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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

Being non-biodegradable is a pretty important feature for anything that has to interact with the elements. A house constructed out of truly biodegradable materials would be a disaster.

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European half-timbered houses are out of what then? They're still standing strong, being around 700 years old. Or how about the stairway in Hallstatt? Or the wooden house Kirkjubøargarður? Is wood not truly biodegradable? I think I know what you might mean, but it's not as black and white as you make it to be.

Wood are certainly biodegradable, and some takes a long time to degrade. Afaik many wood houses use paintings or coatings to protect from nature (at least where I live). So, I wonder if it applies to European half-timbered house.

Agreed. But you can also smoke the wood a bit, helps with the weather. Also the interconnectedness is something that helps I think. Because you reduce the surface.

I live much closer to the tropics, how big of a problem are termites in Europe?

I don't think it's a problem at all, never heard about that to be honest.

Could part of that be explained by the use of old growth wood? My understanding is it's much more robust than modern wood.

I would expect something that was biodegradable to biodegrade in less than 700 years. If you have that sort of time, plastics are sort of biodegradable as well.

Being biodegradable doesn't mean that it will degrade in any circumstances. Lumber in a house is usually protected from many biological degradation agents, even if it is not chemically treated. If you took that same wood and threw it in a pile exposed to rain and bugs, it would be gone in less than 100 years.

Are you listening to yourself? Are you really trying to say that wood is not biodegradable? Lolwut

Aren't those treated with varnishes and oil to prevent it from degrading?

My experiences with exterior varnish (terrible) and oil (marginal at best) would suggest that design is very important.

Eves to protect cladding are essential and if you get a lot of wind and sun, very wide eves.

A combo of UV and rain just punishes wood, and oil/varnish doesn’t handle it well.

Paint fares a lot better.

Well, FSVO "disaster". Wood is biodegradable, and a house made entirely out of wood (say a log cabin) might last only 50 years, but that's plenty of time on human scales of habitability.

In actual, no context terms I agree that a home Meade from wood doesn’t biodegrade fast enough on human scales. However, Infeel like the externals associated with the cultural concepts, particular in ‘the west’, around real property and houses as investments (either for rent or for future descendents) make this statement not accurate in a practical way. So, I don’t think it stands as an argument against excluding non-biodegradable materials in construction projects.

All biodegradable materials don't degrade the same in every condition. For example, both cedar timber and romaine lettuce are biodegradable, but you wouldn't coat your exterior walls in romaine lettuce. But if I buried both in humid soil and waited 10 years before digging them back up, I'd likely see no sign of either.

Most plastics are not biodegradable. They don't degrade in any condition. If I buried a fidget spinner and waited 10, 100, or 1,000 years, It'd still likely find most of a fidget spinner when I dug it up.

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