When I was a kid I was really confused by Jerry. How could he make a home inside a wall like that? The walls are completely solid, with bricks and mortar.
I had to move to Canada to understand that the walls are hollow and the house is made from wood, plaster, plastic and styrofoam.
I was so confused too as a Brit since our houses are made of brick and mortar. I still find it weird that houses in NA are made out of wood and plasterboard/drywall
Wall voids are extremely common in older brick buildings. In the case of my house and many others there’s an intentional void that is also used as a massive ac duct.
I wouldn’t consider using more technologically advanced and appropriate materials to be a “problem” I live on a fault line in wildfire country, I have zero interest in living in a stone or concrete house that will fall down and kill everyone, I want a quake rated home, which must be wood, and as far as wildfire, gypsum dryway is fire resistant and part of our fire code.
No one uses styrofoam but high tech high efficiency foam insulation does exist and works far better than stone, brick or concrete while also maintaining breathability
Probably. American homes are typically made with lumber and foam insulation. Older homes (pre-WW2) will use lath and plaster for the interior walls, while newer (post WW2) will use drywall (gypsum board) sheets. There are two big reasons for the differences between American and European construction.
First, Europe had the luxury of time and existing infrastructure. When people were building homes hundreds of years ago, they already had trade routes in place for things like stone. When America was being settled and people were moving west, the only things settlers had was whatever they could fit on their wagons. They weren’t carting massive quantities of quarried stone across the wilderness. And that’s assuming they even had quarried stone in the first place; There aren’t very many quarries in America, even today, because America simply doesn’t have good stone. Rome basically sits on a massive slab of marble, which is why they used so much of it in their construction. But America (with a few exceptions, like the mountains) sits on sandy clay. So if stone is incorporated into American construction, it’s usually in the form of brick (made from the aforementioned sandy clay) instead of quarried stone. But again, nobody was going to waste a ton of wagon space (and an entire team of horses to pull said wagon) to cart fucking bricks across the country. They were more focused on things like survival, and stone+mortar didn’t make the cut.
Instead, the settlers carried tools, and then used those tools to build houses out of whatever resources were local to the area they settled in. This usually meant lumber construction, because carrying a saw and axe is much easier than carrying an entire tree. And as they moved into the more sparsely wooded areas, they changed their construction methods to match; The Great Plains used wire fences instead of solid lumber fences, because there wasn’t enough wood for solid fences. Wire was easy to carry in bulk spools, and you can make the posts out of small pieces of found lumber. When they realized cattle would push the wire fences over, they started adding barbs (literally just twists of more wire) to the wires. And that’s how barbed wire fences were invented, and became prolific throughout the area. Not because they were the best at fencing, but because they were good enough and were extremely resource-efficient for what the settlers had laying around.
The second reason is climate. It can be difficult to get Europeans to understand the sheer destructive force of American weather patterns. My buddy from the UK came to visit, and we had a thunder+hail storm while he was here. He was hunkered down below the table, worried that the windows were all about to shatter. Meanwhile, we were just watching TV like it was no big deal. The tornado sirens hadn’t gone off yet, and the hail was only the size of pennies, so we hadn’t even started to worry about it. To us, it was just a regular storm, but my buddy said it was the worst storm he had ever encountered… We had three more storms just like it during his two week stay. Lumber construction is surprisingly good at resisting high winds, shifting foundations (from the aforementioned clay soil), earthquakes, etc… Stone will tend to crumble, while lumber will bend and flex. The lumber house sounds like it’s falling apart, but that’s just the creaking and groaning from the joints. And that’s just in regular winds; If an actual tornado comes through, anything less than solid concrete will quickly fall apart. And even the concrete isn’t a for sure thing, as the tornado may just decide to pick the entire foundation slab up.
Great answer. I think it’s the easy answer to think “stone hard and solid therefore built better.” My house made out of “shitty” plaster and wood has stood for almost 80 years in an earthquake zone in southern CA. With proper periodic maintenance (which is relatively cheap compared to renovating a stone house) it could stand for another century.
Fires on the other hand might ruin all that though…
Yeah, we also have a lot of wood. And wood structures are less labor intensive. Also, none of our buildings are over 300 years old, so we don’t need a lot of skilled stonemasons around to maintain them. And we’re further south than Europe, so cooling houses is a bigger concern than keeping them warm (though that reason is rapidly changing).
When I was a kid I was really confused by Jerry. How could he make a home inside a wall like that? The walls are completely solid, with bricks and mortar. I had to move to Canada to understand that the walls are hollow and the house is made from wood, plaster, plastic and styrofoam.
