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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

I live near one of a state's first cities in the Midwest. Many of the original buildings, brick and wood alike, are still standing. Those are between 140 and 180 years old.

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.

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There are whole neighborhoods of 120+ year old wooden houses in the US. If they're cared for they look great. If they're not, they look like shit but are still standing and basically fine as long as water's been kept out (no long-term roof leaks). They're largely made of WTF-good timber by modern standards, but worse construction in other ways (balloon framing is common, for instance, and fire protection is otherwise poor as well).

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).

I live in one of those neighborhoods and the thing that kills our houses (aside from leaking roofs) is poor foundations. I've literally never heard of one of these houses falling over because of a structural issue with the actual timber it's built from. It's either that the wood has rotten because of roofing issues or (more likely) the rubble stone foundations fell apart

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.

There is a contractor in LA that posts picture of houses they've inspected.

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.

Hell, concrete foundations fail badly enough to need repairs pretty commonly within the first few years on new houses, and I don't just mean normal settling. Doing concrete right takes a lot of waiting and is highly dependent on the weather, which usually means even more waiting (for enough days in a row of the right weather). Builders (understandably) hate anything with that kind of potential to throw off a schedule—unpredictability can increase the total time construction takes by much, much longer than the individual delays themselves—so some of them cut corners. They also don't like to let the ground sit as long between excavation and pouring as they should, because time is money.

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.

One of the things that comes up in discussions in the link above is local conditions dictate how structures are built.

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.

> Those are between 140 and 180 years old.

Why they are so old? Did owners not have money to rebuild?

my house is well over a hundred years old and was built out of wood, it's been well taken care of (still has the original roof, even!), why exactly would I want to rebuild a perfectly good building? These buildings have been standing a long time, they aren't exactly going anywhere

“Don’t make ‘em like they used to”

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)

My home is 100 years old and probably one of the younger houses in the area. Many homes have been renovated in part of over time. Things like adding electricity, changing the electrical to be modern, adding additions, converting rooms and adding modern plumbing, changing siding and roofing, HVAC installed, etc. So over time, the home is modernized but the original frame (the "good bones") are still there.

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.

In this particular location, the houses are an eclectic collection of architectural styles from many countries and cultures.

Why tear down something that is of historic value, and has a character and beauty completely missing from modern housing?

Why rebuild if the house is in good condition?

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