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I think wolf heads would be even better. If your entire house is built out of the skulls of other wolves, they're probably not gonna wanna come near you.
I'm friends with the wolf who ate red riding hood's grandma, house material shouldn't matter if you're good enough at gaslighting to be allowed to just walk in through the front door.
Chicagoland here - insurance companies should be replacing all of our siding and roofs as if the wolves are attacking. Thank you all for paying more so I can get my 3rd roof replacement after this week’s storms.
I dunno. I just found out the first little piggie didn’t go to market to shop and that just flipped my whole world upside down. Are birds real? I’m not sure what to believe anymore
Well made wood house will last for generations, well made brick house will last centuries. Both badly made will not last your stay.
I'm from Europe. On my grandma's plot there was a wooden barn, it was much older than some brick houses and in better shape than them.
My ex had a wood house that was more than century old. Still in great shape. And there are brick houses that are older than USA.
I'm preparing to build a house for myself. There are no earthquakes, no storms, no natural disasters where I live. My house gonna be build from wood. It should last at least for my grandchildren, and by then, looking at how urbanisation is going, the plot of land should be worth enough to destroy the house and sell the plot.
Im from Sweden. The village i grew up in had a church with a chapel from the late 1200's. Some of the oldest wooden houses were from the mid 1600's. My neighbor's house had been inhabited about a century when the US declared independence.
I mean we have houses and building older than 2000 years in southern Europe. Most were destroyed due to no one living there anymore or war, otherwise they remain standing.
Well made wood houses last centuries too, tbh. One of the houses I grew up in was a wood house on a stone foundation that predated the US by about 120 years.
Obviously modern construction doesn't do that, but that's an issue with build quality not build style.
I went to an abandoned village in Mexico, in the desert. It’s been abandoned for around 100 years. The walls were made of stone but the roofs long ago collapsed and nature was growing all around them. It’s wild how in a dry environment it got that “ancient ruins” look and it wasn’t even that old. Crazy to think other abandoned cities, for example roman ones in North Africa, probably only needing a little bit of time without human habitation to turn into ruins. And all the lost Mayan or Amazonian cities probably only needed a couple decades to disappear.
There's an old abandoned town near me in the US. An old mining town abandoned about 100 years ago. Pretty much everything is gone except for some old foundations / concrete fixtures built for industrial use. The entirety of the (presumably wood) town is fully gone. No ancient ruins. Just gone.
Modern construction when done properly can absolutely last centuries. You might have to re-side and/or reroof a few times, but that is true for any construction technique.
When I refer to modern builders, I'm mostly addressing megacorp development firms popping up house farms.
There are always local builders doing good work with good skills, but sadly the majority of new residences built are at the hands of the megacorps, not local builders.
That’s fair. Even then, a home built today even by mass home builders is of higher quality than they were 50 years ago, primarily due to advances in techniques and materials, but also building codes.
And if they decide not to sell it but instead they want to take it down and put maybe a duplex or a triplex to hold multiple members of the family because that's the best choice then it works as well. I don't understand why anyone would think that the best choice 200 years from now for that particular area would be exactly the same as the best choice today.
They’re the same people that think people in North America should build like people in Europe do despite the two continents having different challenges and resources.
And that’s the same dumb energy anyone has when they try to make sweeping generalizations based on limited information. Like conservatives and government, why don’t we just do X? Well, because it doesn’t work because of xyz, did you really think we’re all idiots and you’re the first person to think of this really obvious and easy solution?
After centuries, you have a crappy old house that doesn't fit the modern times though...so what's the point? The construction cost, amortized over centuries, is pennies too.
An example for some really old European homes - No HVAC, no electrical, indoor plumbing, low ceilings, low door frames, etc.
I'd argue the ease of remodeling, construction, changes, etc. outweigh the "centuries" style building, given how humans actually use homes.
The tiny wooden century farmhouse I grew up in in Canada also still has low ceilings, doors, and no HVAC lol
We do have an indoor plumbing and electricity though, as does every old brick European house I’ve ever visited.
Anyway where y’all get all that money to renovate your houses?
It outlived the first occupants, and has lasted generations…but it’s new to me and the longevity issues are coming home to roost under my tenure as the owner.
And it sucks.
But…due to changing in zoning laws, etc. it’s really hard to buy a new house with the sort of walkability & transit infrastructure like what my neighborhood has, but all the houses here are 100 years old, so if I want to live here, or in a neighborhood like it, I have to buy an old wood house.
To get a new one, I have to go to some new subdivision in some godforsaken car-dependent & treeless suburb where you gotta drive 15-20 minutes just to get to some shitty strip mall with bad national chains.