I was so confused too as a Brit since our houses are made of brick and mortar. I still find it weird that houses in NA are made out of wood and plasterboard/drywall
Wall voids are extremely common in older brick buildings. In the case of my house and many others there’s an intentional void that is also used as a massive ac duct.
I’m sorry, is this some kind of americas problem i am too european to understand?
I wouldn’t consider using more technologically advanced and appropriate materials to be a “problem” I live on a fault line in wildfire country, I have zero interest in living in a stone or concrete house that will fall down and kill everyone, I want a quake rated home, which must be wood, and as far as wildfire, gypsum dryway is fire resistant and part of our fire code.
No one uses styrofoam but high tech high efficiency foam insulation does exist and works far better than stone, brick or concrete while also maintaining breathability
Probably. American homes are typically made with lumber and foam insulation. Older homes (pre-WW2) will use lath and plaster for the interior walls, while newer (post WW2) will use drywall (gypsum board) sheets. There are two big reasons for the differences between American and European construction.
First, Europe had the luxury of time and existing infrastructure. When people were building homes hundreds of years ago, they already had trade routes in place for things like stone. When America was being settled and people were moving west, the only things settlers had was whatever they could fit on their wagons. They weren’t carting massive quantities of quarried stone across the wilderness. And that’s assuming they even had quarried stone in the first place; There aren’t very many quarries in America, even today, because America simply doesn’t have good stone. Rome basically sits on a massive slab of marble, which is why they used so much of it in their construction. But America (with a few exceptions, like the mountains) sits on sandy clay. So if stone is incorporated into American construction, it’s usually in the form of brick (made from the aforementioned sandy clay) instead of quarried stone. But again, nobody was going to waste a ton of wagon space (and an entire team of horses to pull said wagon) to cart fucking bricks across the country. They were more focused on things like survival, and stone+mortar didn’t make the cut.
Instead, the settlers carried tools, and then used those tools to build houses out of whatever resources were local to the area they settled in. This usually meant lumber construction, because carrying a saw and axe is much easier than carrying an entire tree. And as they moved into the more sparsely wooded areas, they changed their construction methods to match; The Great Plains used wire fences instead of solid lumber fences, because there wasn’t enough wood for solid fences. Wire was easy to carry in bulk spools, and you can make the posts out of small pieces of found lumber. When they realized cattle would push the wire fences over, they started adding barbs (literally just twists of more wire) to the wires. And that’s how barbed wire fences were invented, and became prolific throughout the area. Not because they were the best at fencing, but because they were good enough and were extremely resource-efficient for what the settlers had laying around.
The second reason is climate. It can be difficult to get Europeans to understand the sheer destructive force of American weather patterns. My buddy from the UK came to visit, and we had a thunder+hail storm while he was here. He was hunkered down below the table, worried that the windows were all about to shatter. Meanwhile, we were just watching TV like it was no big deal. The tornado sirens hadn’t gone off yet, and the hail was only the size of pennies, so we hadn’t even started to worry about it. To us, it was just a regular storm, but my buddy said it was the worst storm he had ever encountered… We had three more storms just like it during his two week stay. Lumber construction is surprisingly good at resisting high winds, shifting foundations (from the aforementioned clay soil), earthquakes, etc… Stone will tend to crumble, while lumber will bend and flex. The lumber house sounds like it’s falling apart, but that’s just the creaking and groaning from the joints. And that’s just in regular winds; If an actual tornado comes through, anything less than solid concrete will quickly fall apart. And even the concrete isn’t a for sure thing, as the tornado may just decide to pick the entire foundation slab up.
Great answer. I think it’s the easy answer to think “stone hard and solid therefore built better.” My house made out of “shitty” plaster and wood has stood for almost 80 years in an earthquake zone in southern CA. With proper periodic maintenance (which is relatively cheap compared to renovating a stone house) it could stand for another century.
Fires on the other hand might ruin all that though…
Probably;
Wood structures fair better in high wind and in earthquakes. Things we have far more of in North America.
Yeah, we also have a lot of wood. And wood structures are less labor intensive. Also, none of our buildings are over 300 years old, so we don’t need a lot of skilled stonemasons around to maintain them. And we’re further south than Europe, so cooling houses is a bigger concern than keeping them warm (though that reason is rapidly changing).
Insulation is way better than solid rock walls or whatever Europe uses.
Not in wildfires though which you have a shitton as well.
That’s another reason drywall is used, it’s pretty fire resistant. Where I live all exposed beams must be wrapped in drywall for fire safety