First-world vs third-world (approximately).

In the first world, brick construction is extremely expensive and you're right -- modern residences are often built with structural beams (whether wood or steel), and the brick is usually just a veneer.

But in the third world, variants of brick (e.g. cinder block) are often the norm, and are structurally load-bearing, and work fine for two to three stories. And they're very easy and cheap to build with.

The US has a ton of cheap lumber so load-bearing wood frames are common. Many countries don't have forests like that so bricks/blocks are the way to go.

I have to disagree, and I don't think the first world vs. third world comparison is helpful.

Bricks are quite common in Europe, at least for buildings up to a certain height. The resulting buildings here (in Germany) offer higher living quality with better thermal and acoustic insulation than a typical North American beams + drywalls building. That's just an observation though and maybe the general construction method is not the cause - maybe it's just because our windows and doors are much more solid.

Bricks and stone provide abysmal thermal insulation. North American drywall with insulation is far, far better thermally. It's not even close.

Also... what does "much more solid" windows mean exactly? Like, are you saying European window glass is... thicker or something? Which wouldn't make any sense, and I'm not even sure what a benefit would be?

Tilt and turn windows, with triple or quadruple panes, low-E glass, and two gaskets for air sealing are much more common in Europe than in the US for residential construction, where they would only be seen in highly energy efficient high end construction.

They're also only seen in high end energy efficient construction in France, Spain, the Netherlands and I've never seen them in Eastern Europe. They're frickin' expensive! They may be more common than in the US, but still not "common".

Indeed. And double-paned windows are in the majority of homes in the US [1]. And triple-paned windows are a lot more expensive for not a ton more benefit no matter where you live.

Unless someone has some actual comparative statistics, the idea that European windows are somehow more "solid" than North American ones isn't at all obvious. I've spent years living on both continents and never noticed a huge difference. What matters the most is simply the age of and investment in the building, not which continent you're on.

[1] https://www.dwmmag.com/survey-multi-pane-windows-now-on-59-p...

Maybe triple-glazing is more rare, but at least in Poland, by my observation, almost everyone seems to have double-glazed, PVC-framed windows. I only ever see single-pane windows in really old and poor houses. IIRC, there was a rush of replacing old windows with double-glazed ones in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

> Bricks and stone provide abysmal thermal insulation

Even 80-90 years ago, brick housing in wester Europe was made with walls of two layers with an air/insulation cavity inbetween. Current practices usually don't use clay bricks but aerated concrete [1] which has great thermal insulation, plus insulation layers on top.

> what does "much more solid" windows mean exactly

Triple-glazed windows with well-insulated frames, rather than single-pane push-up windows that leak heat like a sieve. Massive difference in thermal and acoustic insulation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete

Yeah, it’s not a 1st / 3rd world thing as much as a regional thing. Here in California wood is practically free, while stick and sheathing construction is the best way to build an earthquake resistant home. Other parts of the world have different concerns and costs.

Similarly, it's not common to build stick houses in Florida. Definitely regional.

Cinder block construction can also be difficult to insulate and hide services such as electricity and plumbing behind. In addition, brick buildings are a bad idea in areas subject to [seismic events](https://www.npr.org/2010/01/14/122547242/haitis-buildings-we...).

I was curious as to the cost of bricks so I did a bit of research...

A standard two-cell "cinder block" in the US weighs around 17.5kg and costs around $2.00 at home depot [1]. I suspect they'll be much cheaper in bulk. Maybe $1.50 if you buy thousands?

The same thing costs ₹65 INR in India [2]. Or about $0.89 (₹73 INR = $1 USD). Not sure if they would accept orders for a single block at that site.

So, more expensive in the US. But not extremely so.

[1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/16-in-x-8-in-x-8-in-Normal-Weigh... [2] https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/concrete-hollow-blocks-...

I guess what is more expensive is to pay the builders in a first-world-nation, since brick-laying is labour-intensive and requires skill.

Stick building homes is labor intensive and requires a skill as well…

Obviously it's the difference between the two.

