Is it still considered inflation if it's rather temporary? I agree whole heartedly with your comment, was just curious about the terminology since inflation usually seems to imply a...longer term trend.
Do you really think there can be this much government-doled money, money printing, and wage raising without permanent inflationary consequences? I can’t hire anybody right now because so many people not working are getting more from unemployment than they would in a job. This is going to unwind at some point.
Normally no but given the almost complete lack of inflation during the post financial crisis years, despite continuous predictions of its eminent arrival it's become a lot harder to say. It's honestly one of the big mysteries in contemporary economics.
It's possible this current wave of anecdotes of price increases is indicitive of a large wave of inflation. It's also possible it is just a short lived mismatch between the demand economy ticking on slightly before the supply economy does.
> It's honestly one of the big mysteries in contemporary economics.
I assumed it was due to the increasing income/wealth gap. You have automation and cheaper labor from other countries reducing the price of labor for a substantial amount of people, seen in the lack of meaningful rise in wages for decades.
You also have the US splitting into very desirable areas seeing lots of increase in prices, but more of it seeing price decreases due to lack of demand. Concentration of businesses that offer higher paying job opportunities contributes here, as well as people’s preferences.
Income/wealth gap is just a result of the increased savings rate in the corporate sector. There are a billion reasons but most of them are caused by an unwillingness if companies to invest their savings to grow the business.
If you don't employ anyone, the unemployed still have to eat which means corporate savings grow at the expense of the unemployed. Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
Why aren't companies growing their business? One problem is that there is not enough consumer demand to justify it. Why is there not enough consumer demand? Because people are unemployed or underemployed. It's a vicious cycle.
>Income/wealth gap is just a result of the increased savings rate in the corporate sector.
I do not see the connection here. It seems more direct to say that the supply and demand curves for labor have shifted in such a way that the price of labor has gone down for the labor many people are selling.
>Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
That’s one of those how to draw an owl things. Maybe if the whole country got behind it as an effort, it might work if properly executed. But one or a few companies doing it (without the caliber of organizations like Apple) are probably just going to end up with worse financials, and get punished for it by investors.
Japan managed to have 30 years with unreasonably low inflation.
Remember, the purpose of that money printing is to add money back into the economy while various factors are removing it from the economy. By "economy" I primarily mean the productive part, namely businesses and workers doing work on behalf of a customer.
Somehow the money is not reaching the productive part of the economy. Of course that is changing in 2021, governments finally decided to hand out money directly to those who actually want to spend it and that is a good thing. If it works, then money printing no longer becomes necessary.
If you are printing money why would you give it to banks and financial institutions, and not to the people themselves? (Assuming good-faith and not the obvious explanation, of course).
Assumptions based on contributing factors. You had people more or less hold off on everything for a year, which tanked suppliers. Now that there's light at the end of the tunnel, everyone is buying making up for lost time, while supply hasn't recovered and realistically aren't going to double their capacity for what is seen as a short term spike.
With lumber prices where they're at, you'd see mills popping up like oil wells if they had any hope those were permanent increases.
So it's anecdotal at best, but where I live, anyone with an old portable sawmill sitting in a barn collecting rust has been getting them out, cleaning them up, and have started sawing again. I'm talking people who retired 20-30 years ago, or people who bought property with a mill on it and have literally never used it.
Right now I'd say we don't know what it is. We have some anecdotal evidence from various industries but until we get some updates from the wider indices used to track inflation there's probably not much point in speculation.
Inflation is like sitting at a bar. Have a few beers and feels nothing special. Then halfway through the fourth round, get up to pee, and suddenly it will all hit.
> legislative motions like raises to the minimum wage.
Doubt that has much if anything to do with it. According to this study[1], increases of 10% to the minimum wage are correlated with only a 0.36% increase of prices, and minimum wage increases may decrease prices.
I know people are looking more at stone patios then wood decks but the cost was already higher for those. And that’s seen a rise too (though not as dramatic). Brick and stone are still a lot more cost though than fast grown sh* pine.
I recently built a couple of side tables for our living room, brick and stone just wasn't the right choice. I went with reclaimed wood and it was more expensive than I expected.
I used cargo decking from old semi-trailers (lorries), the wood that makes up the cargo floor. Its nice maple butcher block. I don't think they'll stop building and retiring those trucks any time soon.
The idea is that if something js 5z as durable but is 2x the price, its more economical.
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?
It's more economical only if the original buyer is there to reap the benefits of the durability. Because American houses change hands so fast, durability is the next guy's problem.
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.
I wouldn’t take the economical argument too seriously on this front.
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.
I wouldn’t consider bricks better than wood. Especially in an earthquake prone area.
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.
I'm pretty sure "average" is doing a lot of work there. I'm willing to bet that number is skewed a lot by younger people moving from apartment to apartment.
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.)
It usually does! One thing to consider - during those years you were moving, you also reinforced the market position of not caring too much about long term durability for a large number of properties/landlords/sellers, and your current place you’ve only influenced in the other direction for one property/landlord/seller, correct?
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.
The wood being used in this construction is not for the exterior of the home, but for the frame and internal walls. Most homes in the US are built with wood frames but brick and / or concrete exteriors.
The other comments seem to be missing the point of this, but as I understand it's in reference to building construction.
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.
Part of the reason everyone builds stick frame houses in the U.S. is because county building codes are restrictive and have not adapted to new ways of building such as with cob. Even California is way behind in this regard. That and consumer demand towards stick frame houses.
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 you share walls with neighbors? Sometimes though modern buildings no. Gaps and other engineered voids cut that out. I had more issues in Singapore with concrete construction and noise than with a modern townhome and shared walls.
California is further behind on building codes than most neighboring states.
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.
Most counties adopt a recent International Residential Code without modification, and the rest use it as the basis. Also, cob was approved and published in August, though it's not a very useful building method in wet places.
That is sad for the climate, concrete is a large source for CO2 emissions while wood used in building is a carbon sink. I am not so sure that pretty much nobody builds wood frame houses in Europe, where I live it is mostly wood that is used and even for larger buildings we are starting to move away from concrete to wood to make buildings more sustainable.
Well, in Germany it is common wisdom that stick-frame houses only live for roughly 40 years, have poor insulation, poor fire safety, are prone to infestations and transmit sounds so you can hear all the footsteps everywhere. So nobody builds with wood, basically. There is a growing market, but it is still very small and mostly limited to prefab houses.
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.
I suspect it is strongly down to culture and experience (i.e. "common wisdom" is wrong on both sides of the Atlantic). In North America, most everything is built in wood. There are plenty of houses approaching 100 years that are just fine. Good insulation exists and is used. Infestations aren't generally a problem in European climates. There are plenty of techniques for dampening sound.
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.
My wood frame house in New England is 200 years old. Of course, it's had maintenance work done over the years and probably has been expanded. There are old brick houses in the city but, as you say, it's far less common.
> plenty of houses approaching 100 years that are just fine
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.
They can, but only if it is well built. Plenty of brick buildings will fall down in 100 years, too. There are wooden buildings that are hundreds of years old, also.
I wonder if there are more brick or wooden buildings that are around thousand years old. Concrete the Romans had 2000 years ago did last, but that technology was lost. Most buildings I know about that are between 500 and 1000 years are made of wood. Of course the wars we have had in Europe since then might have had something to do with how many old houses we have
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?
> 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.
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.
My house is closing in on 70 years, is upgraded with good insulation and it is nothing indicating it will not last for another 70 years. My family's vacation house has a core that is more than 200 years old. Both houses are made of wood. I thought it was concrete houses that had problems with transmitting sound and had poor insulation.
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
40 years - who is building these homes? A wood framed home should last hundreds of years if maintained. I recently opened up part of mine to do a renovation and the 100 year old+ timber was beautiful and strong.
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.
> Well, in Germany it is common wisdom that stick-frame houses only live for roughly 40 years
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?
>>In Europe pretty much nobody builds stick frame houses today.
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.
I'm not sure where you live, but where I live in the UK, every house I've lived in has had a concrete floor. All 1960s - 1990s houses. Internal structure is definitely not a wooden frame, it is brick, wood is used for decoration, floor boards and the roof.
I really don’t understand the distaste that many Europeans seem to have for wood. It’s an incredible natural composite material and trees are basically the ultimate renewable resource.
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.
It's simply much more expensive here, as we've had longer to deplete the available forests.
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.
> 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.
That’s funny I wonder why that is - in the UK carpentry is considered more skilled than bricklaying and a carpenter is much more expensive than a brickie.
Because not that long ago the UK was more or less totally deforested and the only people doing stuff with wood were the well to do and as is typical with these sorts of things the yacht builder is held in higher regard than the barge builder.
Not really, though it depends on what you are building. A large portion of the US is at risk for strong seismic events, and this is reflected in the regulations for building materials. We learned it the hard way. Building with brick and stone to earthquake standards is quite expensive, it doesn’t make sense. If you see brick or stone in a modern building, it is applied as a facade over a wood or steel frame.
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.
Living in Philadelphia 7 years ago, an earthquake cracked the foundation of the 100 year old stone house I lived in, then a tropical storm 2 months later flooded the basement. We had similar storms previously that only gave us an inch of water, but after the crack, the basement filled up at least 3 feet.
That probably says more about your chosen news outlets than the geologic stability of the US. There are faults all over, and even Tennessee gets quakes that can be felt in neighboring states.
There are multiple contributing factors, but the supply-side limitations are very real.
Sawmills slowed down in anticipation of a housing slump that never came, and now they're stuck playing catch-up.
Wildfires destroyed huge swaths of trees and even equipment last year, especially in Oregon. Oregon officials estimate that they lost 4X more harvestable trees last year than the state produces in an average year: https://www.ofic.com/after-the-fires-timber-industry-faces-g...
Even various policy changes from timber harvesting quotas to required sawmill safety retrofits have contributed. If you were a sawmill looking to upgrade, what better time than to do it during a pandemic? Turns out this wasn't such a great time.
WSJ youtube had a segment the other day on the price increases and shortages but pointed out that this isn't necessarily translating into increased prices paid for trees, and interviewed a couple who own a wood lot in Georgia (for 40 years) who sounded like they were barely getting by:
Additionally, the wildfires in the Northwest also contributed to glut of timber. The wildfires kill the trees, but usually don’t destroy the timber, which is still good for harvest — however, it must be harvested quickly before it rots or gets infested by insects. Thus the owners of burned timberlands are scrambling to harvest the timber ASAP. This results in plenty of cheap logs, but since sawmills aren’t keeping up, its a double whammy to owners of burned timberlands: not only they have to harvest at less than optimal time, they also have to pay top dollar for logging crews as everybody else is also scrambling to harvest their burned timber, and selling the logs for cheap, as there are so many sellers and too little milling capacity.
As a plot owner, at least in Europe, you cannot make a living with just the trees. At the moment, and this is expected to worsen with the time, we go through series of very harsh weather conditions over long periods of time. We have a lot of wood getting lost or sold at the cost of harvesting (if not less).
You basically lose 20 to 30 years of taking care of the trees and you need to "restart" the forest naturally afterwards, because anyway, you have no ideas what could be the right kind of trees to support the climate change.
You lose money on the forest, the land is getting more value, but it means just more taxes nothing more.
At the moment, it does not make sense to own only the land, the value is extracted one level above. But here in Europe (at least in France), forest is owned by a lot of people. Many, many people have 1ha or less, here and there, because of the agricultural tradition of the country (forest has been growing again on not taken care of fields).
Source: We have about 300ha, taken care of in a "sustainable" way (all the stuff you read about the "best/ecological" way to take care of a forest) for the past 30 years, we just break even. That is, the forest is bringing no money at all to the owners, everything is going back to pay the workers and taxes.
I think it's been the case for a long time, that cutting trees and selling them is not financially interesting.
My own goal is to get a couple of ha, plant "a few" trees and let them grow without planning on cutting anything for the next century. Nobody is doing that anymore, so it might be interesting to see what happens!
Do it! A forest is wonderful and buying a small lot does not cost that much.
But if in France, stay below the 40ha limit to not have to deal with massive costs of having your forest to be managed with validated planning every X years etc. which makes it very hard to keep "wild" areas in it (even more paperwork!).
> But if in France, stay below the 40ha limit to not have to deal with massive costs of having your forest to be managed
I read about that a while ago! To me it seems like good-intent at first that turned out a complete bureaucratic creep! My question is: Can we decide to "manage" the forest ourselves and be registered as an official "forest manager", draft a management plan, publish any outstanding paperwork, etc ? I'm not sure about which administrative body would enforce the planning and management (municipalities, ONF, ...)
I won't go above 40ha for any foreseeable future, so it's probably not an issue!
The 40ha limit is generous. This is because at the moment we have a lot of diseases in the forests (thank you climate change...). Nearly each specie is suffering of one and sometimes, the only way not to transform your forest in a reservoir which then spread and attack the surroundings is to quickly remove the trees.
Trees are not evolving as fast as the speed we destroy our environment, we have no choices left and we need to help them by not letting the forest completely wild. You need a bit of control. This is the reasoning being this 40ha limit. Starting this limit, you need to do the control seriously.
> Trees are not evolving as fast as the speed we destroy our environment, we have no choices left and we need to help them by not letting the forest completely wild.
Mostly, the problem isn't actually one of too-slow evolution, but even more basic: Forests often can't migrate fast enough to keep up with current rates of climactic zone movement.
Human intervention is pretty simple and effective, though: keep planting trees on the leading edge of the forest (usually poleward or upslope where the limit is temperature, away from the coast where the limit is precipitation)
Of course, there are ecosystems that don't have anywhere convenient to move to (arctic and alpine, for example), but most forests don't fall into that category.
What do you mean by nobody is doing that anymore? Isn't this exactly what a nature reserve is, they're all over the place. My family owned one of the larger forests in The Netherlands originally developed to sell timber but it was infeasible so the family sold most of it to the national forestry service, which is paid by the government to take care of the forests. Mostly by not cutting them down.
Here in Ontario having a managed forest entitles you to the same better property tax rate that farmers get. Basically 1/3rd of the annual taxes. Unfortunately my 7 acres (2.8 ha) isn't big enough, you need at least 4 hectares of woods (I have about 1).
But I think the point of the program they offer is more for conservation than for incentivizing wood production.
(Softwood exports have ceased to be a healthy industry in Canada a couple decades ago, especially since a long and ugly trade war with the United States which they seemingly won.)
You can get more tax breaks for planting > 6 fruit trees, and an additional break if you get a forester to survey your woodlot and they find species on a protected list! There are also incentives for putting in wetlands/ponds and grassland.
Could that couple buy portable milling machinery and start selling finished lumber? My relative had someone come out to his land and turn his trees into finished lumber for his house.
They're not operating at cottage industry scale, they're talking hundreds of acres I believe. Those portable mills are more of a cottage/craft industry (I had one come and mill some of my trees a few years ago)
I suspect owning a mill exposes you to additional risks as well. I know here in Canada a bunch of the softwood mills in B.C. closed a decade ago, I suspect it's big time boom and bust and now you've got expensive equipment you're in debt for...
Every yuppie that fancies themselves a handyman and every landscaper looking for more side gigs had that same idea and sawmills are back-orded as bad or worse than outdoor recreation items.
Furthermore, milling lumber is one of those things that only pencils out to be economically in the black at very large scale or at very small scale where you focus on a high margin niche.
Homes in North America are not built with wood from Southeastern US. Wood from PNW and Canada is used. I believe this is why a lot of furniture, cardboard boxes and cabinetry is made in Southeast US.
Mills / lumber yards consolidated during 2008-2009 financial crisis.
In the years leading up to covid, Canada unintentionally lowered lumber prices by cutting down trees that were infested with a certain type of beatle. At the same time, Canada was reducing the number of (healthy) trees allowed to be harvested for wood every year.
Some have argued that wood prices have been too low, for to long. The industry has never recovered from 2008-2009, and has a conservative mindset.
There are definitely a lot of perspectives to hear in this equation.
I like a quote from this podcast; higher prices cure high prices.
Prices were spiking before the pandemic. Immediately after Trump’s tariffs Canada (and, also China), $/sqft increased over 20% for new construction in the SF Bay Area. I imagine the percentage increase was higher in places where labor and bureaucracy are a lower percentage of construction costs.
Another issue is rail capacity for transporting lumber from sawmills. Even if the sawmills were able to ramp up and massively increase their supply, we could run into a bottleneck with transport. The mills typically sign contracts with rail companies ahead of time (based on projected demand) and it's not likely they could all of the sudden get double the number of trains if supply went up.
Yeah same; I'm thinking of investing in a simple chainsaw mill as I have plenty of trees on my property I could use. In the past I had someone mill stuff that I cut down but he is no longer doing it and I suspect that is getting hard to do anyways.
You probably know this but unless you have a kiln or can access one it can take a really long time to dry the wood. IIRC 1 year per inch of thickness. Also make sure you seal the end grain...
There's some people on YT demonstrating how to cut a log with a chain saw... For the very adventurous ;)
Yeah my last batch of milled wood sat in my shop for 3 summers before I started using it. Measured the moisture and everything, but the table I had made still split after a dry winter inside :-(
I've been doing woodwork for a long time, and get most of my wood from used single-size bed frames on Gumtree/Marketplace. People effectively throw the beds out (or at most want AUD$20-50 for the entire thing), and they're generally made of some pretty decent wood, especially the older ones.
Like others said, reclaiming wood - even mediocre to bad wood - can be a satisfying part of that hobby. I took a beat up pallet and turned it into a storage chest. It filled up my summer and fall and half of winter. The reclaiming labor was worth it alone: https://imgur.com/gallery/jpFNJPB
That's stunning, what a fantastic result! How did you carve the surface detail?
You've alluded to it in your post but for anyone else thinking about using pallet wood - look for heat treated wood (stamped HT), and be mindful that these things can be used to ship hazardous materials, and may retain some residue of whatever they were carrying.
Didn't go into it because I have nothing to contribute being an amateur, but yep, anyone working with shipping pallets should read authoritative sources on safety first. If you don't see that HT stamp, move on. And luckily they're a lot of effort to disassemble to a point of discouragement.
Surface detail was a scroll saw and power-carving with a cheap rotary tool. Flex shaft, assortment of diamond coated burrs, and some patience. Just started getting into power carving and I have a long way to go, but enough can be done with just a hand file and sanding: https://i.imgur.com/kjLPtGu.jpg
I'll second that. Also look for old houses being torn down or for scraps being thrown from new houses being build. I just got a bunch of leftover wood from a building site down the street. Even though they were trying to reuse most of it they still have to throw some away and if you ask nicely they'll probably let you have it...
I've also gotten some very nice pallet wood from a local business importing countertops from China.
Do watch out for chemically treated wood though I think that's more rare these days. The wood should have stamps/marks showing how it has been treated.
i have been lamenting the 100 year old house down the street being gutted of its original wood (in good shape still, as far as i could see) and replaced with the cheap stuff of today, for no obvious benefit. a literal replacement, likely to keep the tax basis. the facade, roof, plumbing, and wiring (plus insulation) are likely upgrades but not the framing timber. such a waste.
i’ve done some (small) reclamation projects with similar old wood, and it’s so much better than today’s lumber.
For reasons I can't explain, furniture-grade hardwood is only up 25% or thereabouts near me (VT/NH). It's really only the construction material that's gone bonkers.
I don't pay as much attention to high grade sheet goods prices because I mostly work in solid wood, but they seem reasonable-ish. Good plywood has always been pricey.
