Is the shortage of lumber getting Americans to try other materials like brick and stone?
Parts of the US were originally built with brick and stone but were destroyed in earthquakes. Civil engineering, along with the ample availability of timber, changed the way the US designed buildings. New England, which does have a lot of stone and brick construction, suffers damage when they experience the rare, moderate for the US (M5-ish) earthquake.
Earthquake safety and cost will never recommend brick and stone in most of the US. They are more likely to switch to steel than brick. There are a lot of brick houses, I grew up in some, but they were built before modern seismic codes. Parts of the US people don’t think of as being earthquake prone have surprisingly large earthquakes. For example, severe earthquakes in New Madrid Seismic Zone[0] in the southern Midwest. In the US, learning the extent of seismic activity in North America was often paid for in blood. Like Japan, everything modern is engineered for it.
This collapsed a freeway.
In Europe pretty much nobody builds stick frame houses today. I'm building a house right now, and the only wood that'll be part of the structure is the roof struts. Floors are concrete and walls are made of clay air bricks. In milder climates these walls are insulated enough that you could get by without any extra insulation (here it gets to -25c/-5F). The interior is finished by plastering, and the exterior by cladding or concrete render.
Ha! Cob is like as old as history. Im sure there are other reasons. When you add sprinklers wood isn't a bad choice especially for making modifications later. Adding a wiring/outlets/making modifications is a lot easier to.
If there’s an issue with sound then you can install dampening material in the wall or floor.
You’re more likely to have noise travel through vents though.
In some places with high humidity though you want the home to breath to prevent mold, etc. Otherwise it gets damp and stays damp.
For instance, the local university uses permeable pavement, but the local building code forces homeowners to use less sustainable options, and then spend exorbitant amounts of money on environmentally destructive drainage.
There are old (>80 years), wood frame plus open clay filling buildings ("Fachwerkhaus"), but those are impossible to construct anymore due to building codes. Upkeep is extremely expensive and quality is not up to current standards, so nobody would want anything like this.
Due to the reasons stated above, there is no experienced construction workers available (at least not cheaply), no architects and since that part of the building code is rarely used, statics evaluation and building permit take ages. In short, new construction will still be concrete plus bricks over here.
The point is, in North America, everyone builds with wood so it is very difficult (expensive) to find someone who can build in brick. There is also the issue of material availability and familiarity of building inspectors. Building anything "non-standard" will be a big pain. I am sure the same applies in Germany, but swap wood for brick or concrete.
This is such an incredibly low bar to be citing as an achievement!
I think a lot of Americans can't comprehend that if you build from a permanent material like brick or stone the house will just sit there for a thousand years.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of those 500/1000 year old wooden houses are like the ship of Theseus. How much of those buildings has been replaced or repaired over that time period?
Same thing with brick houses. When they are repointed every few decades, how many of the bricks are swapped out when they crack or crumble?
That can depend on how stable the land is. My sister's US brick rental has many large gaps in the masonry. One side of her front door frame sags over 2 inches.
Edit. Maybe the 40 years come from that the sidings might have to be changed after around 40 years depending on the climate. But changing the siding is not a large job, easier that changing a roof that also often have about the same lifespan
Foundations are brick here (cinderblocks) but after that I can’t see any real advantages to using bricks for walls. They’re expensive, hard to modify, and bulky. Wood framing breathes much better too.
As long as the wood is protected from moisture and termites, it will get stronger over time. I have ~100 year old 2x4s in my house and they are nigh indestructible - in a way it's a bad thing because it makes renovations more difficult. Drilling into the stuff is basically impossible. Why would it last only 40 years?
Last time I checked UK is still in Europe, and that's how nearly all new houses are built here. I'm from "the continent" personally but when I mentioned to people having concrete floors they looked at me like I'm mad. It's just not done here. The exterior walls are however made from "air bricks" quite often. But nearly the entire internal structure will be just wooden frame.
Not the load bearing parts though, a light frame for internal walls. The load bearing parts are still masonry.
I suspect this is going to change as the big house builders all seem to be moving towards making houses in factories then assembling them on site.
Maybe modern houses are built as you say
This is definitely not the case. All the houses around me a structural brick, including all the new ones they're building now.
You'll have to exclude Scandinavia there
Particularly when combined with modern building science, there is absolutely no reason that a modern stick built house cannot last for hundreds of years and be energy efficient.
The extreme of this was, say, 1800s Scottish architecture - the typical croft house was designed to use exactly one piece of proper lumber, the roof beam, while the walls were all stone, because trees were scarce.
https://www.electricscotland.com/history/journey/jour3.htm
> From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman's house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the county.
I doubt this results in lower homebuilding cost all-in, though.
The people who built the house aren’t going to care if the house lasts 40 years or 300. They will care if it costs 5x more to build/live in/buy/rent.
Secondly - there are areas like SF and London where house prices are like 5x the national average because of land. Surely they can afford better materials?
This is exacerbated by the fact that a huge number of homes are built by developers who want to sell the thing as soon as it's built, and then move on.
In a long-term, societal sense, you're right that it's kind of irrational. It's really unfortunate.
One factor that is a big issue in Europe is energy efficiency, and recent/updated electrical. With so much of the stock being ancient, and societal trends towards keeping older structures (and large investments in very durable structures being more of a norm), they have huge issues with a large stock of very inefficient and difficult to upgrade or fix structures. It is entirely possible to make energy efficient and modern buildings in Europe of course - it just doesn’t happen as much (because there is so much existing stock), and it is REALLY expensive compared to the US.
Even Munich which got bombed to smithereens and rebuilt not that long ago (so less a problem than most), it’s not common to have well insulated walls or what American’s would consider modern electrical. Lots of retrofit work, surface mounted outlets and conduit, etc.
What most Americans would consider a normal remodel (adding a bathroom, changing the layout of some rooms though modifications to non-exterior walls, whatever) are essentially impossible or crazy expensive in many of these buildings too because of the concrete masonry construction.
Wood frame construction is cheap and easy to reconfigure, drywall and wood frame is easy to rip off and upgrade what is underneath, then replace, and all of these are easy to stuff with insulation. They’re also remarkably strong, durable, and flexible. They do have flammability and pest issues, but those have good solutions in modern structures.
They all do use a lot of wood; which is a bit of an issue now.
Now, steel - that would be better.
But if thinking about the future I think wood framing is superior. In many places in Europe the old brick or stone homes have a lot of issues by modern standards and they are expensive to renovate. They tend to have floor plans that made sense 200+ years ago but not today. Like small rooms to better conserve fireplace heat. But again, it’s very difficult to renovate these homes to have a sensible, modern floor plan.
Old wood frame homes are fairly easy to renovate either to modernize or to renovate.
Even a house that's going to fall over in a year would be worth 75% as much as one that would last 1000 years.
I certainly moved a lot in my 20s, especially if you count school. But I've been in the same house for over 20 years and I'm sure that's not at all unusual. (Although I don't disagree with your point that most people won't pay a big premium just to have a house that could be standing in a few hundred years.)
A dollar sitting under the mattress for 20 years affects GDP/the economy a lot less than the dollar that gets spent all the time.
It isn’t as simple of course as ‘who cares, I’ll be out of here in a few years’ - though a surprisingly percent of the time I’ve literally heard people say that and use it as justification for writing off obvious maintenance issues or buying a place that clearly has problems.
Brick is harder to the touch, but that doesn't translate into anything useful for mechanical strength.
That is a selection effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias