Hey you should check out a video of Amish Barn Raising Time lapse...The Amish here in the US are a religious people who do not participate in modern society here. They mainly farm. They do not believe in using Electricity and other modern conveniences. They do not own cars. They still use horse and buggy. Anyway they live in big communitys and when something bad happens like a barn fire the entire community will come together and build a huge barn in one day with very little modern tools or heavy equipment. Its something to behold. Check one out just type in Amish Barn Raising Timelapse in the CZcams search bar a bunch will pop up...These barns are huge and built really well.
In the US we have a lot of trees, lumber is more cost effective over stone and its faster to build plus the fact if something happens storm tree falling on the home it is easier to fix over stone brick.
Hurricanes can damage homes it is the water aspect however tornadoes are more damaging to the structure of the home those winds can rip apart almost anything where as a hurricane does have wind but to a lesser degree hurricane water tornado high winds (acts as a vacuum).
Your over thinking it. Our houses are mainilly made out of wood bc we have enough trees that it makes timber cheaper. Also our storms are just ways stronger in certain parts of the country
This is the most important reason, yes: in areas where trees grow readily, wood is actually cheaper than stone or brick. And trees absolutely grow readily in the eastern US. Just about everything between the Atlantic and the Mississippi (that's not underwater) is naturally forest if you don't regularly mow or pave it. Given the climate in this part of the world, if a farmer's kids don't want to farm the land but don't want to sell it either, and they just let it sit unused, it takes about 20 years to go from fields to woods without anybody doing anything. If you *plant* fast-growth pine saplings, you can have full-grown trees in 5-7 years. (This is also why paper is cheap.) An unused asphalt parking lot takes more like 50 years to revert, but it will happen entirely on its own. You don't have to do anything, the forest will reclaim the land. So yeah, wood is affordable. As it happens, most of the American population, lives in this region. This is likely not a coincidence: land that gets enough rain to grow trees, ipso facto also gets enough rain to grow a variety of other things, and so it can support a substantial population. Secondarily, wood-frame walls are also much easier to build, maintain, and adjust as needed, and easier to run cabling and conduit and pipe through. You don't have to surface mount anything, you can just run your pipes or conduit or whatever between the studs before you put the drywall on, and if you later decide you want to add some more wiring or whatnot, you don't have to fuss with drilling out masonry, you just knock a small hole in the drywall, run the wiring between the studs, et voila, patch up the drywall when you're done. So in the eighties when you want to add a phone line to your teenage daughter's room so you don't have to listen to all her long phone calls in the living room, you can. Then in 2002 when you decide you want to run cat5 ethernet cabling for the home network, you can. If you want to add an extra sink on the opposite wall of the kitchen from where the main sink is, you can. You want to take out the kitchen window and put in a sliding door in its place, you just grab a skill saw, cut out a couple of 2x4 studs, nail the new ones into place, and you're ready to go for the new configuration. And so on and so forth. It's all just very much easier to manage than if all the walls are stone or brick.
Homes are built to certain codes. They need to meet a bare minimum Federal Code. Local codes (state, county, and city) will address possible local conditions (earthquakes in California, hurricanes in New Jersey, snow in New York, etc) but they can't fall below the requirements of Federal requirements.
Bricks and stones are no guarantee against a tornado or hurricane. When they are knocked down by a storm they just add more hard flying objects. Most houses in the northern states are made of wood as well as the houses in the south. Lumber is still less expensive than bricks in the US.
Modern wood homes with proper coded bracing and all those annoying simpson tie downs that are required nowadays are way stronger than a brick only house. Maybe a solid block wall with rebar reinforcement and filled full of concrete would be as good but honestly mortar wears over time and can ruin a wall in no time if not kept up.
Wood also flexes better if it comes under mother nature's forces like wind from hurricanes and earthquakes. Plus would you rather be buried under a pile of bricks or a pile of wood if things got bad enough?
That's not really how it works. Your house doesn't lift up and fall straight down. Where it lands, is anyone's guess, and what lands on you, is anyone's guess. Maybe its the neighbors house, his barn, or his truck.
😂 So that’s why all across Europe there are castles and row houses that are centuries old…..yet here in America with our stick built homes they rot away easily and are easily destroyed by fire and natural disasters. Not to mention the number of beautiful homes condemned and torn down for disgusting apartment complexes all over.
So this was just the framing portion I’m sure you have figured out. A 2k square foot home or roughly 186 meters squared can be completely framed in a day depending on the crew. That and if it’s paid by job or paid by hour
We build with wood because it's very plentiful. And when storms come through they sway they don't crack like cement and brick do. We have wooden houses that are over 200 yrs old. And in the south we have strict building codes for hurricanes.
Unlike the UK, trees are abundant in the US, so it's easier to use lumber than stone in most places. However, in some parts of the US, like Florida, many of the houses there are made with concrete block, have "hurricane belts" (a metal rebar-like that goes all around the house to hold it together in high winds), and the pitch of the roof is almost flat (again, so winds can go over easier). Northern states that get snow usually have high-pitched roofs so the snow & ice can slide off easier instead of accumulating on the roof - it's heavy!
Where a building is, in proximity to other buildings is also a factor in materials used. If you're adjoining another unit, or within a certain number of feet of one, Fire Code is going to require a fire barrier between them- and often brick is used for that purpose. You see a lot of brick in cities, because buildings are all closer to each other.
You're welcome! I've recently just subbed. Also, no, it doesn't get put up in a day. ^_^ It's more a thing that setting the frame up gives an easier line for wiring & pipes to go around and through the house. Once that's in place, they can use insulation to proof it against heat & cool loss. It's not as easy as it looks -- the heat during the warmer seasons (which is when most things are built to help keep it easy) can creep up on you quickly & dehydration is a serious issue. It's fascinating to watch! You'd like watching woodturning videos. Woodturning is the art of crafting wood into magnificent pieces.
My home in New England was built prior to the American Revolution. It was originally a clapboard timberframe (12" square hand-hewn beams) but around 1830 the owners bricked the exterior. When I was restoring the house (It had been boarded up and derelict for many years) the contractors were all astonished that the roofline and the floors were still dead level--even after 270 years. Craftsmanship is a true art.
Homes like yours give folks the false impression that things were made better then. In reality, they made a lot of stuff in that same year yours was made, that no longer stand. So we are seeing the best of the best, that still survive today, not the average.
Not even a humble brag lol...just a full blown flex 💪. Those victorian and old style homes with handcarved decorative trim and moulding is breathtaking. I dont even have the patience to try making minorly simple moulds w a router and other power tools let alone do it by hand. Gods they were
@@TijuanabillWell no, they were very susceptible to fire because of the chimneys among other things but fire was one big reason many arent still standing today. Most of them though were at some point pulverized for development. There are several “living history museums” up here in New England that are basically whole towns of 2-300 or more yo buildings, Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH for example. Many of the houses there today, that isnt their original location they were moved there to be part of the museum so they wouldnt be destroyed. Its actually relatively common up here someone will buy the land an old historic home sits on because they want the land but intend to tear down the house for any number of reasons so they will advertise anyone can take the house for free or very cheap if they are willing to pay the cost of having it moved. So anyway, kind of a tangent but they were built better, theres just not as many today because they either burned down or were destroyed before anyone really took any interest in preserving them. We do still have a ton of them up here though, thankfully.
Stone and brink homes are death trap in the areas where hurricanes are common-- the east coast and the south. They are also horrible in earthquake areas like on the west coast.
In Oregon, we had the Spring Break Quake about 30 years ago. The wood houses did fine, but the brick city hall, movie theater, etc. all had to be torn down or have major and expensive repairs. They don't seem to understand that bricks are stronger than wood, when wood can flex while brick will crumble!
I build commercial buildings for a living (hospitals, car dealerships, airports, malls). It’s pretty much the same, except we use metal studs, and we build everything in place instead of standing it up.
We have more trees than we know what to do with, hence, lotsa wood houses. Tornadoes will destroy a house made out of anything. Hurricanes do damage but rarely destroy homes. This house has no basement so it's most likely down south somewhere. Also a flat roof means they don't get snow.
Low slope roof structures have very little correlation to snowfall totals. I've been on low slope roofs that had feet of snow on them with no problem. The primary determining factor for steep vs. low slope is, respectively, residential vs. commercial. I'm guessing you have only done residential work in a small geographic area or have done none at all and are just making assumptions. Either way...
A suggestion for future videos - check out Schoolhouse Rock. It was an American thing from the 1970s-maybe 2000. They were short - commercial length - that they'd play during cartoon time on Saturday mornings (kids have to learn somehow). It used catchy tunes, memorable lyrics, yet taught math(s), grammar, and US history/civics. They're really awesome, and few people have reacted to them. But anyone over 30 in the US knows Schoolhouse Rock. Try "Conjunction Junction" or "I'm Just a Bill."
You should check out a video from Faris and Lisa. They do a year long time lapse from purchasing/clearing land to every step in the process and how much they spent. Granted it's not what most American's can afford to build but at least you get a proper idea of how homes are made. Homes are made from wood frames because wood is plentiful here but not all homes are made from it. You are correct on how and why they're made the way they are dependent on where you are in the US. There are several shows on HGTV that you can watch them build and/or remodel homes of all kinds.
I'm a former electrician, and let me just say, there is no trade like iron workers. You guys are some interesting humans, to say the least. Pretty fun to be around though.
Yes an Ironworkers video would be really good to watch your reaction. I started working commercial construction in 1973 and had my first experiences with ironworkers. This was in the days when riding the ball was still normal and the use of harnesses were not like they are today I knew hundreds of them over the years and I can honestly say that I only ever met a handful that I didn't like. I started as a surveyor and I used to lay out all of the gridlines and anchor bolts. It was a point of pride to not have the ironworkers have to slot a single bolt on the job. Deadly or go home. I then moved on to high rises and ran forming crews on the concrete core style buildings that you don't see too many of any more. Concrete cores that contained all of the elevator shafts etc,,, often with corbels with anchor bolts or embedded weld plates. Pretty precise stuff. We were up several floors above the ironworkers so I was looking down on them as they did the connecting. Saw some pretty gnarly stuff Lol . I had more to walk on and hang onto than they did though. Lol. But swinging around on the ends of the cranes was lots of fun. Loved it. I miss the comraderie of working up there.