No, in fact prices for raw logs haven't moved at all. The US government subsidized the planting of trees on farm land in the 80's to boost the price of corn and soybeans and there is an over supply of trees. Supposedly the shortage is all due to mill capacity.
Unrelated to forestry, but you make a point that I'm curious about. If or when electric cars take over, what's going to happen with all of the farmland that's planted with corn for ethanol production?
The cost of land is not what is keeping farmland from being turned into housing. Most farmland is very far from urban and suburban places people want to live. If it doesn't make sense to plant because of low prices they will simply let it lay fallow.
Meanwhile in many countries in Europe there is bark beetle epidemic that is destroying our spruce forrests and lumber is currently cheapest and most abundant ever.
There are various bottlenecks (harvesting capacity, environmental regulations forbidding harvesting in over half the year, sawmill capacity, transport capacity) that make the market very weird: If you have the capacity to harvest, you can get "pluck it yourself"-lumber really really cheap. In regions where sawmills are at capacity, you can get timber very very cheap (currently basically everywhere). But harvesting machine rent and labour as well as sawing are extremely expensive, as are sawed products.
We also had the heatwave a few years ago that killed a lot of forests (at least in Germany) and probably contributed to the damage bark beetles are now causing. And I'm sure the massive wildfires in Australia and North America in 2019/2020 destroyed a lot of timber, too.
But the problem doesn't seem to be the timber supply, weirdly enough.
Well, in Germany there are complaints that lots (I think 50%) of our lumber goes over the atlantic. Making prices skyrocket out of proportion over here.
I'll say. The cost of a board of birch ply 18mm × 2500mm × 1250mm is over €90 in the Netherlands and Germany alike now (that's about $110). It's been creeping up for a few years in my experience.
A quick glance at one of the big box diy-stores shows a the similarly sized ¾" × 4' × 8' birch ply costs some $60 in the US.
Money is ridiculously cheap right now. I just refinanced my house and my mortgage went down 20%, and I just refinanced four years ago. When the appraiser came he told me that he's been working non-stop since April 2020 because there are so many cash-out refinances. There are a ton of remodels near me, many of who got the money with cash out refinances.
It's not a surprise that there is a demand for lumber.
Much of the available data is only pointing to inflation being on the order of 2.5% in the coming years. This is hardly the runaway inflation scenario many are predicting and is close to the target inflation rate of 2%.
Yes, some things (housing, lumber, used cars, etc.) are experiencing quick increases in price. Some are saying this is a sign of runaway inflation. Many others are saying these price increases are a result of pandemic related supply/demand issues and temporary shocks to supply chains.
I'll be convinced there is a serious inflation problem if broad-based measures show inflation >3% in 12 months time. In the meantime, a lot of the price increases cited by individuals seem to be related to pandemic-caused supply chain issues, which will hopefully be worked out within the next 12 months.
It has been here for me for over a decade, per the price history of my purchases. Not that it should factor into account for purposes of national statistics, but it has and continues to affect my behavior (and of those around me).
I just paid >$60/sheet for a pile of 19/32" 5-ply cdx plywood sheathing. They want nearly the same price for OSB.
The T&G 1-1/8" subfloor I paid ~$40/sheet for in 2019 is currently $110/sheet at the same Home Depot.
If you're looking to share some quality bitching time with a rando, go grumble aloud about the prices in the lumber aisles of your nearest store. If there's anyone around, I guarantee you'll find vocal company for your misery. I've never had so many conversations with Home Depot customers in my life...
I’m happy I did by renovation 6 months ago. Contractor told me it’d cost more today. People he quoted a year ago are coming back looking to start their project and I’m done cases he’s having to revise quotes up 30-40%.
Some trees hit my deck after a hurricane last fall. When we rebuilt it in December composite was about $500 more than lumber. The price since December has almost doubled for composite from $3.80 a linear foot to almost $8.
My father in law is a General Contractor and said right now is the worst time to build a deck. He’s scoped a couple deck jobs but they all backed out due to cost increases.
If you can wait until next summer you will probably save a lot depending on the deck size. Compare wood with composite decking and you might get a favorable composite price.
If you can hold off any lumber intensive construction until next year, it might be sensible if you want to save on costs. Fences, decks, etc. the opinions I’ve heard is the cost will go down considerably but we probably won’t see costs as low as pre-covid.
But today, $9 for a 2x4 is ridiculous. I’m sort of expecting labor costs to go up too since these guys are in such demand.
A contractor once told me (way before the pandemic) that the materials cost more than his time. I'm still perplexed by it. I feel like maybe we should rethink something.
I lucked out with an honest roofer who encouraged me to buy when he found CDX at his wholesaler and offered to store it until our job could start. We just got our roof on this week, but paid $25/sheet for 90 sheets of CDX. Even beforehand, other roofers were quoting higher prices for OSB and warning that the rising prices would be passed to me, not frozen with their offers.
As an European I'm always amazed at how much lumber North Americans use in their houses, with their timber frames. I didn't know that was a thing until I stared exploring Youtube.
Where I live all houses are brick homes. Wood is something that one might use in a "forest cabin"; a "real house" will have wood perhaps on doors, window trims and and maybe to pave the hard cement floors. And that's it.
I assume bricks are also more expensive, but perhaps not as much?
Perhaps North Americans will start building more brick homes.
Even UK housebuilders seem to be putting up a lot more timber framed houses than they traditionally used to, just often with an imitation brick facade.
> Europe is bigger than where you live. Scandinavia builds a lot with wood.
OP is likely aware of such anecdotes.
Masonry is popular in (central and southern) Europe because forests were already cut down centuries ago so lumber prices are generally high. The abundance of lumber in Scandinavia and previously in N.A. thus explains why wooden structures are/were popular there.
So, the hypothesis that N.A. will build more with masonry and less with lumber is an interesting one.
Wood is still extremely common here in North America. Much of our construction lumber comes from "tree farms", intentionally planted forests growing trees as a crop.
Where I grew up there were more "tree farms" than housing. Anyone who says housing is expensive because land is finite hasn't driven more than an hour out of the city.
I don't know why this was downvoted. I live in a fairly developed suburb outside DC and when I get on top of my building all I see for miles outside of the tiny mall I live in are trees, parking lots, and max 2 story (usually 1) buildings. Most of the US is even less dense than this and it's largely due to ridiculous zoning.
The zoning didn't come from nowhere. It's no secret the Federal, State, and Local governments encourage home ownership through policies, programs, and specific tax benefits. It then logically follows that single family homes are the golden standard in America. Which then logically follows that single family homes are built a lot (which do require much space). It then logically follows that the people who move into single family homes want single family home neighbors, not dense apartment or housing structures, as evidenced by the zoning laws which are typically passed at city councils with vocal citizen participation. Read into other reasons or causes that surround those facts (NIMBYism, racism, whatever-ism), but these are the basics. I also would expect any group of people to act similar fashion, regardless of demographics or other superficial characteristics. People are protective of their neighborhoods.