Are we using bricks at a greater rate than the earth is renewing them? What reserves does the earth currently have? What year will we run out?
I'll give you a quick answer... we've used about 0.00003% of all available clay. It makes up a significant percentage of the earths brittle crust. We will not run out of it
The exterior brick seen here is usually clay. The interior structural blocking is concrete. Both are pretty carbon intensive processes. Wood is carbon negative.
Yeah, that sounds like a bug, not a feature. Appliances, HVAC, electrical wiring, plumbing, etc have updated codes pretty regularly. Maintaining them in a 150 year old home sounds... Very challenging. I hated ripping out cast iron plumbing from a 1950s home, I can't imagine if I had to install Pex through brick as well.
Right. The argument of ‘it will still be unchanged in 200 years’ is a negative, not a positive. Being so robust (while still seismically unsound) means it is inflexible as living preferences and technologies change.
It's always funny seeing comments from people saying their house is older than the united states, then in the same paragraph talk about how nobody in the area has air conditioning because it just isn't a thing where they live. I have no idea how they can't come to the conclusion that the two things might just be related, but I guess it's w/e at the end of the day.
I live in a wood frame house that was built in 1964 and its solid. The most important thing is you need to keep the roof and siding intact otherwise you'll get mold and eventually rot.
1964 is not that long ago. Two weeks ago I was in a house built in 1595, it has a record shop and a discount store on the ground floor (which is really bizarre to look at, modern shops in a 400 year old building).
Like the other guy said, wood houses last generations, brick lasts centuries (if properly made).
I think there's a philosophical difference in play here. Many Americans aren't looking for longevity. They're looking for something that's easily updated to keep up with their personal preferences. When an American buys a house, it's very common to purchase with the plan to renovate either immediately or down the line. I'd be willing to bet that a majority of American houses that are destroyed are by choice and not due to a lack of engineering. Personally, my wood frame house turns 100 next year. It's in great shape and can easily make it another 100, but I'm sure there will be something else standing here by then.
Outside of nobility, someone looking for longevity at the relevant scale -- like 1000+ years instead of eh let's say 150 -- is mostly just foolish. Odds are that ways of living in 200 or 300 years are going to be different enough that whoever's in your "durable" house are going to be pretty annoyed with your choices.
Noise insulation via materials is less important than sealing. Most noise enters a house through the cracks so it doesn't matter what you build with if the airgaps in the construction aren't sealed well. After that though the mass of cinder blocks definitely helps a lot more. The gold standard for how to begin to design a noise insulated house is however disconnection. You build a secondary wall on the interior or you mount your interior surface in such a way as they are disconnected from the exterior wall.
Thermal effects again come down to construction methods. Wood is theoretically a better insulator than stone/brick but breaking the thermal bridge from indoors to outdoors and again air sealing counts for more than framing material assuming equivalent insulation and proper insulation placement in the wall system.
(Exception for the framing material thermal counting is stuff like aircrete, mass earth hyperadobe, and other edge cases)
Most brick houses are cavity wall now so there are two walls with a sizable gap between them. Its designed to reduce thermal bridging but I guess it would apply to sounds of certain frequencies too.
Wood walls can do wonders if done right. Dude in the vid is spot on, it's ALL about how it's engineered. Offset 2*4 stud bays with proper air sealing for penetrations and edges are gonna result in whisper quiet rooms and amazing thermal control, while single bay walls that aren't properly sealed are gonna transfer sound and temps as if they weren't even there.
I’ve lived in both including wood and brick houses over 100 years old. I’ll pick well constructed and insulated wood or brick vs cheaply constructed wood or brick any time.
That’s really the answer. Brick can be unstable as fuck if it’s done wrong. And if you notice, the brick in both has nothing to do with the structure; it’s just the veneer decoration.
Yeah but if they're both well constructed I'm taking the brick cause it's way cooler/easier to keep cool in the summer. Also way less noise, I can hear quiet conversations between rooms in my American house, when I lived in Germany I couldn't even hear my parents yelling for me to come down for dinner.
Bricks are really bad for the summer though. They should really only be used in cooler climates for that reason although judging by Europe's heatwaves that is less predictable now. Bricks act like a pizza oven and radiate all the heat they absorb during the day into your home at night. That's why they were beneficial for cold places but are literally hell during a heatwave because it means you can't escape the heat even at night. You would be a lot better off with wood and modern insulation when it comes to heat.
I redid my house. I can’t hear my wife yelling from barely a room way. Rockwool r30 in the ceiling between floors, and two inches of wood floor will do that. And thick solid doors between rooms.
