/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Let's more people be able to afford to build a house. And in particular it allows for people to build larger houses.

As frequent as tornadoes are, the overwhelming majority of homes will remain unmolested. So its not a big enough issue for insurance companies to say "Stop that shit". They just charge everyone a little extra if you're in the line of fire, and that offsets when they need to shell out cash for a rebuild.

Certain areas of the country though, a stick built house is sufficient for what will ever get thrown its way.

>>458210
In addition to >>458219 one big thing is contractors. Contractors often times get paid per job. So, they really want to do as many jobs in as fast amount of time as they can to make the maximum amount of money they can make. The same thing goes for the architects that design this stuff.

So, you get lots of wooden structures, standardized, rapid-building, materials like plywood, OSB, plastic wrap/Tyvek, asphalt shingles, slipform stone masonry, and rolled fiberglass insulation. With these things they can lay up row after row of shitty houses like those in your image.

It is capitalism at its finest.

mh... so I gather... the reply would be "it looks good, and not frowned upon"

Here if you go to see a property, and turns out part of it is wood or drywall, it's pretty much a deal breaker. And not because everybody is so rich that wood is unacceptable, but because it's seen as if that part of the house is a sham. Built to get the sale and then it'll go to shit fast.

Guess it's a culture thing then.

I'd choose to live in a big house made of wood, if I had to choose between size and material.

The only thing I wouldn't be so happy about is fire regulations. Nobody cares about fire here in residential areas. They pretty much don't exist.

thanks!

Regulations make it harder to change things. At the time tough regulations on residential buildings began to be enforced, they looked like that. If the regulatory regime doesn't end, they will still look like that in a hundred years.

If it was built like bunker, would it be harder and more expensive to renovate?

>>458278
Normally, there's no reason to renovate solid structures.

This si just a guess but i can imagine weather maybe a factor. Lots of rain and snow would mean a brick house would last longer, in theory.

>european on four year mission in US
>D.C. hit by storm
>power goes out for two weeks like a third-world country
>they use poles for wiring knowing they have hurricane season every year

Why not just bury it? Trench them cables.

short answer is labor cost

>>458296
>implying we don't use mexicans

>>458246

There's a lot of NFPA regulations to prevent fires here. That being said some handymen like to fuck with things beyond their comprehension.

It is easier, faster, and cheaper to build. Also in case of a strong earthquake, the houses will collapse regardless, and are less dangerous and easier to clean up if made out of wood.

>>458294

Nowhere to bury them in many cases, they didn't plan for it. Or they are already up, so its cheaper to repair them rather than go back through and bury them all.

In the USA, a shack in a good neighborhood is worth much more then a castle in a bad neighborhood. That might be because police see crime as job security.

>>458300
They also need all kinds of different permits and such to start digging like that across people's properties.

The power companies and the natural gas companies need to join up. Let the power companies run their lines through the gas pipes.

Americans like their houses like they like their cars: big and cheap. Hatchbacks and premium small cars (e.g. Audi A3) sell poorly, while bare-bones sedans (e.g. Chevy Malibu) and SUVs sell well. It's psychological.

>>458306
That'll teach those talented/diy/ers to accidentally hit a gas pipe when renovating. Boom! There goes the neighborhood.

>>458278

>would it be harder and more expensive to renovate?

im plumbing in a bunker like home right now. 90% of the house is made out of concrete. The floors have pre-stressed cable in them which lose all of their tensile strength if you cut or hit them, so im measuring all of my clearances twice or more so i dont fuck up.

If a brick and mortar house blows down in a hurricane or gets lit on fire by angry fundamentalists you're pretty much fucked. If a fibreboard and paper house gets smashed you can have another one airlifted in in a couple of hours, no harm no foul.

>>458306
Where I live we have "right of way" on private and public land when it comes to trenching infrastructure (power, fiber, etc). Tho you can appeal, but it's rarely done. Your cabling has to be approved by city planners. Everything is entered to a public map database where you can see what goes where do avoid any diy:er mishaps.

trenching is faster, cheaper and safer than digging/poling.

>>458210
I live in California, and wood dissipates earthquakes better than brick or masonry construction.

Im an american and this shit has bothered me forever. The main thing i hate is our infrastructure. Most places i have lived are dealing with infrastructure 100 years old with no upgrades whatsoever. The budget is non existent. In minnesota it was slightly better, but then again we had a bridge collapse because they cut the inspection budget (because who needs safe roads right?). Where i lived in minnesota most of our power cables were buried. There were some long transmission lines above ground, but they were made out of metal. I live in springfield MO now and this place has some really outdated roads( no right hand turn lanes anywhere so traffic is backed up constantly) and power lines are all above ground.

