# Houses made of wood. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 29, 2013, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193 "2013-06-29T11:05:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/1 "2013-06-29T11:05:56Z")
I was wondering where, and how long ago most houses were made of wood. and how long after that other products were used. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/2 "2013-06-29T11:27:57Z")
Any chance you could rephrase the question? Because as it stands, I don’t think it’s answerable. Houses have been made of “other products” since prehistory. ---
**Author:** ![Ken001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/43a26b/32.png) [@Ken001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ken001)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/3 "2013-06-29T11:49:27Z")
And houses are made of wood today. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/4 "2013-06-29T11:49:46Z")
Not only have other building materials been used since humans have been building houses, but wood continues to be a major percentage of the building materials used in houses today. [Over 90% of houses in the US today are build with wood, according to these guys, who seem like they’d know.](http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=645)So yes, please do restate the question. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/5 "2013-06-29T12:03:41Z")
And, of course, in other places (deserts) houses were never made of wood, because it was rare and expensive. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/6 "2013-06-29T12:12:06Z")
Most residential construction out here in the middle USA (Texas, OK, KS, etc…), and even some very small scale commercial, is wood framed with some sort of rock, brick, Dry-Vit, Masonite, wood, vinyl, or metal facade or siding. Been that way since i started in this business in the 70s. It will vary for others depending on location, availability, and needs. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/7 "2013-06-29T12:29:10Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > And, of course, in other places (deserts) houses were never made of wood, because it was rare and expensive. Many houses in the southwest used to be made of adobe. Now they are wood-framed with an outer layer of stucco to make them _look_ like adobe, because importing wood is cheaper than real adobe. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/8 "2013-06-29T12:35:43Z")
We have a wood grown int the U.S. that will literaly last forever. It is called osage orange or hedge apple, some cll it bodoc. Termites will not eat it and you can bury it in the ground for 100 years it it still wont rot. It was used by ranchers and farmers before barbed wire was invented and is now being bulldozed into piles and burned. ``` The wood starts off a beautull bright yellow and will continue to darken over the years till it is almost black but never seems to loose it's beauty. I would love to build a house from this wood. ``` ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/9 "2013-06-29T12:41:34Z")
_A duck!_ ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/10 "2013-06-29T14:07:45Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > Any chance you could rephrase the question? Because as it stands, I don’t think it’s answerable. > > Houses have been made of “other products” since prehistory. Indeed, most of the earliest examples of permanent settlement we know of (Mesopotamia, the Levant, Nile valley, Indus valley) used bricks. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/11 "2013-06-29T14:17:51Z")
A lot of development and upscale custom houses use engineered materials - steel framing, composite panels and most especially laminated or built-up beams. Wood has increased in price over the last decades to where standard timbers (2x4 through maybe 4x8) are still cheaper and easier to work with than most alternatives, but when you need a beam to span 15-25-50 feet, a multi-part engineered piece is going to be a lot cheaper, and often lighter and more durable, than a chunk of tree that big. But, of course, even those are made from wood timbers and byproducts. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/12 "2013-06-29T14:40:22Z")
As far as I know, which may not be that far, the earliest human built shelters were made of wood, probably covered with animal skins. The available materials were earth, stone, wood, foliage, and animal bones and skins. It would be a long time after wood was used before earth or stone could be used to make walls and/or roofs. Digging out earthen caves may have preceded everything else, don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![sylmar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@sylmar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sylmar)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/13 "2013-06-29T14:44:34Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > We have a wood grown int the U.S. that will literaly last forever. It is called osage orange or hedge apple, some cll it bodoc. Termites will not eat it and you can bury it in the ground for 100 years it it still wont rot. > > ``` > The wood starts off a beautull bright yellow and will continue to darken over the years till it is almost black but never seems to loose it's beauty. I would love to build a house from this wood. > > ``` Being a hard wood, sounds like it’d have to be a labor of love HB. Pines are the construction industry standard because their softness is conducive to speedy sawing and nailing when “time is money”. As for the op, I imagine the earliest shelters made by humanoid types were probably of lean-to type construction, large wood branches interwoven with smaller brush/reeds etc. with refinements occurring as our ability to shape materials evolved. Dunno where you’d feel the shelter/house demarcation line should be as the process evolved. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/14 "2013-06-29T14:48:49Z")
As noted, the timing really depends on which particular peoples and geographic area you’re looking at. However, anthropologists have found that the development of housing construction techniques has generally followed a linear—and shockingly similar—pathway (provided certain resources are accessible to a culture). There are three primary phases of growth. Cultures first start out with locally available, pliable plant matter, generally a reseeding perennial of some sort. Changing circumstances and experiences over time (generally, though not exclusively, related to predation and climate-related threats) highlight the inherent weaknesses therein, which drives the construction towards woody materials. Though an improvement, such structures exhibit similar weaknesses. Again, when such circumstances are present in a people we see the development of structures that rely on mineral- or earth-based architectural and construction techniques. [Here is a fascinating (and short) Youtube discussion](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E34eBjaqmgo) that does a much better job relating the history. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/15 "2013-06-29T14:56:39Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > It is called osage orange or hedge apple, some cll it bodoc. That’s often given as “bodock” or “bodark”. It comes from “bois d’arc”, French for “bow wood” - as Osage Orange wood has long been considered excellent for bows. > [@](#): > > I would love to build a house from this wood. Sounds impractical. The yield of useful straight-grained lumber from a typical tree is low, and the wood can be hard to work. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/16 "2013-06-29T15:02:27Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > We have a wood grown int the U.S. that will literaly last forever. It is called osage orange or hedge apple, some cll it bodoc. Termites will not eat it and you can bury it in the ground for 100 years it it still wont rot. It was used by ranchers and farmers before barbed wire was invented and is now being bulldozed into piles and burned. > > ``` > The wood starts off a beautull bright yellow and will continue to darken over the years till it is almost black but never seems to loose it's beauty. I would love to build a house from this wood. > > ``` gnarly ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/17 "2013-06-29T15:06:18Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > That’s often given as “bodock” or “bodark”. It comes from “bois d’arc”, French for “bow wood” - as Osage Orange wood has long been considered excellent for bows. > Sounds impractical. The yield of useful straight-grained lumber from a typical tree is low, and the wood can be hard to work. I work with the wood quite a bit and yes it is hard to work. It would also be hard to hang things in the house as you cannot drive nails into it. It does bandsaw fairly well. Very comparable to the tropical hardwoods that have become so popular for decking material but as you say straight pieces are hard to find. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/18 "2013-06-29T15:23:00Z")
Re hard woods: Kiln dried wood is a modern invention. Traditionally wood used in construction was worked while it was still green, and much softer and easier to work. ---
**Author:** ![rock\_party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@rock\_party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rock_party)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/19 "2013-06-29T15:25:35Z")
I find it amazing that along the gulf coast, in areas that get a huge amount of rain, the older neighboorhoods are build of wood. Stick frame with clapboard siding. Some of these houses are from the 1870’s, and still going strong. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193/20 "2013-06-29T16:15:42Z")
> [@rock\_party](#): > > I find it amazing that along the gulf coast, in areas that get a huge amount of rain, the older neighboorhoods are build of wood. Stick frame with clapboard siding. Some of these houses are from the 1870’s, and still going strong. My theory is that they breathe, iow, are not very air tight, so water rot never sets in with the drying from the minimal air flow. I’ve also noticed a lot of these homes are raised up from the ground, not sitting on a concrete foundation. Even if only a foot or so, that has to have some factor in this, I would think. Of course, I could be all wet on this… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/houses-made-of-wood/662193.md?page=2)