It’s amazing how insulation isn’t that cheap in the grand scheme of building a house. But so many builders don’t apply it when building, when it’s cheapest to do it! Yeah you can drill holes and blow in insulation, but it’s not going to be a great seal.
But really another huge issue for multi level homes is that HVAC is run in the walls as well. So you’ll end up with a lot of bays mostly hollow for the supply or return vents. Can be solved by running a dual zone system, unit in the basement, unit in the attic. Again, most affordable if done at construction, not later.
Me too. I was already a pretty handy DIYer before I found his channel and have learned a ton from his videos,
he's a great teacher with a talent for breaking down the concepts.
Totally agree. He does an amazing job at explaining accurately and concisely.
When I was in the trades I just had old guys who would mumble vague instructions then yell at you if you did it wrong. Wish I had this guy's videos to lean from.
And he seemingly makes videos without begging for subscribers, financial support, product placement, etc. Definitely one of the good ones on social media.
In parts of the US a block/brick building will crumble faster than wood framed house due to seismic activity. It almost like we all build based on availability of materials and for structural needs.
It may trap heat but it takes more energy for it to heat up in the first place. That is why a well insulated house of any framing type is better. It keeps heat in and out while taking less energy to do so.
But, what about “X place worse than Y place”? How would we recognize that X place is worse than Y place if we couldn’t criticize every little thing that X place does?
I’ve been in home building a large portion of my adult life… this video is amazing. There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses. They all have to meet code… the engineering is all that matters.
ETA: The US does not only build wood frame houses, wood frame and CMU are better than brick houses. Brick is decorative in 2026. If you don’t want a wood house, buy a concrete one. I hear they suck in the winter up north though.
There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses
People in this very post will most likely still think this and always think this no matter what evidence they get that shows both ways can be equally as good while being built differently
Someone on Reddit once said 'The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics'
Someone on Reddit once said 'The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics'
Michael Crichton called something similar the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" and described it this way:
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
I'm lawyer, and whenever I read reddit's knowledge / opinion about the law, I get a big hit of this effect. Makes it hard to trust anything that doesn't come from a heavily curated subreddit (like askhistorians) or an extreme niche hobby subreddit (where bad info gets called out readily).
I unfortunately work in Property Management, only as a maintenance guy, but I’ve definitely picked up more than a few things about fair housing and tenant rights.
I sometimes stumble upon posts where people are throwing out completely incorrect information and laws. Anytime I jump in to say “well hold on that isn’t true” and I say I’m in property management, I immediately get lambasted and called a bootlicker and all sorts of names simply because I have knowledge of a situation.
Reddit is just chock full of people like that. I try to help but it feels so fruitless most of the time.
It doesn't help that things like law and property management are often highly dependent on jurisdiction, but many people on Reddit speak as if these things are universal.
My most controversial/downvoted comments are where I speak about a subject in which I am a bona fide expert, subjects where I am confident saying I am in the top 0.1% of knowledge. I won't claim my pro opinions are always correct, but the critical response from redditors never represents a sensical challenge, but they often sound good and ratio me hard.
My most upvoted comments are subjects in which I have a passing interest, an amateur understanding, or just dumb hivemind stuff. Things where I'm speculating out loud or making big assumptions to bridge the gaps in my knoweldge. Rarely I'll see somebody with -7 votes saying why I'm wrong, and I'm never sure if they're a loon or an expert beyond my comprehension.
I get most suspicious of myself when I find I've made a very popular comment.
I worked with a guy who was very much a demonstrative know-it-all. He was very convincing, even though usually he was just kind of reading something, turning around, and regurgitating it without having done any reflecting on it. But certainly he felt compelled, almost without regard for context, to offer his authoritative opinion (unsolicited) on everything. Now, we were in science, so a lot of the time he’d be giving us lessons on some domain that none of us were experts in so we took his word for it. But then he started talking about college football and the utter imbecility of it was fully exposed to me, and I was like goddamnit this guy’s probably full of shit about everything isn’t he.
100%. Especially anything that could possibly put the US in a negative light. I’ve lived in brick European houses and standard American ones. There really is no big difference.
IME a lot of the online bitching about timber houses is just people using it to rag on Americans.
As soon as folks from Canada or Scandinavian countries pop up to say they also use timber I generally see detractors suddenly less enthusiastic about slamming it as a building material.
It's also just an irrelevant argument, we read "why does X country build with X" all the time. Exceedingly rarely do you hear the one real answer that is true no matter where you look in the world... Homes in X country are built with X because they have a lot of X.
The US has abundant timber resources, so does Northern Europe. Those places build predominately with wood. Countries that build with bricks all build with different bricks be they red, orange, or deep brown.
