# Why wooden houses? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 4, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064 "2008-09-04T21:56:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2008, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/21 "2008-09-11T04:56:13Z")
> [@Ed\_Zotti](#): > > …the short answer is: cheap wood. My house was built during the golden age of wood construction in the U.S., when the virgin forest was being cut down and enormous quantities of high quality lumber were available at low cost… European forests were reduced long ago and the lumber just isn’t available. The prevalence of wooden houses in New Zealand, and the recent deforestation here is another good example of this – in the 100 or so years from the early 1800’s to the early 20th C over 90% of the North Island’s estimated 12,000 sq kilometers of [kauri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agathis_australis)forests were cut / destroyed, and while much was burnt or exported large quantities of the wood was used locally in both ship- and house-building; many of the Auckland villa style houses from the late 19th / early 20th century use kauri throughout, being an ideal wood for both framing and exposed / polished surfaces. It’s a beautiful [golden colour](http://www.thewoodturnersstudio.co.nz/pages/WEBSITE%20KAURI%20BLANK%20REF%20BB6%20PHOTO%201%20333%20pixels.JPG). (Photo of exterior of [typical villa](http://www.greatpons.co.nz/small-hotels-auckland-new-zealand/) – not sure if the word means the same in US). Once the kauri was (largely) gone other woods were used. My 50 year old house is largely built from [rimu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimu), another versatile wood, although not as strong as kauri. (Personally I prefer the look of rimu, a lovely [warm red-gold](http://world-heritage-wood.co.nz/images/Poduct_split_rimu1_med.jpg) colour). These days those woods are only used for polished trim or special furniture, and often recycled from demolished dwellings, and the framing is radiata pine from the large planted / managed /sustainable forests, with the exterior cladding likely to be fiber cement siding, or some other un-wood-like substance. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/22 "2008-10-09T20:18:34Z")
> [@Ed\_Zotti](#): > > I spend most of a chapter on this, but the short answer is: cheap wood. My house was built during the golden age of wood construction in the U.S., when the virgin forest was being cut down and enormous quantities of high quality lumber were available at low cost. Even now, despite steady price increases, wood is used to frame 80 percent of the houses in the U.S. European forests were reduced long ago and the lumber just isn’t available. My Polish carpenters told me that was the big difference between construction in the U.S. and Europe. In scandinavia a lot (probably most) houses are built of wood. Lots of timber and space. In town wood is still common, but there are more concrete/brick/stone houses. Many of the larger towns have been completely destroyed by fire at least once, and places like Stockholm and Sundsvall are fairly typical in that the historic centre is made up of old stone buildings, largely due to old fire regulations > [@](#): > > Sundsvall is a magnificent neo-Renaissance town with richly ornamented buildings. But it wasn’t always so. The Sundsvall of the foresters and timber barons naturally grew up as a town of wood. And wood is flammable. When the town was devastated by fire for the third time in 1888, rendering 9,000 people homeless, residents decided enough was enough-the town would be rebuilt in stone. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/23 "2008-10-09T22:21:50Z")
Another way to look at this is: _a shortage of cheap stone in the US_. Europe has salvaged a lot of building stone from old buildings, some hundreds or even thousands of years old. Over the centuries, the labor necessary to cut stone has been conserved in stone that has already been cut. When we arrived in North America, there wasn’t much in the way of stone buildings. Oh, a few. But not a lot. Cutting stone takes lots of time & labor. And for the first 300 years or so (post-Pilgrims), labor was always rather scarce in contrast to the need. We used wood because it was, simply, less labor intensive. You folks used stone, in part, because your ancestors never hesitated to rip up olds Gothic churches or Roman ruins to build a stone cowbarn. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2008, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/24 "2008-10-15T14:50:16Z")
> [@Kevbo](#): > > It is also cultural. Consider that Columbus landed in the Americas only a little over 500 years ago, and the US declared independence from England only a little over 200 years ago. > > When I was in Austria, I had dinner with a man who built a stunning timber framed house including cork insulation. Everyone in the village laughed at him, because everyone knows that if you build a house out of wood, it won’t be around in 2 or 3 hundred years. In America they think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, they think 100 miles is a long distance. I can see the Austrians’ point, but the thing is, this still wouldn’t explain why most houses in Latin America are not timber, or why a “good house” in Latin America is not timber (I have seen houses made of wooden planks, but calling them “houses” is polite - they were solid only by comparison with the metal planks house across the road). The difference in the availability of good timber is definitely a factor. I’m not sure about it being easier to train someone to work wood than brick, though. Building a single-storey brick house doesn’t require a lot in the way of big beams. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2008, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/25 "2008-10-17T23:59:54Z")
Wood reacts well to earthquakes, if constructed correctly. The house my parents designed and built is all-wood construction (Built in 1978), and it has endured dozens of respectable quakes and more than a few big quakes. Such as the [7.1, 6.6, 6.6 Trifecta of Seismic Might](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/261/5120/433) on April 25th/26th,1992 (yes, that’s all three in one 24 hour period). ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/26 "2008-10-27T20:31:01Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > a wood frame (what builders often call “stick built”) house Just a little nitpick, but related to the OP: “stick built” is only a subset of wood frame houses, referring to the modern method of framing using lots of small (2x4 and slightly larger) pieces. As opposed to old-school “post and beam” using fewer but massive timbers. The switch happened generally in the middle of the 1800s in the U.S. The big reason was the shortage of massive timbers (both because all the big old trees in the east had been cut down, and because there weren’t a whole lot of big trees to begin with in the midwest plains where people were now settling). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/27 "2009-07-05T16:40:36Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > In parts of the US where termites are a problem, frame houses are the exception. throughout Texas (outside of the West Texas desert) and Oklahoma, most new houses are brick. At least in Houston, Galveston, Austin, Dallas, College Station, those cities’ surrounding areas and everywhere else I’ve been, the houses are primarily wood framed, with a brick veneer (i.e. brick outer walls that are not structural). Almost ALL new construction in those areas I mention is and has been like that since the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/28 "2009-07-05T16:54:47Z")
Gah! I forgot to unsubscribe from this thread. So I’ll perpetuate it instead. 😉 mangeorge ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/29 "2009-07-06T14:13:18Z")
I think it depends on where in the US you’re building the house. In the northern half of the nation, wood is plentiful. Out in the desert, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064/30 "2009-07-21T18:21:56Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Yes, I can corroborate that at least in some areas of the country, 100 years is an old building. [/QUOTE] In San Francisco, any building that survived the 1906 earthquake is celebrated and fairly rare. As a side note, documenting anything older than 1906 is a challenge as the city records were lost in the fires following the quake. IIRC, about all there is to go with is water company records of when water or sewer lines were connected, and survey maps done by a fire insurance company. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wooden-houses/462064.md?page=1)