Bricklaying requires much more labor than wooden frame construction. And it requires more skill which most contractors do not have.

It's more expensive for these basic economic reasons.

I was under the impression they used metal to reinforce masonry, but apparently not all everyone does. Found an article that goes into more details and lists pros and cons of the masonry approach here:

https://theconstructor.org/construction/masonry/load-bearing...

> the load bearers, while the bricks are more of less just filling vertical space

Bricks are decorative in a few buildings, but this is by far the minority.

Where bricks are used in < 8 floor high buildings, they normally are supporting the weight of the entire structure.

Where do you live that a building of modern construction is supported by bricks? In the US, multi-story residences are built on wood with a brick facade. Multi-story commercial buildings are built using wood up to 4 stories (depending on locale), and steel after that.

The US is the odd one out... I completely see why you'd make a temporary building out of wood so that you can build it in just a few days.

But if this is a house, expected to last 150 years plus, and you're already bringing lots of bricks to the site, you really ought to be using the bricks to hold the building up and reserving the wood for the internal floors and other things that will be replaced every 75 years.

We don't use bricks for structure any more because earthquakes. Wood buildings fare much better when shaken. We also have plenty of wooden houses that have stood for 150 years.

Wood lasts 150 years plus. There are environmental factors that, unmitigated, can damage wood. But the same is also the case for masonry construction. They both have their pros and cons. And now that things like vinyl siding exist, wood homes can last a long time even with minimal maintenance.

Just FYI, Hōryū-ji is a temple built of wood that has lasted 400 to 1300 years (parts have been repaired over the centuries). It's all about how you care for the building.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji

A bit off topic but wood houses can, if done right, last quite a lot longer than 150 years.

The oldest timber frame house in the US dates to 1637.

Wood easily lasts 200+ years as long as it’s thick and dry. It tends to sag over time, but most buildings end up being fairly temporary on those timescales.

Wood houses can last just as long if they are properly built and maintained. I will grant you that many buildings in the US aren't built or maintained to last that long, but they can and do exist and it is what most builders would prefer to build if there was the demand. Wood is also much easier to repair if there is damage, or easily jacked up if the foundation moves over 100 years.

Bricks are not nearly as strong as you intuitively think. They do great in compression, but terrible in tension. Bricks are also terrible insulation. Real structural engineers take this into account, and thus often use wood or steel (or other materials) depending on what really matters. And of course the entire structure needs to be designed as a whole.

Unreinforced masonry is weak in tension because of the weak binding interface between the masonry unit and the mortar. The reason masonry is used in wall construction and not in, say, a suspended floor, is precisely because walls don't typically experience tensile forces. Any tensile force resulting from e.g.: wind loading on the entire structure is typically overcome by the self-weight of the masonry.

If there is a special case where tensile forces are expected, for example a retaining wall, or a mid-rise structure, or earthquake load, the engineer will specify the the masonry is reinforced with steel and then it can resist tension through the unit/mortar interface just fine.

It is a poor structural engineer who tells the architect masonry isn't an option because tension.

The tension is resisted via the steel, not the CMU/mortar interface. Masonry behaves similar to concrete (that’s what the C in CMU stands for...) and suffers from the same issue as concrete re: lack of tensile strength. It is not the mortar interface which makes masonry a problem for tensile loading conditions but the structure of the masonry and mortar itself. They simply are not amenable to carrying tensile load at a microscopic level.

I don’t know what structural engineering you’ve done or what jurisdiction it’s in, but for practical purposes on the west coast in America, structural masonry isn’t an option beyond maybe 3 stories because of tension (due to seismic demand) and any structural engineer that says otherwise is looking to get sued for negligence.

Elsewhere in America this is less true but still most modern engineering doctrines would lead you quickly away from masonry for anything substantial, although cost and schedule is obviously a key factor in masonry’s favor.

Everything else about the use of masonry in walls I generally agree with, although the move away from allowable stress has impacted it as described above. Except maybe I would quibble about the use for retaining walls. CMU can be particularly cost effective for some geometries of retaining walls when used with steel.