So that is to say, the situation we have arrived at, however unfortunate, is entirely unsurprising, and not that hard to figure out why it is so.
Where I live (Texas), the alternative to wood is steel. Finding crews & builders to do custom steel framed houses is harder. Although, the price difference is such that it might make sense, now.
I suppose the way old European cities are constructed, with a lot of smaller houses right next to each other and narrow roads, also makes them a much larger fire hazard when made of wood compared to the spaced-out suburban way of building.
A lot of newer homes are also built with plenty of wood an drywall in Germany. But if you live in a city or don't live near an area that has seen a lot of single family housing construction over the past decade you probably wouldn't know that because most houses you've seen yourself are made of brick or rebar.
I do not see why I would want to use brick rather than lumber. Wood plus proper insulation plus drywall is quicker, easily modifiable, and lets wireless signals through.
It makes almost everything a much simpler do it yourself project.
I'm not a builder but what you say makes sense particularly if you're building your own house. I've only ever lived in stone or brick houses so I don't really know what timber-framed houses are like in person, and my gut tells me I’d still prefer the former
I feel like it's a good time to introduce HN to "groverhaus" - a DIY extension performed by a mod on the SomethingAwful forums to a property in the Great Dismal Swamp.
Ah sorry, folks like you who aren't familiar with Groverhaus were exactly who I was posting that for - I guess the twitter thread doesn't really give enough background. The best intro IMO to the 'haus is unfortunately a paywalled episode of the podcast "Well There's Your Problem". It's a good podcast though so worth a few bucks a month
In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations. That durability is hard to achieve with wood frames and drywall.
But the major driving force is probably wood prices. We have less forest, and those forests have been farmed for wood for centuries. Long straight hard timber takes way to long to grow to be used for anything but accent pieces. (Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification, countries with more forest like e.g. Sweden tend to build wooden houses in the countryside).
In industrial buildings you sometimes see something akin to American construction methods, but they usually use aluminum instead of wood
In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations.
That might have been true once upon a time, but looking at the houses that have been built around me the past few years, I'd say that quick and cheap is the driving factor of the day. Most people building houses now aren't doing so on the assumption that they'll be in use 100 years from now.
"In Europe houses are typically seen as something you pass down for generations. That durability is hard to achieve with wood frames and drywall."
I don't see a real difference in durability. There are plenty of stick built houses that are passed down for generations. The ones that are torn down is usually not a durability issue but more of desire to upgrade (wiring, more sqft, HVAC, etc), and it happens with masonry too.
But that's the point, you don't want to have to hope for the best when maintaining a wood based home. By the time you notice you have termites, it might be too late. Brick removes the guesswork.
There is no guess work. You have a block or concrete foundation, no water leaks in the house, and that's basically it. Termites need water to survive. So if your house doesn't have any leaks, the you will see mud tubes coming up in the foundation. You can treat before they become established. You can use preventive measures like spraying the foundation, bait traps, etc.
Even masonry homes require preventive maintenance. It's just that the maintenance and concerns are somewhat different.
> There is no guess work. You have a block or concrete foundation, no water leaks in the house, and that's basically it.
You also need proper ventilation/drainage to ensure that you don't get moisture build-up inside walls and other spaces from condensation and the like, but admittedly that's more of a factor for things like dry rot or mold, rather than termites.
Ummm, the durability of wood is way longer than you’d think. My family lives in a three-floor wooden house from 1760, and it’s showing no signs of decay just yet.
As long as you replace the facade/roof tiles when needed (every 50 years?) and don’t get water into the main walls, a wood building will last for a very long time. Fires excepted, ofc :)
Bricks don't interfere that much wireless signals and for new bricks no additional insulation or drywall is needed [1]. Still some plaster inside and facade oustide is needed and you are completely right building with wood is much quicker, more flexible and also probably cheaper.
>Bricks don't interfere that much wireless signals and for new bricks no additional insulation or drywall is needed
How acoustically active are the rooms in a house like this? I can only imagine how many rugs and tapestries hanging on the walls would be needed just to stay sane.
It insulates outside noise pretty well of course so you probably mean how does it work with indoor noise and frankly we (Central Europe) have lots of such houses and I don't see the problem very much (I am in room made from (different) brick walls right now). Buildings made with concrete are much more problematic in that regard.
Tapestries are only in museums and rugs are becoming less popular with floor heating.
yes. echoes/reflections in interior spaces is a huge problem for me. you say tapestries are museum only pieces, but i was really referring to any cloth like material used as a wall hanging to help absorb some of those reflections. also, do not see how a rug on the floor would interfere with floor heating. rugs are not 100% coverage, but would still help reduce reflections/echoes. as would furniture, but not as much as wall hangings/rugs.
No cloth-like material on walls is used to absorb reflections of sound, it's not needed, usually a modest amount of furniture, wooden flooring and perhaps some curtains on the windows are enough. I think when we speak about residential buildings, the rooms are not that big and there are not a lot of people in a room at a time, so it's not really an issue. When you have a pub full of people and the owners didn't think about acoustic treatment, it's a different story of course.
Rugs are not 100% coverage but the rugs that were used here in the past were maybe 90% coverage? Like not glued to the floor but covering most of it. So these are not popular anymore.
North Americans even use wooden shingles for their roof instead of ceramic or slate tiles, metal panelling (zinc etc), which are more common in my experience in Europe.
Wood shingles (shakes) are used, but extremely rarely. The most common roofing type is asphalt shingles. Tile and metal roofs are far more common than wood.
Depends where you live. There are towns in California where it’s all ceramic. Skate is popular in some older homes but it’s quite expensive.
Most homes have asphalt tiles as they are reliable, easy to install, and inexpensive vs the other options.
Siding however has a lot of variety. In the northeast you see a lot of wood siding (cedar shingle) where as in many other parts it’s aluminum or vinyl (made to look like wood) or stucco.
Nobody in the northeast or anywhere is using shakes for siding except where required for regulatory compliance (bylaws that mandate historic looking materials and other crap like that).
I would have thought that the extremely high cost of insurance premiums for wood shingles had pretty much eliminated them from use, especially for new consttruction or roof replacements.
> Perhaps North Americans will start building more brick homes.
Why build anything out of brick when you have concrete? Aerated concrete blocks are almost perfect for low and even some medium density housing. Additional insulation is a bit annoying, but for many states it won't even be needed if the wall is one full block thick.