Did that for a few years. The "key phrase" was: "If you fall, you're fired before you hit the ground". Can't sue me, when you found out gravity sucks, you were unemployed.
well unfortunately unless you were given paperwork stating that you were fired and or it's in a system also stating that you're fired then unfortunately still responsible
This is fairly typical framing. We live in a framed home with brick over the exterior wood frame. Why wood? We have millions of acres of forests and timber/wood framing is cheap and durable. A framed home can easily last 100 years or more. Yes, tornados and hurricanes wreak havoc on framed homes. However, the framed roofs and window of your masonry homes would also me blown away in these type of storms. The framing nail gun has a trigger. It also has a spring loaded safety at the tip where the nail comes out. The trigger must be depressed and the safety pressed into the wood before a nail is allowed to be shot. (So you don't kill everyone on the job site) If you squeeze the trigger(holding it in) and bounce the end of the gun....It will shoot a nail every time you touch the end to wood. It can shoot nails nearly as fast as a machine gin.
as I posted, can you imagine running wiring, plumbing and heating through stone walls. And can you imagine the cost and manpower to do a remodeling job on a stone structure.
With residential buildings, a huge determining factor for construction method is the readily available material. If you move up to commercial/industrial structures. The construction method is very similar in the majority of developed countries. In the US, trees are abundant, especially the ones we use as building material. Pine is the most common. It also grows quickly. So, it's a readily available resource that is replenished relatively quickly. Side note, this video shows a "stick built" home(completely constructed on-site). We also have "prefabricated" homes. Those are built at a different location(generally a huge factory), and they're transported in large sections and placed on a foundation that was constructed on the site. Our building codes for residential homes vary a lot depending on location. The most strict building code we have is the "Miami-Dade standard". It's used in Florida to build homes that will experience hurricane conditions.
I’ve actually saw the Amish here in central Illinois build a two story house in one day. It was amazing to watch them work. I went by early in the morning and they were laying the foundation, I went back by a little later in the afternoon and they had all the walls up and closed in. Went by in the evening when the sun was beginning to go down and there were like 20 guys on the roof finishing it off. It was unbelievable how fast they worked together and without modern electric tools.🇺🇸
My father was a carpenter and worked for his father in-law, a local homebuilder. The house four lots up the street from my childhood home (buildt by my dad on weekends and after he got off work building other people's homes) was the fastest start to finish house my grandfather constructed. 28 days from an undisturbed empty lot to the new family moving in the first boxes as the painter was leaving, warning them to be careful around the paint in the back bedroom for a few more hours. It was still wet. 45 years later, it's still a nice looking house. About 20% of the houses in the neighborhood I grew up in were buildt by my grandfather. He had multiple crews, but my dad worked on quite a few of them, including the houses some of my childhood friends grew up in.
Wood framing is the norm throughout America. America and Canada has tons of lumber so it keeps cost down. Most framers will end up with back injuries, for me double spinal fusion and a lumbar discectomy laminectomy, this is hard work! In California we have earthquakes, wood gives a little and can sway back and forth without breaking apart. Brick and concrete blocks in earthquakes tend to crack and fall apart. This was an add on addition to a house that was already built. And yes if you had seven or eight guys that know what they’re doing a day or two for something this size to frame.
That last metal piece with all the holes in it is called a "hurricane strap" and literally ties the house to the foundation or one floor to another floor, with the idea being that if the house is tied together and tied to the foundation it become much more difficult for a hurricane or a tornado to pick up the whole house. However if the winds hit the house directly.. the rood is always the first thing to go.
Like @memelord3117 was saying is that the #1 reason we build our homes with a wooden frame structure like this is because we have a thriving timber industry. There are some parts of the country that are essentially lumber farms...the Pacific Northwest is a major source of timber. And yes, when a plot of trees is cut, it is replanted and then about 20 years later it's ready to be cut again again. That may sound like a long time, or even short time, but there's just so much land covered in trees that it kinda takes that long to having to need that plot of land again. The #2 reason is because wooden framed structures can survive Earthquakes better than stone, brick, or mud ones do. If you notice that when there's an Earthquake within the Mediterranean or southern Asian region, it usually results in massive structural damage and lots of death. You don't see that in the US with wooden frames. Why? The wood can give just enough so that it doesn't crumble or snap. There's a major fault lines in the US. The San Andres out in California, the New Madrid in the Midwest, and another in the Northeast around NYC. (They just had a 5.0 there a month or so ago.) But there's other shakes events that go on as well. Mine blasting is one such thing. Back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, we had strip mines near my house. Every so often, they'd blast rock, and we'd get a mini earthquake here. The house would shake for a few seconds and that'd be it, right. No damage, just a trinket may fall off the wall every now and again. But if our houses were built out of brick or stone, they would have crumbled in no time. They've done seismic tests to see which building materials work best under ever increasing seismic disturbances. They tested Mud, Stone, Wood, and Steel. They all failed in pretty much that order. Mud crumbles right away. Followed rather quickly with Stone, but the Wood survives for quite a long time, and then the steel the longest as it too can give a little, steel as we know can flex without breaking. But yes, you're right. Wooden structures tend to get blown away pretty easily in Tornadoes and Hurricanes, but they do quite well in straight lime winds if not directly hit or for not long sustained times. Like for Father's Day 1998, my neighborhood was hit with a a major Downburst. There was a lot of tree damage in the area, but hardly any of any at all house damage. If there was any house damage it was because a tree fell on the structure. But yeah, if it's a tornado with 85-200 mph winds and the funnel hits your structure...it's gone. But I'd say that it'd fuck up a stone or brick structure pretty bad too. In fact, we just had brand new Walmart Supercenter and adjacent stand alone stripmall built in our town in 2011, and we were hit on Leap Day 2012 with an EF 3 tornado and it totally destroyed that stripmall. It was built with cement block and steel. So there ya go.
This house lacks a basement, so it's being built on a concrete slab. My 1950s ranch-style house was a modest 1000 square feet (93 square meters) in size before an addition, but it also has 1000 square feet of storage and additional living space in the climate-controlled basement.
I love my 1959 ranch with finished walkout basement. 1938 sq ft on each level, but looks like a much smaller house from the street. It’s a “little” house that lives large.
@@JPMadden Walkout basements have access to the outside, typically with a door and windows, it’s not underground like a standard basement. It can be any size, it just needs to be accessible from the ground level with standard doors and windows. Sometimes they’re called daylight basements (because you can see daylight in it.) A basement with bulkhead doors is not considered a walkout basement.
@@maine-lygamingtips2039 yes it is. A tidal surge can travel hundreds of miles inland like a tidal wave. During Katrina it wasn't the wind that demolished New Orleans.
Adam have you ever seen a big building made of brick or block and steel get hit by a tornado? It doesn't take the strongest tornado to wreck even big strong non-wooden buildings. There have even been tornadoes that have removed the foundation from the property, forget the house anchored to and built on it.
Hurricane damage is mostly water damage, from the flooding that they cause. There is also some wind damage, but it's a lot less than the water damage. In colder states, the walls are still essentially made like this but then the exterior walls will have a couple of inches of styrofoam (in large sheets) over the outside of the wall, underneath the siding; and inside of that, between the studs, there may also be fiberglass insulation between the studs. Fiberglass insulation is the stuff that's usually either yellow or pink and comes in rolls; the width of the rolls is the same as the usual distance between studs, so to install it (from inside the house) you staple the insulation backing to the 2x4 that runs across the top of the wall, unroll downward, cut when you get to the bottom, staple it in place in a few more spots, and then eventually put the drywall over the top just like you would do if the insulation weren't there. And then you make darned sure your windows are the good ones (where each frame contains three parallel panes separated by vacuum), so the windows don't leak heat like nobody's business. Typically you the double-hung windows so they're easy to open in the summer and easy to clean; and you get the ones with built-in screens on a second set of tracks. There are a lot of ways to scrimp and save when building a house, but do NOT scrimp too much on the windows, you WILL regret it. Cheap flooring can be easily replaced later. Cheap woodwork can be painted. A room can be added on, a larger garage built, etc. Replacing all the windows in the house is more of a pain. Don't cheap out on the windows.
Not quite done in a day, but depending on various factors, it's definitely doable to construct a house in under a week. A lot of times it'll take significantly longer for various reasons (sometimes sourcing the right window that you just can't live without, or you want to construct it somewhere that's difficult to transport materials to), but if you have what you need, have the permits, and know what you're going to do, having a crew to work on it, a few days is a possibility.
A little off topic, but I've been meaning to tell you that your new house is exactly what we always did in the US until recently. When you get a partner you begin to focus on getting what we call a "starter" home either just before or just after the first child. More kids and more income means a move to a family house, then often after the kids are grown, you down size. So feel good about what you're accomplishing and remember a lot of these nicer homes are being bought by CZcamsrs. If they can you can! Love the new content.
America has more trees now than in 1900. We plant trees like crops. Lumber is cheap. We build with what is abundant and cheap (and sturdy) Most houses use this type of construction method. It is a method that has developed over the years that allows for quick and accurate construction. These houses can last 200 years if the roof is maintained.
I live in a brick house that was built around the 1990's, it was made by the chickasaws here in oklahoma! I got to repair the corner of ny roof from a old satellite dish that caused wood to rot.
Nope, Northern state dweller here, brick houses are not common. Most are indeed made of wood. Now if you go to larger, older cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, there are brick houses, mansions really, in the "old part of town". Can't remember why, but I think it has something to do with how windy it gets in some parts and the wooden houses are more supple and can easily bend and adjust, whereas the brick houses are firmer and can't handle the strain off high winds as well.
Mainly houses are built like this because of cost and availability of materials and the time to build; wood is more readily available and cheaper than stone and brick, and it's faster to build than one that uses brick or stone
Stone structures in major hurricanes & tornadoes just become heavier debris to hit & squash you. The strongest tornadoes can suck asphalt & grass out of the ground. If you've ever seen aftermath images or video you'll notice everything is covered in mud from what used to be lawn & roads.
We have lots of trees to use for building and also brick does not do great in earthquake country. Stone or brick does not give well at too much pressure it breaks
I've always heard we did woodhouses.Because the abundance of trees we have and because of the lower cost.Besides, who wants to have a brick house?When a tornado?Then comes to throw those bricks around
Keep in mind that houses usually have basements poured first. Ours has an exposed southern exposure with lg windows and patio door going out onto a patio. While they can be used for storage ours has a bath, extra bedrm, living rm with fireplace and a 2nd kitchen. The other half has a 2 car garage plus furnace etc. A basement gives not only more house space but its safer in extreme weather conditions.
You would really have been shocked at how my house was built. All the walls came preassembled on a flat bed truck. They were stacked on the truck in order of assembly. The guys pulled a wall off, carried it to where it was supposed to go and nailed it to the adjacent wall. In our 3000 home development, there were only 9 different styles of house, so they were quite good at putting them together. It took 3 days to frame, sheath, side, and roof it. One day to install all the drywall, and a little over a week to do all the finish work which consists of cabinets and trim. Pouring the basement took the most time due to the time it takes to cure the concrete. From the time they first broke ground until we moved in was a bit less than 3 months.
We have more Timber here thus we use wood. Brick and stone buildings also will not stand up to hurricanes, tornados, and take more damage in earthquakes.
I'm in Florida. My home is built with double poured cement block with rods. Houses are built all kind of ways in the US. They are built 4 or 5 different ways just on my street alone. Many, both block and wood ,have been here 100 years or more.
Tornadoes don't discriminate, they'll level a brick and mortar house just as quickly as a stick built. Tornadoes jump, they can decimate a neighborhood and not touch several of them. If it's an F 5. Your only safe if you're underground in a shelter
Of course tyvex, or insulation board is another product we put on the outside, in between the veneers. Safe rooms also can be added for hurricanes and tornadoes. It doesn't always mean that you have to go to the basement. Some places like Texas and the gulf coast/ South, have footings and slab foundations. Due to ground conditions.
Most residential homes are pretty much built in the same fashion, with maybe some slight differences in the technologies used. There are actually a LOT of different reasons we use wood over brick or stone in America. Don't get me wrong, there certainly are a lot of structures in the US that are made from brick or stone but when it comes to Residential construction, wood wins out. First of all, Wood is very available in the US. We have lots of forest areas and lots of companies that grow fast growing trees specifically so they can be harvested on a regular basis for wood. Second wood construction is a lot quicker and easier, specially with all the pneumatic tools we have now-a-days. Wood is easier to manipulate into different designs and also allows for quicker and easier modifications to your home. Want to expand? just take down a wall and boom you're ready to add on. Having a wood frame home also allow for easier updating and changing things inside. It's much easier to attach drywall or other indoor coverings to the wall. With stone or brick you either have to glue everything or you poking holes into the stone/brick which deteriorated the integrity of the structure.
I've built additions and done roofing it's not as fun as you think lol! Our apartment is brick and concrete and always warm in here so you may be onto something with that
Stone, masonry, & adobe are all cooler in the heat. Here in Texas a lot are brick for that reason. But with a well constructed home it really doesn't matter much. Stone would be very cold in snow country. There are tips & tricks to make either work anywhere. Hurricane do flood damage. Most will have hurricane ties & not blow away. In a strong tornado, brick with be marginally better for a few seconds. Roofs are lifted off so unless the roof is made of masonry . . . This is more than one day but it is much faster than brick. My house is built like this with a brick facade.
All houses in the United States have to adhere to codes that differ from area to area. Houses on the West Coast are built to withstand earthquakes. Houses on the East Coast are built to withstand hurricanes. Homes in the Midwest are built to withstand boredom. Also, most homes in the U.S. are covered in brick or stone.
Concrete slab foundations are for areas that have seismic considerations, high water table or soil that has the kind of clay that expands when wet. Putting on the rafters, trusses and roof requires a crane and takes a while to build. The gap between the OSB (Oriented Strand Board) or plywood boards of the attic floor and the drop ceiling beneath it is so that electrical wiring, plumbing, insulation and HVAC can be placed in there. Reflective OSB is for the floor of the attic. Hispanic work crews are very fast and efficient. This home is being built in California. Florida or the Southwest. They start early in the day and try to get it done while the light lasts because this is desert or a Mediterranean climate. The temperatures in the early morning are way cooler than sundown. Brick construction is more expensive than stucco or stick built (wood frame) construction. Stick built construction is also stronger and can take varying stresses better from wind or earthquake better than brick can. I lived through a EF4 195 mph wind speed tornado and the houses that were destroyed right down to the brick basements were made of solid oak framing with 1" thick inner and outer oak walls made with nailed boards. The 100% brick homes were demolished. 70% of the houses in town were total losses. Fortunately, we only had 0.7% deaths and most injuries were such that people could survive them. Afterwards, the town looked like a war zone. 99% of the population pulled together and helped one another right after the tornado struck and afterwards during the cleanup and rebuilding process. I had really good insurance and bought another old house with a basement in the same town. The oak construction was so sturdy that all the corners of the frame and beams are still in alignment and it had been in the tornado's path. The house had some damage but not severe. The USA has wild weather due to large expanses of plains, large bodies of water on all sides of the lower 48 States and hot humid summers that provide the energy to fuel tornados and hurricanes. I have been in every kind of extreme weather in the USA except hurricanes and tsunamis. The west coast of the USA, Hawaii and Alaska are on the Ring of Fire so tsunamis and earthquakes can happen there.
Insulation is generally only installed on the exterior walls and the top floor ceiling between the living space and the attic and in the bottom floor between the basement or crawlspace and the first floor. However, a lot of people will install a sound proofing foam or board between floors to muffle sound from traveling either from the lower floor to the upper floor or the other way. That way if someone is sleeping upstairs in a bedroom the sound from people's activities below won't be heard as much, in the same way if someone is having crazy sex in a bedroom upstairs you won't hear as much of the screaming on the first floor. 🥳
"this guy with the nail gun is on something" Nah, he's just used to it. He's also not going that fast, you can hear the rhythm of it. The way he's firing the nail gun is slower then you can fire a real semi automatic firearm (.25 seconds between shots is around average - 4 rounds per second)
The trouble with hurricanes and tornadoes is structural separation. It doesn't really matter what your house is made of, if the roof comes off the walls are likely going to be blown over. This is wood's advantage in that through the use of sheet steel ties you can bond the structure together in tension. This is difficult with masonry because you have to distribute any possible tensile loads through a lot of material as it's not strong at all in tension, where wood is perfectly happy in both tension and compression. Freeze-thaw cycles also mean very little to wood versus masonry. Final note, there's probably not a square meter of land in this country that won't see a 2.5 or 3 magnitude earthquake at least once during a building's life span. Maybe in Michigan around the Canadian shield, but quakes pop up in places you'd never expect. Hell, there was a 4.8 quake last month in New Jersey...
The first thing to recognize is that they are built differently in different places. This is typical modern wood construction. I live in Arizona. In large construction developments (dozens or hundreds of houses) it's probably going to be wood because it's cheap in terms of labor. Since Arizona doesn't have extensive forests and because it's hot traditionally houses were made of brick; the type of brick has varied over time. My first home was made with mud adobe walls -- actual blocks of mud and straw sun dried and stuccoed over. These are very thick walls that absorb heat well; they provide about ten hours of delay in keeping the heat from penetrating the interior, releasing heat into the interior to keep it warm at night. In the winter they work as heat for the night and provide passive solar warming. Over time regular brick became popular because it was cheap and easy to ship into the state or make on site. My current home is made of fired adobe block (mud adobe that has been fired in a kiln) and provides those thermal benefits, but inside the walls are firred out with wood for insulation and sheetrock for a finish. this gives me extra thick walls which are also good for passive solar heating in the winter and keeping temps low in the summer. Also in Arizona we don't have basements in part because we don't need to dig down eight feet to be below the frost line, we use "concrete slab on grade" with 18 inch deep footings and a concrete slab that's maybe 8 inches thick. It's hard to dig and there's a lot of land so less need to make it two stories or have a basement.
The long metal strip with all those holes is called a "hurricane strap" and it's put in key places on the building. The silvery metallic side of the plywood of the roof is a moisture barrier. It keeps too much moisture from entering, or having your house dry out in warm dry weather. My house is 100 years old, and is built the same way except for the foundation. (Mine has beams and piers with a crawl space under the floor, and a small basement.)
Every State has their own way of building homes. In California you can't have brick nor stone houses because of the earthquakes. Earthquakes make the bricks or stone shoot around like bulletts. In Texas, homes are mostly built of stone or bricks
You should watch an Amish barn raising. You'd get a kick out of it. Houses in the US are mostly timber framed since wood is plentiful (Southeastern pine forests especially as they grow back rather fast) and the lesser reason of it makes things easier/more affordable to re-build after tornado/hurricane/earthquake/flood what-have-you. The cost and damage would likely increase after storms if brick were used due to cost to replace and the amount of damage a heavier brick could do than wood boards to both people and property. Brick is actually common in SOME areas of the US - clay is plentiful in parts of the Southeastern US (we actually exported kaolin clay to the UK for Wedgewood pottery in the past) and you'll see a lot of "lower" to "middle" class homes that have brick while it's only seen on primarily "upper" class homes in other areas of the country. Brick is NOT good in areas with a lot of earthquakes or tornadoes due to the damage/injuries/costs they would lead to so in areas like the Southwestern US that have heat and earthquakes you might see adobe or stucco or timber framing. If you live in tornado country the temperature and weather fluctuates too much for adobe or stucco and the % chance of you getting hit by a tornado, hail, or tornado debris is good anyways so just build with the expectation of re-building and repairing.
Building codes differ in each state and town. The states have a set of building codes, and then local building codes can make those state codes even more restrictive. Hurricanes are a major concern in states like Florida. I think it was Hurricane Andrew that swept across Southern Florida that made Florida greatly increase their building codes. One result of these hurricanes was that the hurricanes were lifting off the roof of homes, and then the homes would collapse; as a result, roof straps were mandated that nailed these metal straps from the roof rafters to the wall studs. I live on Long Island, NY, and we partially adopted these roof straps into our building codes. Roof straps are now required for some construction. Most homes are built of wood like this. America and Canada have a lot of trees; this method makes homes much cheaper to build. My home is over 60 years old, and was built like this. Of course building materials and methods have changed, but it's still very similar. As you can imagine, these homes (like the one in this video) are easy to add to and change around. You want a bigger room? Knock down a wall. You want another couple rooms? Add an addition like in this video.
