Why most houses in the US are made of wood and other frail materials?

Question

Why concrete and stone and brick are rarely used to build houses in the US?
Don´t you think that with so many hurricanes and wild fires in the time to come due to the planet warming it´s necessary to think in other more resistant materials for construction?

Answer 1

Wood is very plentiful in the US so it is cheaper to use for building construction.

A properly constructed house can withstand a hurricane. The house I lived in as a child in New Orleans was built in the 1920's and it has withstood countless hurricanes and is still standing today.

Brick or stone homes are not as resistant to earth quakes as a properly constructed wooden home because the wood homes is flexible and the stone or brick home is not.

When you look at the total number of homes in the US and the number lost of wildfires, you will see the number is very small. I do agree that those people who live in areas similar to portions of California would be wise to use more fire resistant materials on the exterior of their homes. That is specially true of roofs.

Answer 2

Wood, is not as frail as might be assumed. If built properly, a wood structure is quite resilient. There are cases on file where houses built in the Habitat for Humanity program survived hurricanes that other contractor built homes flew apart in. Concrete is difficult to build with. There is a lot of preplanning that has to be done for water, sewage, and electrical services that are not needed for wood frame homes. Stone and brick homes, unless massively built, suffer from an instability that wood frame homes do not suffer from. Cement doesn't really "cement" the various bricks and stones together. Rather, it forms an encasement around the material that holds it together. The encasement is subject to shock, and vibration that could cause it to crack, and thus lose it's mechanical stability. The sheer weight of the building material is largely what holds it together. If not built properly, the whole thing can come crashing down where a wood frame home would still be left standing. So, wood is a lot cheaper to work with, and is more easily fixed, or replaced than a home built with rock, brick, or concrete.

Answer 3

It is a trade off.

In Tennessee you couldn't hardly give away a block house because typically they were not insulated very well. Slab on grade construction was frowned upon as well.

In Florida, you cannot hardly give away a wood frame house because of storms and termites. Block, slab on grade is the construction of choice.

Wood frame houses can have brick or stone veneers if you like but it's still a wood house

Answer 4

That is true in the areas where wood was cheap so it was a cost effective material. In places like parts of Ohio where clay for bricks was the cheaper material you will see the majority of the houses were made of brick.

Answer 5

becasue its COST EFFECTIVE, and tho frail, it it easier to replace and less likely to have major stuctural damage from any wear & tear, or malfunction error!!!
if made of metal, can cause rust and disease from that rust... and cost waaaayyy too much for a homeowner to make house of metal...!!!

Answer 6

its cheaper