Concrete production has a terrible CO2 footprint. This is is a pretty big source of industrial CO2 emissions (some sources say 8% of worldwide CO2 emissions). Burned bricks seems to be a bit better in this regard, but I don't have an good source.
I think GP meant "brick" as "rectangular block used in building". Most buildings in most of Europe are made from these. Bricks made from clay are indeed not common in new constructions today. Clay bricks might look nice, but in buildings we rarely expose the brick so that doesn't matter
YMMV: As an European I have my house almost completely built from wood: structure frame, roof beams, floors, exterior siding, interior floor, doors, window frames, furniture etc. I would not call it a forest cabin, it is very real house, with 2 floors.
In Europe you have 'post and beam' - the beams are often made of wood. The brick is just the wall, not necessary load-bearing. North America has many brick homes as well, but it's outside the framing. Brick is a terrible insulator, most of us would freeze, we need insulation.
In California, where earthquakes are a concern, wood frames are highly preferable. I think it’s illegal to even build a house with unreinforced masonry (eg plain brick) since it’s a death trap.
Do you have any sources to share about masonry buildings being death traps?
In the highlands of Greece (where my grandparents are from), earthquakes are frequent, and almost every house is built out of stone. I am not sure if they are unreinforced or not these days or have been retrofitted, but many are 300-400 years old and still standing.
I did find this https://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/WCEE2012_2227.pdf which is a fascinating analysis of the damage to the unreinforced masonry buildings during the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes (which poor quality materials was found to be one of the largest factors of resulting damage)
This is a universally acknowledged truth in civil engineering in the context of seismic design and international building codes.
For sources... I'd say check out ASCE 7-16 Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Building and Other Structures, table 12.2-1. For seismic design categories D, E, and F, even Ordinary Reinforced Masonry Buildings (Bearing wall systems) are simply "NP" or not permitted.
There simply isn't a category for "unreinforced masonry" because it will not hold the shear. The problem is it has no ductility. That is essentially the measure of a material to resist force even after deformation. Masonry is very stiff, but it is brittle and fractures as it deforms at which point it loses ALL of it's ability to hold shear in the direction which it is being applied. Reinforced masonry will retain some capacity to resist shear after deformation because the steel inside will continue to resist shear.
In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias. It may be luck, it may be the effect of soil and rock characteristics acting to dampen seismic ground accelerations at the right frequency of seismic waves, it almost certainly is exceptional construction technique, methodology and design, and it likely combines with several other factors I haven't listed here. Personally, I suspect the load-bearing components of the buildings you're talking about are actually wood.
> Architecture and construction practices are regional and cultural. What works gets repeated and over time it becomes so common that people forget why things are done a certain way.
NA has more forests than europe, so local lumber supply is generally higher. Also, lumber is way more earthquake-resistant than plain brick or stone, which can be very important depending on where you live
Yes, almost all US housing is timber frames (either 2x4 or 2x6 studs), but the exterior veneer depends greatly on where you live in the US.
Where I live in Oklahoma City, almost all of our houses are brick or stone on the outside. It's a veneer so it's not structural, but it provides a great thermal layer beyond just insulation between the timber studs. Brick is made locally in Oklahoma because the "red dirt" soil has a lot of clay in it, so bricks are actually the same price or cheaper than many siding products. Siding is really only widely used on second floors and "bonus rooms", etc. since brick is too heavy for the second floor and would require a lot more structural support.
Most of the HOAs in newer neighborhoods around OKC will even require 70-80% brick or stone exteriors because it's lower maintenance and less likely to become an eyesore with fading/chipping paint, etc. So the requirements are pretty regional.
I was planning to build a timber pole barn this year but am now thinking of switching to a steel building. Steel prices are also up but from what I'm seeing here not as much as lumber.
Perfect! Maybe now they will start building real houses. You know ones with foundations and concrete that can sustain some wind, do not rumble from footsteps, and have way longer longevity.
People keep bringing that up. I get the impression none of them have a background in civil engineering. Most foundations in the us are concrete. Most of the structure is wood and not concrete for several good engineering reasons.
Then US civil engineers need to travel to see what proper foundations looks like. My European house foundations look nothing like the thin slice of concrete that I got here in the US.
Please do list the engineering advantages of wood over concrete, because from my experience a US house was a structural (and efficiency) downgrade compared to my European concrete & brick house.
I don't buy this Sawmill BS/Supply side shortage. This industry is controlled by a handful of big players that used lobbying/tariffs to raise prices because they could, the pandemic is just an excuse. Timber is still being cut and arriving at sawmills, still being processed and shipped. Housing starts in the US and Canada are down, RENO's in Canada are up (because you can't afford to sell and buy). You can also attribute some of the rising cost to Inflation, it's coming at us in a big way. Look to see where the money is going and you'll find the folks who orchestrated this.
Are housing starts down? The article included this graph[1] that shows starts taking a brief dip in Q1 of last year, but bouncing back to above pre-pandemic but not pre-2008 levels. Anecdotally, I see plenty of new construction going up in our town, I assume mostly on the basis of low interest rates since the prices they're selling for definitely aren't low. I've heard the same from a realtor friend in a larger city, saying that builders are signing plenty of contracts, and are even telling people there's no guaranteed delivery date as part of the deal.
It is a supply shortage. Get out and talk to a carpenter or a general contractor. Sawmills closed, surviving ones have less capacity due to health precautions, and then demand exploded.
Since the current bottleneck is lumber mill capacity, I wonder how many new mills are being planned and how long it would take for them to start producing.
Are there any disruptive technologies out there that might allow for smaller new entrants to enter the industry more quickly?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] threadConditions have not been so ripe for inflation in a long time.
It's possible this current wave of anecdotes of price increases is indicitive of a large wave of inflation. It's also possible it is just a short lived mismatch between the demand economy ticking on slightly before the supply economy does.
I assumed it was due to the increasing income/wealth gap. You have automation and cheaper labor from other countries reducing the price of labor for a substantial amount of people, seen in the lack of meaningful rise in wages for decades.
You also have the US splitting into very desirable areas seeing lots of increase in prices, but more of it seeing price decreases due to lack of demand. Concentration of businesses that offer higher paying job opportunities contributes here, as well as people’s preferences.
If you don't employ anyone, the unemployed still have to eat which means corporate savings grow at the expense of the unemployed. Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
Why aren't companies growing their business? One problem is that there is not enough consumer demand to justify it. Why is there not enough consumer demand? Because people are unemployed or underemployed. It's a vicious cycle.
I do not see the connection here. It seems more direct to say that the supply and demand curves for labor have shifted in such a way that the price of labor has gone down for the labor many people are selling.
>Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
That’s one of those how to draw an owl things. Maybe if the whole country got behind it as an effort, it might work if properly executed. But one or a few companies doing it (without the caliber of organizations like Apple) are probably just going to end up with worse financials, and get punished for it by investors.
Remember, the purpose of that money printing is to add money back into the economy while various factors are removing it from the economy. By "economy" I primarily mean the productive part, namely businesses and workers doing work on behalf of a customer.
Somehow the money is not reaching the productive part of the economy. Of course that is changing in 2021, governments finally decided to hand out money directly to those who actually want to spend it and that is a good thing. If it works, then money printing no longer becomes necessary.
With lumber prices where they're at, you'd see mills popping up like oil wells if they had any hope those were permanent increases.
Trends in inflation are just that, trends. So it’s certainly possible to have high inflation for short periods.
Doubt that has much if anything to do with it. According to this study[1], increases of 10% to the minimum wage are correlated with only a 0.36% increase of prices, and minimum wage increases may decrease prices.
[1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...
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
I doubt this results in lower homebuilding cost all-in, though.
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone
This collapsed a freeway.
Sawmills slowed down in anticipation of a housing slump that never came, and now they're stuck playing catch-up.
Wildfires destroyed huge swaths of trees and even equipment last year, especially in Oregon. Oregon officials estimate that they lost 4X more harvestable trees last year than the state produces in an average year: https://www.ofic.com/after-the-fires-timber-industry-faces-g...
Even various policy changes from timber harvesting quotas to required sawmill safety retrofits have contributed. If you were a sawmill looking to upgrade, what better time than to do it during a pandemic? Turns out this wasn't such a great time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5MkGbXXKc
So yeah, problem is at the mills.
You basically lose 20 to 30 years of taking care of the trees and you need to "restart" the forest naturally afterwards, because anyway, you have no ideas what could be the right kind of trees to support the climate change.
You lose money on the forest, the land is getting more value, but it means just more taxes nothing more.
At the moment, it does not make sense to own only the land, the value is extracted one level above. But here in Europe (at least in France), forest is owned by a lot of people. Many, many people have 1ha or less, here and there, because of the agricultural tradition of the country (forest has been growing again on not taken care of fields).
Source: We have about 300ha, taken care of in a "sustainable" way (all the stuff you read about the "best/ecological" way to take care of a forest) for the past 30 years, we just break even. That is, the forest is bringing no money at all to the owners, everything is going back to pay the workers and taxes.
But if in France, stay below the 40ha limit to not have to deal with massive costs of having your forest to be managed with validated planning every X years etc. which makes it very hard to keep "wild" areas in it (even more paperwork!).
I read about that a while ago! To me it seems like good-intent at first that turned out a complete bureaucratic creep! My question is: Can we decide to "manage" the forest ourselves and be registered as an official "forest manager", draft a management plan, publish any outstanding paperwork, etc ? I'm not sure about which administrative body would enforce the planning and management (municipalities, ONF, ...)
I won't go above 40ha for any foreseeable future, so it's probably not an issue!
Trees are not evolving as fast as the speed we destroy our environment, we have no choices left and we need to help them by not letting the forest completely wild. You need a bit of control. This is the reasoning being this 40ha limit. Starting this limit, you need to do the control seriously.
Mostly, the problem isn't actually one of too-slow evolution, but even more basic: Forests often can't migrate fast enough to keep up with current rates of climactic zone movement.
Human intervention is pretty simple and effective, though: keep planting trees on the leading edge of the forest (usually poleward or upslope where the limit is temperature, away from the coast where the limit is precipitation)
Of course, there are ecosystems that don't have anywhere convenient to move to (arctic and alpine, for example), but most forests don't fall into that category.
But I think the point of the program they offer is more for conservation than for incentivizing wood production.
(Softwood exports have ceased to be a healthy industry in Canada a couple decades ago, especially since a long and ugly trade war with the United States which they seemingly won.)
I suspect owning a mill exposes you to additional risks as well. I know here in Canada a bunch of the softwood mills in B.C. closed a decade ago, I suspect it's big time boom and bust and now you've got expensive equipment you're in debt for...
Every yuppie that fancies themselves a handyman and every landscaper looking for more side gigs had that same idea and sawmills are back-orded as bad or worse than outdoor recreation items.
Furthermore, milling lumber is one of those things that only pencils out to be economically in the black at very large scale or at very small scale where you focus on a high margin niche.
Then there's regulatory compliance...
Mills / lumber yards consolidated during 2008-2009 financial crisis.
In the years leading up to covid, Canada unintentionally lowered lumber prices by cutting down trees that were infested with a certain type of beatle. At the same time, Canada was reducing the number of (healthy) trees allowed to be harvested for wood every year.
Some have argued that wood prices have been too low, for to long. The industry has never recovered from 2008-2009, and has a conservative mindset.
There are definitely a lot of perspectives to hear in this equation.
I like a quote from this podcast; higher prices cure high prices.
Transcript: Stinson Dean On The Soaring Price Of Lumber ["https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-29/transcrip..."]
There's some people on YT demonstrating how to cut a log with a chain saw... For the very adventurous ;)
You've alluded to it in your post but for anyone else thinking about using pallet wood - look for heat treated wood (stamped HT), and be mindful that these things can be used to ship hazardous materials, and may retain some residue of whatever they were carrying.
Surface detail was a scroll saw and power-carving with a cheap rotary tool. Flex shaft, assortment of diamond coated burrs, and some patience. Just started getting into power carving and I have a long way to go, but enough can be done with just a hand file and sanding: https://i.imgur.com/kjLPtGu.jpg
I've also gotten some very nice pallet wood from a local business importing countertops from China.
Do watch out for chemically treated wood though I think that's more rare these days. The wood should have stamps/marks showing how it has been treated.
i’ve done some (small) reclamation projects with similar old wood, and it’s so much better than today’s lumber.
As a bonus, I have to empty the wine crate before I build something..
I don't pay as much attention to high grade sheet goods prices because I mostly work in solid wood, but they seem reasonable-ish. Good plywood has always been pricey.
It looks like around of 1/3rd of planted corn in the US is used for ethanol production for cars. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339
I have a feel a lot of farms are going to turn in to more sprawling suburbs when some monster subsidies get passed to build out these abandoned farms.
But the problem doesn't seem to be the timber supply, weirdly enough.
A quick glance at one of the big box diy-stores shows a the similarly sized ¾" × 4' × 8' birch ply costs some $60 in the US.
It's not a surprise that there is a demand for lumber.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIFR
https://www.clevelandfed.org/our-research/indicators-and-dat...