Houses in the North are generally built the same. We get cold winters here but do insulate exterior walls and attics, then the plywood sheets are wrapped in a material to stop air infiltration, so no drafts. Then different types of siding or brick are put on. The houses last a long time if properly cared for. The house I was raised in is about 200 years old now and doesn't show signs of falling down yet. We added 10 inches of insulation in the attic of our house after we moved in which really helps keep out the cold and heat. There are houses that are constructed to limit any cold/hot air exchanges with the interior. Saw one built in new england that used that type of construction and had solar panels that could actually supply enough energy to keep the place comfortable. Called a 0 energy house.
America also has stone and brick houses too. I live in Michigan and a friend has of mine who moved here from California was shocked to see stone and brick houses because in California they can’t really do that because of the danger of Earthquakes.
These guys are framers & depending on the job getting the frame, sheathing, & roof sheathing on is usually all they do. Other crews will come in to do shingles, siding, doors & windows, plumbing, electric, sheetrock, painting, flooring, etc. Yes, most US houses are built in this way because we have lots of trees & also, we're morally opposed to giving hurricanes & tornadoes bricks & stones to throw at us. With our weather it's not that the wind is blowing but rather WHAT the wind is blowing. lol Seriously, brick is probably the second most common house material with stone being a distant third.
Most houses built in the central and northern US are wood frame, where houses in the south [where I live] are made from concrete block and code requires that they can withstand 170 mile an hour winds. My house is on a 300 foot by 500 foot lot and the house has 3200 feet of living space. It was built in 1966 and has been through fifteen major hurricanes and has never had a single dollars worth of damage. The house sits on a concrete foundation and the floors are terrazzo, and all the interior walls are made of block with a finish of swimming pool plaster, so everything is completely waterproof, inside and out. The property is located about 80 feet above the surrounding 320 acre area so unless there is an 80 foot deep flood, we will never need to worry about flooding. The biggest problem is power outages during severe storms and hurricanes, so I have installed a whole house generator that runs everything in the home, including the in ground pool and 30 x 20 foot shop and the HVAC. When the house was built, the total cost including the land and the in ground pool cost $15,000 dollars. Today, I am currently paying taxes on the appraised value of $375,000! But since everything is paid off, including 2 cars and a truck, the only bills we have besides the taxes are food and electricity.
In Florida most of our homes are cement blocks with stucco out the outer side. Interior walls are framed out. Up north they have a basement /foundation underground of concrete then fram flooring and walls.A moisture barrier is out against the interior block walls then insulation, sheetrock,. You should come over and join a crew for a winter. It would be too hot for you in Florida summers, but perfect weather for you in the winter
Those spaces, you asked if they were for insulation, are actually the design of a manufactured I beam. The panels they are laying atop the joists ( I beams) are the sub floor of the first floor of the house.
Timber framed houses like this are by far the most built. Some are sheathed with wood on the outside. Some are clad with stucco. Some are clad with brick. Some are clad with stone. In storm-prone areas, some are framed with concrete blocks.
Most american single family homes are just wood and cardboard stapled together. You should watch some house flipping or remodeling shows, they literally rip walls apart with their bare hands. This is also a reason why so many American movies and tv shows feature characters punching a hole in a wall in a fit of anger, this is not an incredible feat of strength, it's just very easy to do.
The inside of new houses is usually framed out of wood. The materials for the outside can be wood, brick, stone or adobe, or a mix of these materials. There are houses with siding to protect from weather conditions. Adobe houses are usually in the southwest, and southern California. You can find adobe occasionally in Midwest and other states. Wood and brick houses are probably the most common. There's also log cabins that are historic or in rural or wilderness areas or used as vacation homes.
Wood is readily available and relatively cheaper. In addition we can insulate a lot more then your typical brick house which is important to keep the temp nice year round. Insulate concrete forms are becoming more popular and are extremely strong - but they're quite a bit more expensive then traditional wooden houses. A compromise is for the basement to be ICF and the rest traditional.
My oldest son has build 2 houses of his own the first one he sold. Now this one is on his ranch. He and his family are taking their time and detailing it the way they want. He has fallen from the roof here twice and once building his first 2 story home. We have many brick homes destroyed in tornadoes. I personally would love a geodesic home.
Reason wood is used is because it’s very time efficient,but mainly because wood is flexible. The amount of high winds and earthquakes in the states is a bit more than where you guys are at, so having a house that can flex a bit is much better.
My house was built in 1939. It's balloon construction. That is where the wall studs go from the foundation to the roof (2 floors and attic). Then the floors are attached to them. Blows my mind that it is still standing. It also was wrapped with construction paper, like the kind kids use . It has no sheeting, instead it has shiplap and no insulation. Inside walls were plaster and lathe.
Stone and brick with actually keep it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Wood here is grown (pine trees) just for the timber, so it is always readily available. Brick and stone is expensive to build with here. Builder can get a 2000sq ft home finished within six months typically.
Honestly wood is just cheaper, hurricane areas will use certain things to help with the storms but our weather is just incredibly extreme. The wood also allows for more insulation, to insult from both heat and cold. They will likely either put in like 4-6 inches of insulation between the pieces of wood on the exterior walls
You were asking about the manufactured wooden "I" beams. They do not shrink or swell providing floors that do not squeak. Also they are lighter and stronger that if they were solid beams and can be made in longer lengths. Insulation is only put into exterior walls.
The silver coating on the bottom side of the ceiling reflects heat back into the house instead of letting it escape through the ceiling. It's not exactly insulation, but serves a similar purpose. It's more of a supplement to the insulation.
Stick houses, as we call them, can have tremendous Rvalue insulation depending on whether you use 2”x 4” or 2”x 6”, or greater, studs on exterior walls. In Canada we build them everywhere, even in the most northern communities. Many homes have exterior insulation outside between the wooden wall structure and the siding, leaving an air gap between, to increase the thermal break from outside to interior. This build can insulate from extreme heat or cold, increasing the efficiency of heating or cooling the interior. This kind of structure can very comfortable inside when the outside temperatures range from 30 degrees C+ to the low -50s C or lower. Many, outside of North America, think this is unbelievable but it is, in fact, the reality.
Most houses in the US are built in a similar fashion to this although some are a bit different. Even when you see brick or stone covered homes they are mostly all built with wood frames and the stone or bricks are more of a decorative fascade than a structural part of the house.
If all your walls (except the one room you mentioned) are stone, are they all "supporting walls?" Maybe that isn't a thing there. In the US, some interior walls are just walls separating spaces. But some are "load bearing walls" which means you can't take them down unless you add another beam on top to support the weight of the second story or roof. This is quite the issue as many of us buy a house, and make it our own with additions, opening of spaces, etc. But you have to know which walls are okay to take down inside, and which will collapse the house.
Gotta remember for wood is cheaper and also you were talking about tornados and hurricanes. Those brick and stone would just be turned into projectiles. Hell about 6 or 7 years ago my buddy lost his Harley when his entire shed was ripped up and they found it mangled about 3 or 4 miles away.
The medal straps are for hurricane and Tornado protection. We actually have a tornado room in our home. It is made out of reinforced concrete with a solid steel door.
brick and stone houses, which have thicker walls, they will retain heat in the winter and stay cooler in the summer. I think one of the reasons air conditioning is more prevalent in the US is that with wooden framed houses heat up in the summer much faster than a stone/brick building. So there's pros and cons to both... you wanna see something really amazing, watch an Amish barn-raising. They build a whole f*cking barn in less than an hour. it's mind-blowing.
There are high-end homes that are made out of solid concrete including the 2nd and 3rd floors. Hurricanes will just rip the roof off, walls don't really get damaged much.
I used to do construction too. The hardest part really is standing the walls. Everything else is just like doin a big 3d puzzle. I build bike and hike trails now and its way funner cause we get to ride what we build and enjoy it first before the public
Not only is wood cheaper than brick or stone, it is the labor cost that you are saving. Stone and brick require many many more hours to put up and more people, resulting in a much higher cost.
I built my house in east central Mississippi in 2006. It took 2 and a half months. It was built like this video. Foundation, walls, roof, doors, windows, drywall, brick, then painted inside. My house was built in an old cow pasture with a barn (1940s) and farm.
Twitch streams - www.twitch.tv/adamcouser
Hey you should check out a video of Amish Barn Raising Time lapse...The Amish here in the US are a religious people who do not participate in modern society here. They mainly farm. They do not believe in using Electricity and other modern conveniences. They do not own cars. They still use horse and buggy. Anyway they live in big communitys and when something bad happens like a barn fire the entire community will come together and build a huge barn in one day with very little modern tools or heavy equipment. Its something to behold. Check one out just type in Amish Barn Raising Timelapse in the CZcams search bar a bunch will pop up...These barns are huge and built really well.
czcams.com/video/vfKkuZmlx6U/video.html&ab_channel=VisionVideo
In the US we have a lot of trees, lumber is more cost effective over stone and its faster to build plus the fact if something happens storm tree falling on the home it is easier to fix over stone brick.
Hurricanes can damage homes it is the water aspect however tornadoes are more damaging to the structure of the home those winds can rip apart almost anything where as a hurricane does have wind but to a lesser degree hurricane water tornado high winds (acts as a vacuum).
I am in Wisconsin my home is made from wood.
Your over thinking it. Our houses are mainilly made out of wood bc we have enough trees that it makes timber cheaper. Also our storms are just ways stronger in certain parts of the country
That makes sense!
This is the most important reason, yes: in areas where trees grow readily, wood is actually cheaper than stone or brick. And trees absolutely grow readily in the eastern US. Just about everything between the Atlantic and the Mississippi (that's not underwater) is naturally forest if you don't regularly mow or pave it. Given the climate in this part of the world, if a farmer's kids don't want to farm the land but don't want to sell it either, and they just let it sit unused, it takes about 20 years to go from fields to woods without anybody doing anything. If you *plant* fast-growth pine saplings, you can have full-grown trees in 5-7 years. (This is also why paper is cheap.) An unused asphalt parking lot takes more like 50 years to revert, but it will happen entirely on its own. You don't have to do anything, the forest will reclaim the land. So yeah, wood is affordable. As it happens, most of the American population, lives in this region. This is likely not a coincidence: land that gets enough rain to grow trees, ipso facto also gets enough rain to grow a variety of other things, and so it can support a substantial population.