Someone in China wondering why the UK uses red bricks instead of the grey bricks used in large parts of China is materially (pun intended) the same as asking why one country builds with a different material altogether.
yeah, Japan mostly uses timber or concrete/steel but the timber residences amazes me. Honestly kind of luck with northern countries with less tectonics clashing at each other vs what Japan has to fight against
No glaze really, most Asian countries near the Ring of Fire could build so, but they really utilize wood structures the most. It all relies on that build quality and most default to concrete and steel structures as they still can be reliable with a subpar building skills and dismissing code requirements (until accidents happen yeah)
but yeah, it happens in Japan as well (I watched news of one random apartment bldg falling without any EQ or weather affecting it this year) but I do admire their build quality
As an european some europeans are so annoying as well, it's not just americans, annoying people are annoying. Both are totally solid construction methods, drive around northern europe and you will see alot of wooden houses. Where there is alot of food there is alot of wooden construction, surprise surprise. Its more about economics than some different way of thinking. If you're in southern europe I imagine good construction lumber isn't that easy to source locally so brick buildings became more popular etc.
Exactly this. Southern europe and the british isles have very little lumber left, so to build with lumber they have to import it. It simply makes more sense to use what local materials are available.
You see this all over the US as well. Some areas are literal desert and build houses out of adobe because it uses available materials and is effective for the climate. Areas with clay-rich soil use a lot of bricks. Some areas use almost entirely wood because it's what they have available.
This is especially true when looking at older construction, since modern logistics networks have made it a lot easier to move materials around for a lot cheaper.
When it's brits doing the ragging I like to point out that the only reason they don't use wood is because their ancestors cut down the overwhelming majority of their forests.
Britain was overwhelmingly forests (like 80%) thousands of years ago, but dropped to around 5% by the 20th century due to centuries of clear cutting for agriculture, shipbuilding (it takes a lot of wood to build the largest navy in the world back when wood ships were standard), and fuel before shifting to coal.
Meanwhile despite our best efforts in the americas, we still have a shit ton of trees and can use them for cheaper construction that's easier to work with.
You'd love this guy's channel. He does a ton of construction topics this way. Highly condensed construction knowledge showing the dos and donts of different projects.
Lived in both. Id take brick everytime. Much better with keeping a stable temperature. As well as keeping outside noise low. Brick, more expensive and takes longer. Just my experience
As someone who lives in the middle of earthquake central, I'll take flexible wood framing over bricks. Every brick building out here has cracks and has had to have major work to be reinforced.
As a reptile living beneath the Denver airport my tunnels and burrows keep me safer than anything imaginable. Survived here 3,000 years so far and they even built an airport on top of my house.
Every single time this topic comes up it's framed as "oh which is better, brick buildings can last hundreds of years"
As if the different materials and preferences aren't specifically used for different case scenarios.
Out in Phoenix or New Mexico. Guess what, houses are concrete or brick. Because they aren't on fault lines and don't face disasterous weather, but do have the occasional fire.
In the tornado alley and hurricane alley, they use wood. Because it might not last as long. But it's a LOT cheaper to rebuilt.
Well thats another factor. If where you live, there is a good chance your house is shake like hell, yeah, id go something more flexible. Different horses for different courses
I live in an American brick and plaster now. The house doesn't cool down at night till way after midnight in the summer. And it takes forever to heat up in the winter and spring.
I guess it's nice in the fall, but in general I prefer the temperature in my previous wood frame homes
I just need to point out that you claim you like brick better, but it’s more expensive… but your issues with frame, could be solved by spending more money and insulating the wall… so you’ve canceled yourself out.
Yea people that extol the virtues of brick being able to insulate well obviously don’t know that the actual insulation that is put in behind their brick veneer is what’s serving that function and that brick is actually a horrible insulator. My last house was actually a true solid brick structure with plastic laid right on the interior surface. Meaning the bricks of the walls were red clay but as thick as normal cinder blocks. And it was horrible at maintaining a constant temp, even with that much thermal mass. I think people that love brick just dont realize their house is insulated the exact same way as a wood framed house.
The truth is that both are fine and viable when done well. People who default to "wood house is bad, brick is better" don't actually know what they're talking about. The real issue is quality and craftsmanship. Many new builds in the US aren't crap because of the material choice (in theory), they're crap because they're sloppily thrown up by contractors who don't know what they're doing and they cut EVERY corner. This guy is describing a scenario where you assume things are done right.
Actually a really good video, the wall section samples were a fantastic addition.