Yes, some things (housing, lumber, used cars, etc.) are experiencing quick increases in price. Some are saying this is a sign of runaway inflation. Many others are saying these price increases are a result of pandemic related supply/demand issues and temporary shocks to supply chains.
Unfortunately at the same time money isn't cheap for other things that matter.
The T&G 1-1/8" subfloor I paid ~$40/sheet for in 2019 is currently $110/sheet at the same Home Depot.
If you're looking to share some quality bitching time with a rando, go grumble aloud about the prices in the lumber aisles of your nearest store. If there's anyone around, I guarantee you'll find vocal company for your misery. I've never had so many conversations with Home Depot customers in my life...
If you can wait until next summer you will probably save a lot depending on the deck size. Compare wood with composite decking and you might get a favorable composite price.
But today, $9 for a 2x4 is ridiculous. I’m sort of expecting labor costs to go up too since these guys are in such demand.
Where I live all houses are brick homes. Wood is something that one might use in a "forest cabin"; a "real house" will have wood perhaps on doors, window trims and and maybe to pave the hard cement floors. And that's it.
I assume bricks are also more expensive, but perhaps not as much?
Perhaps North Americans will start building more brick homes.
Masonry is popular in (central and southern) Europe because forests were already cut down centuries ago so lumber prices are generally high. The abundance of lumber in Scandinavia and previously in N.A. thus explains why wooden structures are/were popular there.
So, the hypothesis that N.A. will build more with masonry and less with lumber is an interesting one.
http://masonrydesign.blogspot.com/2014/01/european-construct...
So that is to say, the situation we have arrived at, however unfortunate, is entirely unsurprising, and not that hard to figure out why it is so.
It makes almost everything a much simpler do it yourself project.
I feel like it's a good time to introduce HN to "groverhaus" - a DIY extension performed by a mod on the SomethingAwful forums to a property in the Great Dismal Swamp.
It's really amazing: https://twitter.com/boldlybuilding2/status/11979995316711301...
But the major driving force is probably wood prices. We have less forest, and those forests have been farmed for wood for centuries. Long straight hard timber takes way to long to grow to be used for anything but accent pieces. (Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification, countries with more forest like e.g. Sweden tend to build wooden houses in the countryside).
In industrial buildings you sometimes see something akin to American construction methods, but they usually use aluminum instead of wood
That might have been true once upon a time, but looking at the houses that have been built around me the past few years, I'd say that quick and cheap is the driving factor of the day. Most people building houses now aren't doing so on the assumption that they'll be in use 100 years from now.
I don't see a real difference in durability. There are plenty of stick built houses that are passed down for generations. The ones that are torn down is usually not a durability issue but more of desire to upgrade (wiring, more sqft, HVAC, etc), and it happens with masonry too.
Even masonry homes require preventive maintenance. It's just that the maintenance and concerns are somewhat different.
You also need proper ventilation/drainage to ensure that you don't get moisture build-up inside walls and other spaces from condensation and the like, but admittedly that's more of a factor for things like dry rot or mold, rather than termites.
As long as you keep replacing the wood... a wood house will last?
[1] https://www.heluz.com/en/product/heluz-family-50-grinded
How acoustically active are the rooms in a house like this? I can only imagine how many rugs and tapestries hanging on the walls would be needed just to stay sane.
Rugs are not 100% coverage but the rugs that were used here in the past were maybe 90% coverage? Like not glued to the floor but covering most of it. So these are not popular anymore.
This is probably climate-related - when there is a big difference between day- and nighttime temperatures it is very comfortable.
Most homes have asphalt tiles as they are reliable, easy to install, and inexpensive vs the other options.
Siding however has a lot of variety. In the northeast you see a lot of wood siding (cedar shingle) where as in many other parts it’s aluminum or vinyl (made to look like wood) or stucco.
I recently did a renovation which required 2 outside walls to be modified and they put cedar shingle up to match the existing siding.
Why build anything out of brick when you have concrete? Aerated concrete blocks are almost perfect for low and even some medium density housing. Additional insulation is a bit annoying, but for many states it won't even be needed if the wall is one full block thick.
In the highlands of Greece (where my grandparents are from), earthquakes are frequent, and almost every house is built out of stone. I am not sure if they are unreinforced or not these days or have been retrofitted, but many are 300-400 years old and still standing.
I did find this https://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/WCEE2012_2227.pdf which is a fascinating analysis of the damage to the unreinforced masonry buildings during the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes (which poor quality materials was found to be one of the largest factors of resulting damage)
For sources... I'd say check out ASCE 7-16 Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Building and Other Structures, table 12.2-1. For seismic design categories D, E, and F, even Ordinary Reinforced Masonry Buildings (Bearing wall systems) are simply "NP" or not permitted.
There simply isn't a category for "unreinforced masonry" because it will not hold the shear. The problem is it has no ductility. That is essentially the measure of a material to resist force even after deformation. Masonry is very stiff, but it is brittle and fractures as it deforms at which point it loses ALL of it's ability to hold shear in the direction which it is being applied. Reinforced masonry will retain some capacity to resist shear after deformation because the steel inside will continue to resist shear.
In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias. It may be luck, it may be the effect of soil and rock characteristics acting to dampen seismic ground accelerations at the right frequency of seismic waves, it almost certainly is exceptional construction technique, methodology and design, and it likely combines with several other factors I haven't listed here. Personally, I suspect the load-bearing components of the buildings you're talking about are actually wood.
To your point,
> In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias
There's a hell of a lot of survivors.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l1gal0/why_a...
> Architecture and construction practices are regional and cultural. What works gets repeated and over time it becomes so common that people forget why things are done a certain way.
generally, you use what's available.
Where I live in Oklahoma City, almost all of our houses are brick or stone on the outside. It's a veneer so it's not structural, but it provides a great thermal layer beyond just insulation between the timber studs. Brick is made locally in Oklahoma because the "red dirt" soil has a lot of clay in it, so bricks are actually the same price or cheaper than many siding products. Siding is really only widely used on second floors and "bonus rooms", etc. since brick is too heavy for the second floor and would require a lot more structural support.
Most of the HOAs in newer neighborhoods around OKC will even require 70-80% brick or stone exteriors because it's lower maintenance and less likely to become an eyesore with fading/chipping paint, etc. So the requirements are pretty regional.
Whoa!
Why not to try steel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-framing_metal_buildings
Even at current high steel price of $700/t you will save a lot.
Please do list the engineering advantages of wood over concrete, because from my experience a US house was a structural (and efficiency) downgrade compared to my European concrete & brick house.
[1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22481706/N...
Are there any disruptive technologies out there that might allow for smaller new entrants to enter the industry more quickly?