Secondarily, wood-frame walls are also much easier to build, maintain, and adjust as needed, and easier to run cabling and conduit and pipe through. You don't have to surface mount anything, you can just run your pipes or conduit or whatever between the studs before you put the drywall on, and if you later decide you want to add some more wiring or whatnot, you don't have to fuss with drilling out masonry, you just knock a small hole in the drywall, run the wiring between the studs, et voila, patch up the drywall when you're done. So in the eighties when you want to add a phone line to your teenage daughter's room so you don't have to listen to all her long phone calls in the living room, you can. Then in 2002 when you decide you want to run cat5 ethernet cabling for the home network, you can. If you want to add an extra sink on the opposite wall of the kitchen from where the main sink is, you can. You want to take out the kitchen window and put in a sliding door in its place, you just grab a skill saw, cut out a couple of 2x4 studs, nail the new ones into place, and you're ready to go for the new configuration. And so on and so forth. It's all just very much easier to manage than if all the walls are stone or brick.
@@stephenpmurphy591 hahahhahahahaa incorrect
@@MoreAdamCousermost of the lumber for construction comes from tree farms
Homes are built to certain codes. They need to meet a bare minimum Federal Code. Local codes (state, county, and city) will address possible local conditions (earthquakes in California, hurricanes in New Jersey, snow in New York, etc) but they can't fall below the requirements of Federal requirements.
Bricks and stones are no guarantee against a tornado or hurricane. When they are knocked down by a storm they just add more hard flying objects. Most houses in the northern states are made of wood as well as the houses in the south. Lumber is still less expensive than bricks in the US.
Wood also does better in earthquakes. It tends to shake and recover where brick is brittle and cracks loosing its strength.
Modern wood homes with proper coded bracing and all those annoying simpson tie downs that are required nowadays are way stronger than a brick only house. Maybe a solid block wall with rebar reinforcement and filled full of concrete would be as good but honestly mortar wears over time and can ruin a wall in no time if not kept up.
Wood also flexes better if it comes under mother nature's forces like wind from hurricanes and earthquakes. Plus would you rather be buried under a pile of bricks or a pile of wood if things got bad enough?
That's not really how it works. Your house doesn't lift up and fall straight down. Where it lands, is anyone's guess, and what lands on you, is anyone's guess. Maybe its the neighbors house, his barn, or his truck.
Yup block and brick walls dont like uneven vertical disruption. Kinda crazy how weak those walls can be
Wooden house are cheaper then other materials.. And they last hundreds of years.
Makes sense!
Excellent joke!
Also makes it cheaper and easier to build an addiction.
😂
So that’s why all across Europe there are castles and row houses that are centuries old…..yet here in America with our stick built homes they rot away easily and are easily destroyed by fire and natural disasters. Not to mention the number of beautiful homes condemned and torn down for disgusting apartment complexes all over.
@@stephaniecolburn We have houses here in the USA that were built in the 1800s and are still standing. I go past them every day.
So this was just the framing portion I’m sure you have figured out. A 2k square foot home or roughly 186 meters squared can be completely framed in a day depending on the crew. That and if it’s paid by job or paid by hour
That’s crazy!
We build with wood because it's very plentiful. And when storms come through they sway they don't crack like cement and brick do. We have wooden houses that are over 200 yrs old. And in the south we have strict building codes for hurricanes.
Unlike the UK, trees are abundant in the US, so it's easier to use lumber than stone in most places. However, in some parts of the US, like Florida, many of the houses there are made with concrete block, have "hurricane belts" (a metal rebar-like that goes all around the house to hold it together in high winds), and the pitch of the roof is almost flat (again, so winds can go over easier). Northern states that get snow usually have high-pitched roofs so the snow & ice can slide off easier instead of accumulating on the roof - it's heavy!
New homes in tornado-prone areas have higher-pitched rooflines as well because a low pitched one can act as an airfoil.
Guys thank you for the recent support and love ❤
I love these US videos I hope you do more!
Absolutely Adam! You have a great channel, well done 👏!
Where a building is, in proximity to other buildings is also a factor in materials used. If you're adjoining another unit, or within a certain number of feet of one, Fire Code is going to require a fire barrier between them- and often brick is used for that purpose. You see a lot of brick in cities, because buildings are all closer to each other.
I’m new to your channel and I love it!🤘
You're welcome! I've recently just subbed.
Also, no, it doesn't get put up in a day. ^_^ It's more a thing that setting the frame up gives an easier line for wiring & pipes to go around and through the house. Once that's in place, they can use insulation to proof it against heat & cool loss. It's not as easy as it looks -- the heat during the warmer seasons (which is when most things are built to help keep it easy) can creep up on you quickly & dehydration is a serious issue. It's fascinating to watch! You'd like watching woodturning videos. Woodturning is the art of crafting wood into magnificent pieces.
My home in New England was built prior to the American Revolution. It was originally a clapboard timberframe (12" square hand-hewn beams) but around 1830 the owners bricked the exterior. When I was restoring the house (It had been boarded up and derelict for many years) the contractors were all astonished that the roofline and the floors were still dead level--even after 270 years. Craftsmanship is a true art.
Homes like yours give folks the false impression that things were made better then. In reality, they made a lot of stuff in that same year yours was made, that no longer stand. So we are seeing the best of the best, that still survive today, not the average.
Not even a humble brag lol...just a full blown flex 💪. Those victorian and old style homes with handcarved decorative trim and moulding is breathtaking. I dont even have the patience to try making minorly simple moulds w a router and other power tools let alone do it by hand. Gods they were
@@TijuanabillWell no, they were very susceptible to fire because of the chimneys among other things but fire was one big reason many arent still standing today. Most of them though were at some point pulverized for development. There are several “living history museums” up here in New England that are basically whole towns of 2-300 or more yo buildings, Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH for example. Many of the houses there today, that isnt their original location they were moved there to be part of the museum so they wouldnt be destroyed. Its actually relatively common up here someone will buy the land an old historic home sits on because they want the land but intend to tear down the house for any number of reasons so they will advertise anyone can take the house for free or very cheap if they are willing to pay the cost of having it moved. So anyway, kind of a tangent but they were built better, theres just not as many today because they either burned down or were destroyed before anyone really took any interest in preserving them. We do still have a ton of them up here though, thankfully.
Thank you so much for restoring and preserving your historic home. I love that so much.
@@Vanessa-ok3ysIt has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Thank you for your kind and supportive words.😊
Stone and brink homes are death trap in the areas where hurricanes are common-- the east coast and the south. They are also horrible in earthquake areas like on the west coast.
In Oregon, we had the Spring Break Quake about 30 years ago. The wood houses did fine, but the brick city hall, movie theater, etc. all had to be torn down or have major and expensive repairs. They don't seem to understand that bricks are stronger than wood, when wood can flex while brick will crumble!
@@RogCBrand Its the mortar that falls apart, not the bricks.
I live in South Florida where every house is made out of cylinder blocks, my house has been through eight hurricanes, I only lost trees.
I build commercial buildings for a living (hospitals, car dealerships, airports, malls). It’s pretty much the same, except we use metal studs, and we build everything in place instead of standing it up.
Nice!
We have more trees than we know what to do with, hence, lotsa wood houses. Tornadoes will destroy a house made out of anything. Hurricanes do damage but rarely destroy homes. This house has no basement so it's most likely down south somewhere. Also a flat roof means they don't get snow.
Makes sense with the wood!
@@MoreAdamCouser Like anywhere in the world, Product Availability. It is also why every field in your country is bordered by stone walls
Low slope roof structures have very little correlation to snowfall totals. I've been on low slope roofs that had feet of snow on them with no problem. The primary determining factor for steep vs. low slope is, respectively, residential vs. commercial. I'm guessing you have only done residential work in a small geographic area or have done none at all and are just making assumptions. Either way...
A suggestion for future videos - check out Schoolhouse Rock. It was an American thing from the 1970s-maybe 2000. They were short - commercial length - that they'd play during cartoon time on Saturday mornings (kids have to learn somehow). It used catchy tunes, memorable lyrics, yet taught math(s), grammar, and US history/civics. They're really awesome, and few people have reacted to them. But anyone over 30 in the US knows Schoolhouse Rock. Try "Conjunction Junction" or "I'm Just a Bill."
Yes! Schoolhouse Rock!
Don’t forget “No more kings.”
You should check out a video from Faris and Lisa. They do a year long time lapse from purchasing/clearing land to every step in the process and how much they spent. Granted it's not what most American's can afford to build but at least you get a proper idea of how homes are made.
Homes are made from wood frames because wood is plentiful here but not all homes are made from it. You are correct on how and why they're made the way they are dependent on where you are in the US.
There are several shows on HGTV that you can watch them build and/or remodel homes of all kinds.
I will do!
Yeah!! A million $, 8,000 sq ft house build that 90+% of Americans can't afford. That'll show him "real America"!
You should watch a video about how ironworkers build skyscrapers, being an ironworker myself I’d say it’s quite interesting
I will do!
I'm a former electrician, and let me just say, there is no trade like iron workers. You guys are some interesting humans, to say the least. Pretty fun to be around though.
@@Tijuanabill appreciate that brotha 👊🏻
Yes an Ironworkers video would be really good to watch your reaction.
I started working commercial construction in 1973 and had my first experiences with ironworkers. This was in the days when riding the ball was still normal and the use of harnesses were not like they are today
I knew hundreds of them over the years and I can honestly say that I only ever met a handful that I didn't like.
I started as a surveyor and I used to lay out all of the gridlines and anchor bolts. It was a point of pride to not have the ironworkers have to slot a single bolt on the job.
Deadly or go home.
I then moved on to high rises and ran forming crews on the concrete core style buildings that you don't see too many of any more. Concrete cores that contained all of the elevator shafts etc,,, often with corbels with anchor bolts or embedded weld plates. Pretty precise stuff.
We were up several floors above the ironworkers so I was looking down on them as they did the connecting. Saw some pretty gnarly stuff Lol . I had more to walk on and hang onto than they did though. Lol. But swinging around on the ends of the cranes was lots of fun. Loved it. I miss the comraderie of working up there.
Did that for a few years. The "key phrase" was: "If you fall, you're fired before you hit the ground". Can't sue me, when you found out gravity sucks, you were unemployed.
I’ve done electrical for 30 years and I can tell you been saying that since I can’t remember lol
well unfortunately unless you were given paperwork stating that you were fired and or it's in a system also stating that you're fired then unfortunately still responsible
They told me I was on the clock until I hit the ground.
@@godofdeath6455 Its a joke we all tell, but you aren't really fired if you fall; you are just dead.
This is fairly typical framing. We live in a framed home with brick over the exterior wood frame. Why wood? We have millions of acres of forests and timber/wood framing is cheap and durable. A framed home can easily last 100 years or more. Yes, tornados and hurricanes wreak havoc on framed homes. However, the framed roofs and window of your masonry homes would also me blown away in these type of storms.
The framing nail gun has a trigger. It also has a spring loaded safety at the tip where the nail comes out. The trigger must be depressed and the safety pressed into the wood before a nail is allowed to be shot. (So you don't kill everyone on the job site) If you squeeze the trigger(holding it in) and bounce the end of the gun....It will shoot a nail every time you touch the end to wood. It can shoot nails nearly as fast as a machine gin.
as I posted, can you imagine running wiring, plumbing and heating through stone walls. And can you imagine the cost and manpower to do a remodeling job on a stone structure.
@@johnzubil2875. I believe those brick houses still have framing on the inside. Wood or metal. They run the electricity and plumbing thru that.
Also those nail guns didn't always have the safety switches on the fronts. 😮
@@briansmith48 wrong again. Apparently you have never watched how they build their homes.
@@johnzubil2875 . How can I be wrong again???
When was the first time? 🤔
I love how fascinated you are by us
I’m obsessed hahaha
With residential buildings, a huge determining factor for construction method is the readily available material. If you move up to commercial/industrial structures. The construction method is very similar in the majority of developed countries.
In the US, trees are abundant, especially the ones we use as building material. Pine is the most common. It also grows quickly. So, it's a readily available resource that is replenished relatively quickly.
Side note, this video shows a "stick built" home(completely constructed on-site). We also have "prefabricated" homes. Those are built at a different location(generally a huge factory), and they're transported in large sections and placed on a foundation that was constructed on the site. Our building codes for residential homes vary a lot depending on location. The most strict building code we have is the "Miami-Dade standard". It's used in Florida to build homes that will experience hurricane conditions.
I’ve actually saw the Amish here in central Illinois build a two story house in one day. It was amazing to watch them work. I went by early in the morning and they were laying the foundation, I went back by a little later in the afternoon and they had all the walls up and closed in. Went by in the evening when the sun was beginning to go down and there were like 20 guys on the roof finishing it off. It was unbelievable how fast they worked together and without modern electric tools.🇺🇸
My father was a carpenter and worked for his father in-law, a local homebuilder. The house four lots up the street from my childhood home (buildt by my dad on weekends and after he got off work building other people's homes) was the fastest start to finish house my grandfather constructed.
28 days from an undisturbed empty lot to the new family moving in the first boxes as the painter was leaving, warning them to be careful around the paint in the back bedroom for a few more hours. It was still wet.
45 years later, it's still a nice looking house. About 20% of the houses in the neighborhood I grew up in were buildt by my grandfather. He had multiple crews, but my dad worked on quite a few of them, including the houses some of my childhood friends grew up in.
Your reactions and facial expressions to these videos are just priceless Adam. You're on a roll dude. Keep'm coming!
Wood framing is the norm throughout America. America and Canada has tons of lumber so it keeps cost down. Most framers will end up with back injuries, for me double spinal fusion and a lumbar discectomy laminectomy, this is hard work! In California we have earthquakes, wood gives a little and can sway back and forth without breaking apart. Brick and concrete blocks in earthquakes tend to crack and fall apart. This was an add on addition to a house that was already built. And yes if you had seven or eight guys that know what they’re doing a day or two for something this size to frame.
That last metal piece with all the holes in it is called a "hurricane strap" and literally ties the house to the foundation or one floor to another floor, with the idea being that if the house is tied together and tied to the foundation it become much more difficult for a hurricane or a tornado to pick up the whole house. However if the winds hit the house directly.. the rood is always the first thing to go.
Like @memelord3117 was saying is that the #1 reason we build our homes with a wooden frame structure like this is because we have a thriving timber industry. There are some parts of the country that are essentially lumber farms...the Pacific Northwest is a major source of timber. And yes, when a plot of trees is cut, it is replanted and then about 20 years later it's ready to be cut again again. That may sound like a long time, or even short time, but there's just so much land covered in trees that it kinda takes that long to having to need that plot of land again. The #2 reason is because wooden framed structures can survive Earthquakes better than stone, brick, or mud ones do. If you notice that when there's an Earthquake within the Mediterranean or southern Asian region, it usually results in massive structural damage and lots of death. You don't see that in the US with wooden frames. Why? The wood can give just enough so that it doesn't crumble or snap. There's a major fault lines in the US. The San Andres out in California, the New Madrid in the Midwest, and another in the Northeast around NYC. (They just had a 5.0 there a month or so ago.) But there's other shakes events that go on as well. Mine blasting is one such thing. Back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, we had strip mines near my house. Every so often, they'd blast rock, and we'd get a mini earthquake here. The house would shake for a few seconds and that'd be it, right. No damage, just a trinket may fall off the wall every now and again. But if our houses were built out of brick or stone, they would have crumbled in no time. They've done seismic tests to see which building materials work best under ever increasing seismic disturbances. They tested Mud, Stone, Wood, and Steel. They all failed in pretty much that order. Mud crumbles right away. Followed rather quickly with Stone, but the Wood survives for quite a long time, and then the steel the longest as it too can give a little, steel as we know can flex without breaking. But yes, you're right. Wooden structures tend to get blown away pretty easily in Tornadoes and Hurricanes, but they do quite well in straight lime winds if not directly hit or for not long sustained times. Like for Father's Day 1998, my neighborhood was hit with a a major Downburst. There was a lot of tree damage in the area, but hardly any of any at all house damage. If there was any house damage it was because a tree fell on the structure. But yeah, if it's a tornado with 85-200 mph winds and the funnel hits your structure...it's gone. But I'd say that it'd fuck up a stone or brick structure pretty bad too. In fact, we just had brand new Walmart Supercenter and adjacent stand alone stripmall built in our town in 2011, and we were hit on Leap Day 2012 with an EF 3 tornado and it totally destroyed that stripmall. It was built with cement block and steel. So there ya go.
This house lacks a basement, so it's being built on a concrete slab. My 1950s ranch-style house was a modest 1000 square feet (93 square meters) in size before an addition, but it also has 1000 square feet of storage and additional living space in the climate-controlled basement.
Nice
I love my 1959 ranch with finished walkout basement. 1938 sq ft on each level, but looks like a much smaller house from the street. It’s a “little” house that lives large.
@@Pinnfeathers Does "walkout" basement mean it's larger than the ground floor or that it has a bulkhead for outside access?
@@JPMadden Walkout basements have access to the outside, typically with a door and windows, it’s not underground like a standard basement. It can be any size, it just needs to be accessible from the ground level with standard doors and windows. Sometimes they’re called daylight basements (because you can see daylight in it.) A basement with bulkhead doors is not considered a walkout basement.
@@Pinnfeathers Thanks
If you like watching building homes, Trent and Allie have been building their home in Utah for the last 3 years.
There are special straps added for hurricanes in areas needing that for the roofs. In colder climates, the walls are thicker for more insulation.
Flooding is the major concern in a hurricane
@@kramermccabe8601 No it isn't.
@@maine-lygamingtips2039 yes it is. A tidal surge can travel hundreds of miles inland like a tidal wave. During Katrina it wasn't the wind that demolished New Orleans.
Adam have you ever seen a big building made of brick or block and steel get hit by a tornado? It doesn't take the strongest tornado to wreck even big strong non-wooden buildings. There have even been tornadoes that have removed the foundation from the property, forget the house anchored to and built on it.
Hurricane damage is mostly water damage, from the flooding that they cause. There is also some wind damage, but it's a lot less than the water damage.
In colder states, the walls are still essentially made like this but then the exterior walls will have a couple of inches of styrofoam (in large sheets) over the outside of the wall, underneath the siding; and inside of that, between the studs, there may also be fiberglass insulation between the studs. Fiberglass insulation is the stuff that's usually either yellow or pink and comes in rolls; the width of the rolls is the same as the usual distance between studs, so to install it (from inside the house) you staple the insulation backing to the 2x4 that runs across the top of the wall, unroll downward, cut when you get to the bottom, staple it in place in a few more spots, and then eventually put the drywall over the top just like you would do if the insulation weren't there. And then you make darned sure your windows are the good ones (where each frame contains three parallel panes separated by vacuum), so the windows don't leak heat like nobody's business. Typically you the double-hung windows so they're easy to open in the summer and easy to clean; and you get the ones with built-in screens on a second set of tracks. There are a lot of ways to scrimp and save when building a house, but do NOT scrimp too much on the windows, you WILL regret it. Cheap flooring can be easily replaced later. Cheap woodwork can be painted. A room can be added on, a larger garage built, etc. Replacing all the windows in the house is more of a pain. Don't cheap out on the windows.
Not quite done in a day, but depending on various factors, it's definitely doable to construct a house in under a week.
A lot of times it'll take significantly longer for various reasons (sometimes sourcing the right window that you just can't live without, or you want to construct it somewhere that's difficult to transport materials to), but if you have what you need, have the permits, and know what you're going to do, having a crew to work on it, a few days is a possibility.
A little off topic, but I've been meaning to tell you that your new house is exactly what we always did in the US until recently. When you get a partner you begin to focus on getting what we call a "starter" home either just before or just after the first child. More kids and more income means a move to a family house, then often after the kids are grown, you down size.
So feel good about what you're accomplishing and remember a lot of these nicer homes are being bought by CZcamsrs. If they can you can! Love the new content.
America has more trees now than in 1900. We plant trees like crops. Lumber is cheap. We build with what is abundant and cheap (and sturdy) Most houses use this type of construction method. It is a method that has developed over the years that allows for quick and accurate construction. These houses can last 200 years if the roof is maintained.
I live in a brick house that was built around the 1990's, it was made by the chickasaws here in oklahoma! I got to repair the corner of ny roof from a old satellite dish that caused wood to rot.
I like watching you watch things we take for granted. And you’re funny as shit. 😂
Nope, Northern state dweller here, brick houses are not common.
Most are indeed made of wood.
Now if you go to larger, older cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, there are brick houses, mansions really, in the "old part of town".
