It does sound a bit weird. How long do they last? In UK you would expect a house to remain standing for 80-150 years. Maybe more.
And Americans build a lot of detached single-storey houses [1], which mitigates some of the disadvantage of wood: Noisy neighbours? You've got a six-foot-plus air gap between your houses. Fire risk? Escape is trivial when every room has a ground floor window. Rain getting onto the wooden walls? Much reduced by a porch stretching around the entire building. Needs regular repainting? Easy when it's a single-storey building.
Wood is also substantially cheaper in the US than in the UK - so while it might not look like a cheap material from the prices at British wood stockists, Americans who call it a cheap way of building aren't paying those prices!
> Rain getting onto the wooden walls? Needs regular repainting?
Most “wooden” US homes do not have wood siding. Vinyl is extremely common, and most homes that predate vinyl have had vinyl installed because it eliminates the maintenance associated with painted wood. Mine is decorative masonry. (And I wish I had vinyl)
I thought all new homes in the past decade or so came with cement fiber siding like Hardibacker, Durock, or Wonderboard. I have not seen new construction with vinyl siding in a long time (west of Rockies).
Those are typically are used with masonry siding. Vinyl siding is usually put on OBS boards with a vapor barrier in between.
It’s OSB, then a weather resistant barrier, then the cement fiber siding on the outside nailed into the OSB.
Personally I don’t like vinyl siding because it looks cheap and it melts (this seriously happened to a friend of mine - the sun reflected off the windows of his neighbors house and melted his siding.)
There are a few people fighting this, https://gracedesign.ie/ makes stunning beautiful house frames, and I'm having my own house built in wood right now. By coincidence, so are the people in the field next to me. But there's decades of prejudice to overcome.
It's not when you consider that we cut down most of our trees.
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statis...
Note that this foam is foil faced meaning it insulates against radiation energy as well as conduction or convection.
I doubt interior load supporting walls are 2x6. Often there are internal 2x6 walls, but that is to allow extra space for plumbing - 2x4 is plenty strong enough for load bearing in most houses, but toilet drains/vents don't really fit.
Could be another regional difference. Our code requires 2x6 minimum for load bearing walls.
Not a big deal for a qualified carpenter, but enough extra labor that you will pay extra for it in addition to materials.
I don’t understand if people posting this realise what a low bar this is? Brick and stone houses last a thousand years.
And lots of basements were packed eaeth, a whole nother level of 'unfinished'
They suck if you want to retrofit them to have modern heating and cooling. The high ceilings, giant windows on all sides, large open attics (vital for temp control without AC!), and generally poor sealing (=great if you need them to survive temp and humidity changes throughout the year, and not turn into a giant mold farm like a modern house would) all work against you.
Where I live now, ceiling heights are going back up. 10 years ago it was common to have 9 foot ceilings on the first floor, 8 foot on the second. Now it's common to have 9 foot on the second floor as well. And there are a not-insignificant number of houses being built with 10 foot ceilings.
I would rather spend less on my utility bills, and conserve the energy.
Many (brick and wood alike) were destroyed by fires and floods.
All in all, the lifespan of wooden structures is more than adequate, and significantly cheaper.
Further, they're designed to exist without modern heating and cooling, and many still don't have those (or they don't work very well). Yet they stand, and often still have perfectly-aligned original wooden trim work, despite being subject to swings in internal temperature and humidity that'd ruin a modern house in a hurry (modern ones are too air-tight to survive that, aren't built with any care to wood grain direction, and use much lower-quality timber throughout, including for trim, though they may benefit from extensive use of dimensionally-stable plywood).
edit: and even if some of the wood has rotten you can almost always just replace or sister up that piece and be absolutely fine.
https://imgur.com/user/AlphaStructural
What's interesting to me is you have Europeans marveling at houses built of flimsy wood instead of strong brick and concrete. Yet except for occasional water and termite damage what's failing in these houses is the concrete and brick foundations. Not the wood framing.
I wouldn't want a concrete house in the US without inspections so strict that the inspectors basically dictate when & how concrete may be poured, and/or laws explicitly breaking corporate liability protections for failure of concrete within some long time span, or otherwise ensuring that builders care very much that their structures last several decades without needing repair. I suspect they'd be crazy-expensive as a result.
In Florida a slab foundation and cinder block walls is what you want in a place with Hurricanes and a high water table.
On the California coast you want a stick built house. Because of earthquakes.
North east the frost line goes down several feet.
Lot of places you have expansive soils which will totally wreck a masonry building.
Also the problem the local workforce will be familiar with local designs. And likely to make mistakes if forced to build something different.
Why they are so old? Did owners not have money to rebuild?
Some people like the old style of architecture, which is possible but very expensive to reproduce with modern techniques (custom masonry, built in carpentry, that kind of thing)
And let me tell you, those old frames are unbelievable if they've been taken care of. If you do a renovation and open it up the wood is thick with tight, straight grain. A lot of these homes were built with old growth timber that was abundant at that time and unavailable today. The natural aging of the wood has dried out moisture and resins and makes for stronger lumber, albeit lumber that is more brittle which isn't a concern for how it is being used.
There's a good chance the wood was quarter sawn as well and if you have the original floorboards there's a good chance they were quarter sawn back then too. This, again, makes for better construction as the wood won't warp as much.
Why tear down something that is of historic value, and has a character and beauty completely missing from modern housing?