Also nice to have a video from someone who actually works on homes demonstrate that there's literally nothing wrong with timber builds if designed and built correctly. In fact it's far cheaper and way less work for a product that works just as well.
I literally work as a civil engineer (in wastewater admittedly) and the amount of people on Reddit who's construction experience consists of holding a piece of 2x4 so their dad could screw it to another piece a single time when they were 9 and yet insist they know that European brick buildings are better in every way is crazy. People really gotta stay in their lane when giving advice.
Oh, no. Here come all the experts in building materials and engineering to comment on why their country builds homes the right way and the other countries houses are shoddily-built death traps.
That "European," wall is not compliant with Finnish building methods. It's simply too thin. Also we use steel support beams for fire safety reasons, these get filled with concrete. It's to prevent floor or roof collapsing quickly during a fire.
Also masonry blocks are never primary structure here. They are basically just used to make a wall between primary structures. That wall would realistically be a cast concrete or prefab element.
Also that "European wall" looks to me more like "A Brittish wall".
It's almost like everywhere in europe does things differently based on local customs, available materials, and environment. It's not like he said it's a Finnish wall.
Similarly houses aren't all built the same across the US, but you don't see us nitpicking the "US wall" for not being code compliant to our specific regions.
I expected some "this is the best way the other way is stupid" video here, instead I got a surprisingly good, informative but concise video. Great job, video OP.
I know both systems. I’m an American living in Austria. My in-laws built a house out of bricks which is half a meter thick. It’s almost 40 years old now and still in top condition. That baby is indestructible. I helped them build their second house, which is half of a old stone barn, and the other half of modern material. Cinder blocks, and insulation also inside and outside. Also a good two feet thick. The beams alone for the roof are also a foot thick. The heat stays out in the summer, and the warmth stays inside in the winter. We often get winds over 60mph, and you hear nothing. And never have to worry about damage. The quality here is just so much better.
People act like New England isn't littered with houses from the 1600 and 1700s. The house I grew up in was built in 1735. My current house is 105 years old and the child's dollhouse connected to the house was built over 50 years ago. Of course there's not going to be 300 year old houses in the areas we didn't populate until well into the 1800s and early 1900s.
We didnt say anything about any of that. Just saying a 40 year old house is nothing special. Quite the opposite really, if a house cant make it 40 years in good condition its a shit house.
Yeah my wood house is 104 years old and still in great shape. We redid the interior drywall and ceilings when we moved in but there are 0 issues with the frame
Each house is designed for it’s environment. Brick may make more sense for being more stable, but whether be a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake, the brick house and the wood house will be damaged m. However, one is easier, cheaper, and quicker to replace and fix.
Highly recommend subbing to this guys channel. The information he puts out is outstandingly good and even more impressive when you consider how much density he can pack into a short
I live in tornado valley, I'll take the European house any day of the week. I've seen enough tornado and wind damages to neighborhoods in my lifetime to know how poorly built our Americans homes are. Just last year, there was an ef3 tornado that rip through a neighborhood a few miles where I live, there was nothing left of some houses but the concrete foundation. Even with a basement, people died because the floor above them also got ripped away. There was another incident many years ago, I watched as a house a few streets down got its roof and half the house blown apart from just 90mph gust, not even a direct hit from tornado.
All houses should be built to the environment that suits them best, and odds are the population living there figured it out a long time ago.
Wood houses are cheap to construct, reasonably effective when engineered/built properly, easy to modify as needed, have excellent resistance against quakes, can handle high winds, etc. Typically won't last as long as brick due to moisture, more maintenance sensitive, pests, fires, etc. If you look at abandoned wood vs. brick buildings it's not hard to say which will deteriorate faster as a fact of life.
Brick is more expensive and will likely last longer if the location allows for it having well behaved weather and lack of quakes. Catastrophic failure of unreinforced brick has real concerns for search and rescue - a wood house vs a brick house being knocked over have different failure modes making environmental impact and how its built significantly more important.
Roughly half the US could theoretically support brick, but brick has generally fallen out of favor as it's easier to work on wood construction which means it has the largest area of expertise to draw from.
The value of wood construction paid off when direct to home electricity, water, and the invention of the AC all happened. The ability to rough these in rapidly and put your home to looking as good as new is significant - our houses are built to adopt new technologies fast at the cost of longevity.
Sorry man, not convinced here. It's not just about resisting a random, mild hammer blow in real life.
Both houses have pros and cons for sure. But I'd still go for bricks and concrete rather than wood and insulation foam, if I had to choose.
I’m actually interested to know if that’s standard in Europe. I build in the USA, but coastal Florida, so we’re also block. The walls are typically furred out for plumbing and electrical.
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