Can't remember why, but I think it has something to do with how windy it gets in some parts and the wooden houses are more supple and can easily bend and adjust, whereas the brick houses are firmer and can't handle the strain off high winds as well.
Mainly houses are built like this because of cost and availability of materials and the time to build; wood is more readily available and cheaper than stone and brick, and it's faster to build than one that uses brick or stone
Makes sense!
Stone structures in major hurricanes & tornadoes just become heavier debris to hit & squash you. The strongest tornadoes can suck asphalt & grass out of the ground. If you've ever seen aftermath images or video you'll notice everything is covered in mud from what used to be lawn & roads.
We have lots of trees to use for building and also brick does not do great in earthquake country. Stone or brick does not give well at too much pressure it breaks
I have to keep reminding myself that this is an ADDITION to an existing house.
I've always heard we did woodhouses.Because the abundance of trees we have and because of the lower cost.Besides, who wants to have a brick house?When a tornado?Then comes to throw those bricks around
Keep in mind that houses usually have basements poured first. Ours has an exposed southern exposure with lg windows and patio door going out onto a patio. While they can be used for storage ours has a bath, extra bedrm, living rm with fireplace and a 2nd kitchen. The other half has a 2 car garage plus furnace etc. A basement gives not only more house space but its safer in extreme weather conditions.
You would really have been shocked at how my house was built. All the walls came preassembled on a flat bed truck. They were stacked on the truck in order of assembly. The guys pulled a wall off, carried it to where it was supposed to go and nailed it to the adjacent wall. In our 3000 home development, there were only 9 different styles of house, so they were quite good at putting them together. It took 3 days to frame, sheath, side, and roof it. One day to install all the drywall, and a little over a week to do all the finish work which consists of cabinets and trim. Pouring the basement took the most time due to the time it takes to cure the concrete. From the time they first broke ground until we moved in was a bit less than 3 months.
Love watching your reaction. I would like to see you react to more homes being built.
Dude... Youve made me laugh so many times. Just subscribed.
We have more Timber here thus we use wood. Brick and stone buildings also will not stand up to hurricanes, tornados, and take more damage in earthquakes.
I'm in Florida. My home is built with double poured cement block with rods. Houses are built all kind of ways in the US. They are built 4 or 5 different ways just on my street alone. Many, both block and wood ,have been here 100 years or more.
and where here in Germany Have Buildings 1700 Years Old Even wirh world war 2
Tornadoes don't discriminate, they'll level a brick and mortar house just as quickly as a stick built. Tornadoes jump, they can decimate a neighborhood and not touch several of them. If it's an F 5. Your only safe if you're underground in a shelter
Of course tyvex, or insulation board is another product we put on the outside, in between the veneers. Safe rooms also can be added for hurricanes and tornadoes. It doesn't always mean that you have to go to the basement. Some places like Texas and the gulf coast/ South, have footings and slab foundations. Due to ground conditions.
Most residential homes are pretty much built in the same fashion, with maybe some slight differences in the technologies used.
There are actually a LOT of different reasons we use wood over brick or stone in America. Don't get me wrong, there certainly are a lot of structures in the US that are made from brick or stone but when it comes to Residential construction, wood wins out. First of all, Wood is very available in the US. We have lots of forest areas and lots of companies that grow fast growing trees specifically so they can be harvested on a regular basis for wood. Second wood construction is a lot quicker and easier, specially with all the pneumatic tools we have now-a-days. Wood is easier to manipulate into different designs and also allows for quicker and easier modifications to your home. Want to expand? just take down a wall and boom you're ready to add on. Having a wood frame home also allow for easier updating and changing things inside. It's much easier to attach drywall or other indoor coverings to the wall. With stone or brick you either have to glue everything or you poking holes into the stone/brick which deteriorated the integrity of the structure.
I've built additions and done roofing it's not as fun as you think lol! Our apartment is brick and concrete and always warm in here so you may be onto something with that
Stone, masonry, & adobe are all cooler in the heat. Here in Texas a lot are brick for that reason. But with a well constructed home it really doesn't matter much. Stone would be very cold in snow country. There are tips & tricks to make either work anywhere. Hurricane do flood damage. Most will have hurricane ties & not blow away. In a strong tornado, brick with be marginally better for a few seconds. Roofs are lifted off so unless the roof is made of masonry . . . This is more than one day but it is much faster than brick. My house is built like this with a brick facade.
All houses in the United States have to adhere to codes that differ from area to area. Houses on the West Coast are built to withstand earthquakes. Houses on the East Coast are built to withstand hurricanes. Homes in the Midwest are built to withstand boredom. Also, most homes in the U.S. are covered in brick or stone.
built to withstand boredom, BAH!!!!!
Concrete slab foundations are for areas that have seismic considerations, high water table or soil that has the kind of clay that expands when wet.
Putting on the rafters, trusses and roof requires a crane and takes a while to build.
The gap between the OSB (Oriented Strand Board) or plywood boards of the attic floor and the drop ceiling beneath it is so that electrical wiring, plumbing, insulation and HVAC can be placed in there. Reflective OSB is for the floor of the attic.
Hispanic work crews are very fast and efficient. This home is being built in California. Florida or the Southwest. They start early in the day and try to get it done while the light lasts because this is desert or a Mediterranean climate. The temperatures in the early morning are way cooler than sundown.
Brick construction is more expensive than stucco or stick built (wood frame) construction. Stick built construction is also stronger and can take varying stresses better from wind or earthquake better than brick can. I lived through a EF4 195 mph wind speed tornado and the houses that were destroyed right down to the brick basements were made of solid oak framing with 1" thick inner and outer oak walls made with nailed boards. The 100% brick homes were demolished. 70% of the houses in town were total losses. Fortunately, we only had 0.7% deaths and most injuries were such that people could survive them. Afterwards, the town looked like a war zone. 99% of the population pulled together and helped one another right after the tornado struck and afterwards during the cleanup and rebuilding process.
I had really good insurance and bought another old house with a basement in the same town. The oak construction was so sturdy that all the corners of the frame and beams are still in alignment and it had been in the tornado's path. The house had some damage but not severe.
The USA has wild weather due to large expanses of plains, large bodies of water on all sides of the lower 48 States and hot humid summers that provide the energy to fuel tornados and hurricanes. I have been in every kind of extreme weather in the USA except hurricanes and tsunamis. The west coast of the USA, Hawaii and Alaska are on the Ring of Fire so tsunamis and earthquakes can happen there.
Insulation is generally only installed on the exterior walls and the top floor ceiling between the living space and the attic and in the bottom floor between the basement or crawlspace and the first floor. However, a lot of people will install a sound proofing foam or board between floors to muffle sound from traveling either from the lower floor to the upper floor or the other way. That way if someone is sleeping upstairs in a bedroom the sound from people's activities below won't be heard as much, in the same way if someone is having crazy sex in a bedroom upstairs you won't hear as much of the screaming on the first floor. 🥳
"this guy with the nail gun is on something" Nah, he's just used to it. He's also not going that fast, you can hear the rhythm of it. The way he's firing the nail gun is slower then you can fire a real semi automatic firearm (.25 seconds between shots is around average - 4 rounds per second)
The trouble with hurricanes and tornadoes is structural separation. It doesn't really matter what your house is made of, if the roof comes off the walls are likely going to be blown over. This is wood's advantage in that through the use of sheet steel ties you can bond the structure together in tension. This is difficult with masonry because you have to distribute any possible tensile loads through a lot of material as it's not strong at all in tension, where wood is perfectly happy in both tension and compression.
Freeze-thaw cycles also mean very little to wood versus masonry.
Final note, there's probably not a square meter of land in this country that won't see a 2.5 or 3 magnitude earthquake at least once during a building's life span. Maybe in Michigan around the Canadian shield, but quakes pop up in places you'd never expect. Hell, there was a 4.8 quake last month in New Jersey...
The first thing to recognize is that they are built differently in different places. This is typical modern wood construction. I live in Arizona. In large construction developments (dozens or hundreds of houses) it's probably going to be wood because it's cheap in terms of labor.
Since Arizona doesn't have extensive forests and because it's hot traditionally houses were made of brick; the type of brick has varied over time. My first home was made with mud adobe walls -- actual blocks of mud and straw sun dried and stuccoed over. These are very thick walls that absorb heat well; they provide about ten hours of delay in keeping the heat from penetrating the interior, releasing heat into the interior to keep it warm at night. In the winter they work as heat for the night and provide passive solar warming. Over time regular brick became popular because it was cheap and easy to ship into the state or make on site. My current home is made of fired adobe block (mud adobe that has been fired in a kiln) and provides those thermal benefits, but inside the walls are firred out with wood for insulation and sheetrock for a finish. this gives me extra thick walls which are also good for passive solar heating in the winter and keeping temps low in the summer. Also in Arizona we don't have basements in part because we don't need to dig down eight feet to be below the frost line, we use "concrete slab on grade" with 18 inch deep footings and a concrete slab that's maybe 8 inches thick. It's hard to dig and there's a lot of land so less need to make it two stories or have a basement.
The long metal strip with all those holes is called a "hurricane strap" and it's put in key places on the building.
The silvery metallic side of the plywood of the roof is a moisture barrier. It keeps too much moisture from entering, or having your house dry out in warm dry weather.
My house is 100 years old, and is built the same way except for the foundation.
(Mine has beams and piers with a crawl space under the floor, and a small basement.)
I love how you are doing videos on homes now!
Every State has their own way of building homes. In California you can't have brick nor stone houses because of the earthquakes. Earthquakes make the bricks or stone shoot around like bulletts. In Texas, homes are mostly built of stone or bricks
You should watch an Amish barn raising. You'd get a kick out of it.
Houses in the US are mostly timber framed since wood is plentiful (Southeastern pine forests especially as they grow back rather fast) and the lesser reason of it makes things easier/more affordable to re-build after tornado/hurricane/earthquake/flood what-have-you. The cost and damage would likely increase after storms if brick were used due to cost to replace and the amount of damage a heavier brick could do than wood boards to both people and property.
