmon Homes which at least locally to me have an absolutely shocking reputation for callbacks and snagging.
 
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santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
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I had always thought the reason y’all didn’t do too much wood frame was (now) to traditon and taste. I had also thought that taste and tradition had developed after the London Fire (which would jive with Toddy’s comments regarding insurance)

How long do wood frame houses last? The answer is “It depends.” The older ones last longer (and no, that’s not a pun) The point is the older ones (built before WWII) were built of better materials. The lumber (no, they aren’t “timber” framed) was from old growth, longleaf, yellow pine. And even at that, primarily lumber cut from the heart of the trees. That means high resin content (nearly fatwood) that resists rot and termites for centuries. On the other hand the ones built afterWWII are built of cheaper lumber.

One of my cousins is currently living in one of the older homes that was originally built by one of our ancestors 3 generations ago shorthly after the turn of the 20th century and I know of many more built decades before that. If properly cared for they’ll last centuries. That said, we tend to tear houses down and replace them with something more modern before they’re half a century old (no matter what they’re built of) because here insurance is expensive for anything older (if you can find an insurer at all)

One of the advantages of lumber framed houses is the ease with which you can remodel and update and modernize them (hence the tv show mentioned about “flippers” in the OP) Another advantage is cost. By comparison a brick house (which in reality is only a brick facade as an outer wall over the timber frame) is about 15% to 30% additional cost. Another advantage (depending on what part of the country you live in) is that masonry buildings are lousy in earthquakes. At least the type masonry that most of us have Ben familiar with. Some of the native masonry techniques in South America is much better but also more or less a lost skill. Polymer reinforcement has been mandatory for masonry on the West Coast for a few decades now due to the earthquake risks and it adds still more to the cost.
 
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Edtwozeronine

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Jan 18, 2020
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I think it's just the economy of scale, imagine how many brick and block factories they'd have to build to supply a brick and block house to every American family - just not possible because of how vast it is!

Modern buildings around here are brick outer (sometimes with cladding of some sort) insulation boards, block inner with plasterboard as the decorating surface inside. Council houses of probably the 50s to 60s in the area are similar but without the insulation and there are a number of prefab post war houses still knocking about some of the older housing estates. I think the idea was that they'd knock them down after the war but they were just updated with double glazing and pebble dash to keep the weather out.
 

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