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Comment by Daho0n | Hacker News Reader

I find this quite funny as from my place in the world (Scandinavia) I see US housing as exactly how you describe houses in Asia. Around here a house that isn't built with double brick walls are hard to find on the market and it is mostly sheds and garages that are built in the US wood framing/panel style.

Edit to add that I'm not saying wood is bad. I love wood houses.

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That is more an issue of cost than anything... If your choices are between building a wood framed house that you can afford and will last a hundred years or much more, versus not being able to afford to build at all... Well, you go for stick and frame.

Because they are so popular, they are even less expensive- construction crews experienced in building double brick walls are scarce to non existent around here.

On a final note, tornados. We get quite a few of them around here... The odds of actually being hit by one are low, and yet it does happen, and I doubt brick walls would hold up much better facing the full fury of those.

Yeah standard wall insulation even in southern Sweden now is ~300mm/1ft. Compared to just the end of the 90a/start of the millennium the norm was 100mm less than that. Not sure what the end game is for wall insulation but it’s rapidly increasing too.

Double brick walled home do not hold up well to earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, and anything built in the US is probably going to have to be prepared for one of the above.

How come a double brick home would be worse for tornadoes and hurricanes? At a pinch i would say the first weaknesses would be windows and roof, not the walls.

Has more to do with cost -- carpenters are cheaper to hire so wood construction is very popular.

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