Brick is actually common in SOME areas of the US - clay is plentiful in parts of the Southeastern US (we actually exported kaolin clay to the UK for Wedgewood pottery in the past) and you'll see a lot of "lower" to "middle" class homes that have brick while it's only seen on primarily "upper" class homes in other areas of the country. Brick is NOT good in areas with a lot of earthquakes or tornadoes due to the damage/injuries/costs they would lead to so in areas like the Southwestern US that have heat and earthquakes you might see adobe or stucco or timber framing. If you live in tornado country the temperature and weather fluctuates too much for adobe or stucco and the % chance of you getting hit by a tornado, hail, or tornado debris is good anyways so just build with the expectation of re-building and repairing.
Building codes differ in each state and town. The states have a set of building codes, and then local building codes can make those state codes even more restrictive.
Hurricanes are a major concern in states like Florida. I think it was Hurricane Andrew that swept across Southern Florida that made Florida greatly increase their building codes. One result of these hurricanes was that the hurricanes were lifting off the roof of homes, and then the homes would collapse; as a result, roof straps were mandated that nailed these metal straps from the roof rafters to the wall studs. I live on Long Island, NY, and we partially adopted these roof straps into our building codes. Roof straps are now required for some construction.
Most homes are built of wood like this. America and Canada have a lot of trees; this method makes homes much cheaper to build. My home is over 60 years old, and was built like this. Of course building materials and methods have changed, but it's still very similar. As you can imagine, these homes (like the one in this video) are easy to add to and change around. You want a bigger room? Knock down a wall. You want another couple rooms? Add an addition like in this video.
Houses in the North are generally built the same. We get cold winters here but do insulate exterior walls and attics, then the plywood sheets are wrapped in a material to stop air infiltration, so no drafts. Then different types of siding or brick are put on. The houses last a long time if properly cared for. The house I was raised in is about 200 years old now and doesn't show signs of falling down yet. We added 10 inches of insulation in the attic of our house after we moved in which really helps keep out the cold and heat.
There are houses that are constructed to limit any cold/hot air exchanges with the interior. Saw one built in new england that used that type of construction and had solar panels that could actually supply enough energy to keep the place comfortable. Called a 0 energy house.
America also has stone and brick houses too. I live in Michigan and a friend has of mine who moved here from California was shocked to see stone and brick houses because in California they can’t really do that because of the danger of Earthquakes.
Spray foam insulation is lightweight and expands into all crevices. It can have different R-values (thicker or more dense for colder climates).
These guys are framers & depending on the job getting the frame, sheathing, & roof sheathing on is usually all they do. Other crews will come in to do shingles, siding, doors & windows, plumbing, electric, sheetrock, painting, flooring, etc. Yes, most US houses are built in this way because we have lots of trees & also, we're morally opposed to giving hurricanes & tornadoes bricks & stones to throw at us. With our weather it's not that the wind is blowing but rather WHAT the wind is blowing. lol Seriously, brick is probably the second most common house material with stone being a distant third.
There is a healthy mix of building types in the US. I live in a brick home.
Nice!
Most houses built in the central and northern US are wood frame, where houses in the south [where I live] are made from concrete block and code requires that they can withstand 170 mile an hour winds. My house is on a 300 foot by 500 foot lot and the house has 3200 feet of living space. It was built in 1966 and has been through fifteen major hurricanes and has never had a single dollars worth of damage. The house sits on a concrete foundation and the floors are terrazzo, and all the interior walls are made of block with a finish of swimming pool plaster, so everything is completely waterproof, inside and out. The property is located about 80 feet above the surrounding 320 acre area so unless there is an 80 foot deep flood, we will never need to worry about flooding. The biggest problem is power outages during severe storms and hurricanes, so I have installed a whole house generator that runs everything in the home, including the in ground pool and 30 x 20 foot shop and the HVAC. When the house was built, the total cost including the land and the in ground pool cost $15,000 dollars. Today, I am currently paying taxes on the appraised value of $375,000! But since everything is paid off, including 2 cars and a truck, the only bills we have besides the taxes are food and electricity.
The metal strip with all the holes is called a hurricane strap. It's purpose is to try and minimize the amount of flying debris.
In Florida most of our homes are cement blocks with stucco out the outer side. Interior walls are framed out. Up north they have a basement /foundation underground of concrete then fram flooring and walls.A moisture barrier is out against the interior block walls then insulation, sheetrock,. You should come over and join a crew for a winter. It would be too hot for you in Florida summers, but perfect weather for you in the winter
Those spaces, you asked if they were for insulation, are actually the design of a manufactured I beam. The panels they are laying atop the joists ( I beams) are the sub floor of the first floor of the house.
Timber framed houses like this are by far the most built. Some are sheathed with wood on the outside. Some are clad with stucco. Some are clad with brick. Some are clad with stone. In storm-prone areas, some are framed with concrete blocks.
Most american single family homes are just wood and cardboard stapled together. You should watch some house flipping or remodeling shows, they literally rip walls apart with their bare hands. This is also a reason why so many American movies and tv shows feature characters punching a hole in a wall in a fit of anger, this is not an incredible feat of strength, it's just very easy to do.
The inside of new houses is usually framed out of wood. The materials for the outside can be wood, brick, stone or adobe, or a mix of these materials. There are houses with siding to protect from weather conditions. Adobe houses are usually in the southwest, and southern California. You can find adobe occasionally in Midwest and other states. Wood and brick houses are probably the most common. There's also log cabins that are historic or in rural or wilderness areas or used as vacation homes.
We have earthquakes here brick houses fall down, wood is more flexible.
As a framer in the construction industry of house building, you're shoes are one of the most important things, especially when you got a walk on 2 x 4
Wood is readily available and relatively cheaper. In addition we can insulate a lot more then your typical brick house which is important to keep the temp nice year round. Insulate concrete forms are becoming more popular and are extremely strong - but they're quite a bit more expensive then traditional wooden houses. A compromise is for the basement to be ICF and the rest traditional.
My oldest son has build 2 houses of his own the first one he sold. Now this one is on his ranch. He and his family are taking their time and detailing it the way they want. He has fallen from the roof here twice and once building his first 2 story home.
We have many brick homes destroyed in tornadoes. I personally would love a geodesic home.
Reason wood is used is because it’s very time efficient,but mainly because wood is flexible. The amount of high winds and earthquakes in the states is a bit more than where you guys are at, so having a house that can flex a bit is much better.
My house was built in 1939. It's balloon construction. That is where the wall studs go from the foundation to the roof (2 floors and attic). Then the floors are attached to them. Blows my mind that it is still standing. It also was wrapped with construction paper, like the kind kids use . It has no sheeting, instead it has shiplap and no insulation. Inside walls were plaster and lathe.
Stone and brick with actually keep it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Wood here is grown (pine trees) just for the timber, so it is always readily available. Brick and stone is expensive to build with here. Builder can get a 2000sq ft home finished within six months typically.
Honestly wood is just cheaper, hurricane areas will use certain things to help with the storms but our weather is just incredibly extreme.
The wood also allows for more insulation, to insult from both heat and cold. They will likely either put in like 4-6 inches of insulation between the pieces of wood on the exterior walls
You were asking about the manufactured wooden "I" beams. They do not shrink or swell providing floors that do not squeak. Also they are lighter and stronger that if they were solid beams and can be made in longer lengths. Insulation is only put into exterior walls.
The silver coating on the bottom side of the ceiling reflects heat back into the house instead of letting it escape through the ceiling. It's not exactly insulation, but serves a similar purpose. It's more of a supplement to the insulation.
I'm in the Northeast of the states and my house is a 3 story all brick house with a stone basement.
Stick houses, as we call them, can have tremendous Rvalue insulation depending on whether you use 2”x 4” or 2”x 6”, or greater, studs on exterior walls. In Canada we build them everywhere, even in the most northern communities. Many homes have exterior insulation outside between the wooden wall structure and the siding, leaving an air gap between, to increase the thermal break from outside to interior. This build can insulate from extreme heat or cold, increasing the efficiency of heating or cooling the interior. This kind of structure can very comfortable inside when the outside temperatures range from 30 degrees C+ to the low -50s C or lower. Many, outside of North America, think this is unbelievable but it is, in fact, the reality.
My mom was a construction foreman and she’d bring me to work sometimes. It is fascinating to watch.
Most houses in the US are built in a similar fashion to this although some are a bit different. Even when you see brick or stone covered homes they are mostly all built with wood frames and the stone or bricks are more of a decorative fascade than a structural part of the house.
On a construction site like this, the boss will tell you “If you fall off the roof, you’re fired before you hit the ground!”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
If all your walls (except the one room you mentioned) are stone, are they all "supporting walls?" Maybe that isn't a thing there. In the US, some interior walls are just walls separating spaces. But some are "load bearing walls" which means you can't take them down unless you add another beam on top to support the weight of the second story or roof. This is quite the issue as many of us buy a house, and make it our own with additions, opening of spaces, etc. But you have to know which walls are okay to take down inside, and which will collapse the house.
Gotta remember for wood is cheaper and also you were talking about tornados and hurricanes. Those brick and stone would just be turned into projectiles. Hell about 6 or 7 years ago my buddy lost his Harley when his entire shed was ripped up and they found it mangled about 3 or 4 miles away.
The medal straps are for hurricane and Tornado protection. We actually have a tornado room in our home. It is made out of reinforced concrete with a solid steel door.
brick and stone houses, which have thicker walls, they will retain heat in the winter and stay cooler in the summer. I think one of the reasons air conditioning is more prevalent in the US is that with wooden framed houses heat up in the summer much faster than a stone/brick building. So there's pros and cons to both...
you wanna see something really amazing, watch an Amish barn-raising. They build a whole f*cking barn in less than an hour. it's mind-blowing.
My house, in Canada, in the Rocky Mtns of BC, is 97 years old and built like this. It's still standing and entering its 4th renovation.
There are high-end homes that are made out of solid concrete including the 2nd and 3rd floors. Hurricanes will just rip the roof off, walls don't really get damaged much.
I used to do construction too. The hardest part really is standing the walls. Everything else is just like doin a big 3d puzzle. I build bike and hike trails now and its way funner cause we get to ride what we build and enjoy it first before the public
Not only is wood cheaper than brick or stone, it is the labor cost that you are saving. Stone and brick require many many more hours to put up and more people, resulting in a much higher cost.
I built my house in east central Mississippi in 2006. It took 2 and a half months. It was built like this video. Foundation, walls, roof, doors, windows, drywall, brick, then painted inside. My house was built in an old cow pasture with a barn (1940s) and farm.