They way houses are built here is ridiculous. People want a nice looking house over a safe sound structure. Most houses do not have a basement either so there is no palce to go for a tornado. In joplin MO when that huge tornado hit a few years ago, there wasnt a single house left. Some of the home owners were smart and had a steel tornado bunker bolted to their garage floor. Usually the bunker was the only thing left on the foundation intact.When i build a house i want it out of concrete and steel. As a structural welder, i know how it needs to be done. I just have never built a house.

>>458342
typically yes, if you put the average wooden structure vs a concrete structure in an earthquake the wooden structure handles better. But if you build a wooden structure built to withstand earthquakes vs a concrete and steel structure properly designed, the concrete one wins.

>>458294

>The average life a European led 150 years ago with a sky-rocketed military budget

The US in a nut-shell

>>458344
Reminds me of Quebec. They had a highway overpass collapse. Infrastructure spending was cut in the mid-70s, due to a combination of a financially disastrous Olympics, and a sovereignty-focused government that cared little about infrastructure. In 30+ years, Quebec's infrastructure has never completely recovered.

Let that be a lesson. All the states that cut infrastructure spending during the "great recession" are going to be hit 30 down the road.

>>458210
Wood is inexpensive and easy to work with, and it also has flex to it, which means houses will tolerate settling foundations and earth tremors better. It also makes houses easier to make changes to later than reinforced concrete or other materials.

What are some good (hopefully inexpensive) schools for architecture studies?

This fall I'm starting at a community college studying 'Architectural Drafting' which was the closest major I could find, I'm hoping to eventually transfer to a larger university. I'm in California, by the way.

>>458210

housing all over the world is built using materials available locally.

there's nothign wrong with good wood construction. 100+ year lifetime is easy.

>>458344

>The main thing i hate is our infrastructure. Most places i have lived are dealing with infrastructure 100 years old with no upgrades whatsoever. The budget is non existent.

The skilled trades gap isn't helping matters. People not only aren't investing in infrastructure or facilities maintenance, they are unknowingly waiting until many of our best craftsmen are going to retire.

>>458444
Where I live you can not find anyone to pour concrete for you. Well, the truck will come and dump it, but you have to set everything up yourself because there's no one local that makes it their job to actually lay in a concrete slab or lay up bricks and blocks. When someone does pay money to have that done it is always contractors from around 200 miles away or just a bunch of guys that may or may not have done that thing before.

>>458344
I really hate how the utility companies keep raising our rates to pay for 'infrastructure upgrades' and shit is NEVER fucking upgraded.

We are so screwed now. It's terrible when the best hope we have for modernizing our infrastructure is catastrophic fires.

>>458478
The electric here was 5 cents per KWh a couple years ago. Then they doubled it suddenly. People's bills went from $200 to $400 the following month. Lucky for me I was already in the $10-$15/month range when they did that.

Since then we've had around 24 days of no power due to storm damage. The longest power outage was 10 full days.

30+ dead by tornado, totally avoidable. I'm guessing survivors will rebuild with concrete instead.

>>459122

you guess wrong
this isn't the first time, won't be the last, replacements will all be wood

>living in tornado alley in the first place

>>459142

Wooden structures of increasingly suspect quality.

>>458210

in my general very meager understanding, brick, cement, and steel cant be built as fast, cost considerably more, and the possible chance to remodel is much more difficult.

putting in new electrical or plumbing in any of those other materials is much more difficult, messy, requires more expensive tools, and labor.

Plus the U.S. has wood to spare.

>tfw live in arizona
>tfw shitty prefab suburbs are popping up all over the place
>tfw you live in one
>tfw you just want 3 acres in the desert with a nice house

>>458210

1. Wood is god tier material. It barely gets better than wood. But you would say, it burns well, and bugs eat it and shit. Well no, thats shitty wood. You got so many types of woods and non chemical treatments that they can do pretty much anything with it.

2. As far as i have noticed during my edumacation, and from experience i have gathered as an europoor, americans perfer low single story houses or 2 story houses max. Europe builds normal houses a bit higher, also different material availibility and probably tradition at this point.

Americans from what i understand are somewhat of a nomad folk, and they dont mind taking up a job in another city or move for a good job, where europeans tend to set up a house and live there for generations.

3. Time is not an issue. Wood, bricks, concrete, all can be premade and just assembled on spot. Yes you can already get premade brick walls and just set them up on spot to make a quick house.

>>458292

In theory, people make really good roofs out of straw, when its a material that you would think would rot in rain. It can last a while before needing a change. Also straw is cheaper than other roof materials.

>>458299

This and regulations could be a reason. Altough quality made houses, bricks and mortar can get trough most natural disasters without problems if built for them.

In most of america, natural disasters are few and far between. Therefor, we can afford to build fragile wood buildings.

I lived in japan for 6 years, and every building I saw was made of 1 foot thick reinforced concrete with plate glass windows and thickass steel doors. Because typhoons would blow through and break everything that wasnt a bunker.

Should all americans live in homes like that? Fuck no. But in places like Louisiana or Florida, maybe even northern California, they would be perfect, as they would never be destroyed by storm or flame.