You can build wooden house that would stand 100+ years. Not US-style houses from planks, though, you just cut trees and use their trunks as a whole to build walls. Also you should protect it from the rotting.

There are a very large number of 100+ year old wooden homes in the eastern half of the US. Check out Zillow with the "year built" filter. Even if you set the filter to limit results to 1899 and older, the vast majority of homes are of wood construction.

Heck, I live in a 91 year old wood framed and clad home in California - this isn’t limited to the east coast.

This house is going to outlive me as well, barring a natural disaster (which it is better suited to withstand than a masonry home, given that my most likely disaster is an earthquake).

While sibling comments mentioned a bit about differences in building approach with heavy use of brick and concrete in Europe, at times it reaches into cultural incomprehension.

When US action movies started to show up more in Poland, many people joked how american movies exaggerate things by using cheap plywood scene sets for houses. Finding out that american homes are actually built like that was a bit of a shock to many.

To be fair, a little 4.9 earthquake counts as one of the biggest ever recorded in Poland.

And if you know anything about electrical wiring, do not look up how they do it in those plywood houses in US, any European building inspector would have a heart attack :)

I get shivers just from the standard outlets in USA...

What's wrong with our outlets? We've got less voltage, and a ground plug that makes contact first. When the outlet is in a room with water, or outdoors, it goes through a ground fault interrupter to keep people from being electrocuted.

We reserve 220 volt outlets and higher voltages (3 phase 480, etc) for the larger loads, and those plugs are huge, and not something found in a typical home.

While this is all true, less voltage comes with a price and that is more current.

2 times less voltage === 4 times more heating for the same resistance (heating is calculated from R times I^2).

This means that short circuits, wiring problems are potentially much dangerous.

I live in Poland. Almost all buildings outside cities are bricks with bricks being load-bearing.

In cities, almost all buildings older than 1950 are also made from bricks.

Central Europe mostly builds from bricks. Not just classical red bricks, Ytong is a very popular type too.

Wooden structures copied from Scandinavia are slowly coming into fashion for smaller family houses (the construction process is very fast compared to bricks), but they are still very much in minority.

Taller constructions are concrete + steel.

> Taller constructions are concrete + steel.

There have been some advancements in wood for taller structures in recent years. Basically they have come up with wood that is as strong as concrete.

Main problem is fire/pests/rot/etc so you can't build crazy big but there are now 7 or 8 story tall apartment buildings made out of wood mainly in Helsinki for example.

Making apartment buildings out of wood is also much more environment friendly then concrete (somewhere around 50% less total co2)

Structural wood can be more fireproof than steel.

I saw this in an excellent exhibit at the National Building Museum in DC a couple of years back. Will try to track down a reference.

Some discussion (and dead links) near the bottom of this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16331375

Fennoscandinavians are very good with their wood. (Pun not intended.) When other nations try to imitate their know-how, the result is usually subpar.

In Israel almost all construction, even single family homes (not that there are many of them), has concrete/steel beams and floors as the load baring infrastructure, and light Ytong bricks serving mainly for insulation. But it's super common to remove brick walls, interior or exterior, to make changes to home layouts, and as long as you don't touch the beams it's safe.

I live in a building where bricks are very much load-bearing.

I have also lived in buildings that had steel or wood beams in walls for the purpose of keeping the wall rigid (so that it doesn't buckle), but the bricks were still holding most of the load.

Standard design for a UK house uses bricks (and an interior cinder block lining) to bear all loads unless the design calls for a very narrow pillar.

Even where a timber frame bearing roof and floor loads exists so wall bricks just "fill space", they have to be sufficiently performant under compression to support the weight of brick courses above them.

Major problem with plastic in roads is thermal stability and abrasion from constant wear. In the end, concrete is not only cheaper, but also much safer option.

For limited load bearing, aircrete (a concrete foam) is cheaper, and a better insulator. The main issue is that the cure time is much longer.