For regions that don't have to worry about a frost line helical screw piles and mass timber are game-changing building capabilities to construct concrete free. It's even possible to build carbon negative thanks to the timber locked in the building. And it's way faster since you don't spend months preparing a site and building forms.

Even frost line regions could dramatically cut their concrete usage if they just focused on protecting the water lines. You would lose a basement, but those are expensive per sq ft anyway. Just go up another floor for less total costs.

Local building codes will get in the way since building inspectors tend to reject things they haven't seen before (like mass timber frame) and way too many places have incredibly strict height restrictions.

It is incredible to watch helical screw piles go in. A friend needed 60+ posts installed for a big fence. Would have been days of digging or augering post holes down 4 ft for the frost line and then mixing hundreds of bags of cement and filling the holes with concrete. Instead a contractor with a small tracked machine that fit through a standard gate drove every pile in under an hour.

You can use helical screw piles in places with a frost line. As long as the blades are below the frost line.

Absolutely true, but you still need a plan for protecting the water lines. You need some kind of underground insulated structure below the frost line that can handle direct dirt contact. Annoyingly concrete remains the best option.

Was recently in a fairly new construction house in a very cold climate state that did not have a full basement below the frost line. There was a partial 8’x8’ corner that sunk down to where the water line came in, but the rest of the footprint was a crawl space. Losing the basement does affect the style of building that is economical to build on top though, mainly due to building codes.

A basement is nice to have if you live in an area with tornados.

I live in an area with freezing weather. The water pipe to my house is just a PVC pipe buried below the frost line, i.e. in a trench about 3 or 4 feet deep. There's no concrete involved.

>And it's way faster since you don't spend months preparing a site and building forms.

What size house are you building that it takes months preparing a site to build foundations? Sub 2000sqft houses are built to completion in 90-120 days if weather doesn't delay things. It only takes a couple of weeks from clearing the site, digging the trenches, lining the moisture barrier, laying the rebar and forms, then pouring the cement. The formulas today cure very quickly. From the day of the pour to the start of framing is practically the blink of an eye

Here in Canada it’s extremely common for ground works for a new subdivision to take over a year.

Individual houses can be done in a much shorter time, but digging a basement, setting all the forms, pouring the concrete, waterproofing the walls, underpinning the water management, and then back filling back to grade is not a quick process.

You're comparing the time it takes a developer to clear the entire development to the time it takes to build a single house. These are not the same thing. That's comparing apples and oranges. Comparing the time for a house with no basement to one with a basement is comparing a granny smith to a red delicious.

Even a single house worth of ground works is 30-60 days pretty easily.

That's about as fast as maple syrup. The ground around here never gets that cold, and basements are not a thing at all. So your 60 days is about 45 days behind schedule! Your sub-contractors are bilking the contractor ;-)

> Light weight timber frame construction on pile foundations

> But with modern materials (or good old traditional maintenance) thats just not true, a timber frame house can last hundreds of years.

I am not sure were you are reading that "timber frame house can last hundreds of years" but I don't believe that is correct, most timber frame houses have an estimated 30 year life span. A stone/brick house can last thousands of years.

I do agree that a stick frame/light weight timber house is way less concrete then a brick/stone house. But UK doesn't have a ton of trees, so the majority of those trees are imported from EU places like Belarus or Canada. Which is a bunch of gas in itself.

Pile foundations also have tons of problems, and have a very high fail rate. They don't do well with salt water, so costal areas in UK will have problems, they don't do well with stone/bedrock. Which UK has a ton of.

I believe there is tons of work to do, but I disagree that the solution is stick framing and pile foundations. I think the actual solution is innovation and reduction of some building standards to allow innovation. It's very very difficult to even experiment with building materials as every building code requires X insulation and any building official will complain if you have Y. So everyone just uses X.

ICF for example is absolute garbage, its marketed as a eco friendly, green building material that's made from oil and filled with a truck load of cement. How that got classified as a "eco-friendly green building material" is beyond me.

Meanwhile things that are actually eco-friendly like hemp, straw, etc all require a ton of engineering and have zero standards, so everything has to be engineered. And you'll get crazy looks from building officials when you ask for a review of your straw timber frame house.

I live in a ballon-framed house built in 1926. Coming up on 100 years and with reasonable maintenance there is no reason it won't last another 100. There are some terribly built wooden houses that will just rot away, but it's not that hard to do it right.

Wood as a building material when used properly can be incredibly resilient, especially with modern mass timber solutions rather than raw wood.

Agree. My first house was a wood-frame bungalow built near the prior turn of the century. As long as you don't get termites, and maintain the roof and siding so you don't have water leaking in, wood houses will last basically forever, or at least on the order of 100 years.

I'd like to point out that wood 100 years ago was mostly old growth, which differs drastically to the lumber available today.

Modern mass timber more than corrects that problem. It does a fantastic job using fast growing, new growth lumber to produce highly precise parts that are factory produced exactly to spec to nearly eliminate waste.

Highly precise lumber parts sounds like an oxymoron. The standard assumption for wood is that it's only straight while it's being cut. If they've invented fix for that, it's not gonna be the wood that they're using that does it, but some extra processing to make like a particle board or something

Modern mass timber has advanced a long way beyond cheap particle board. Read up on cross laminated timber. Manufactured and cut exactly to size and often requires no cutting on site.

>with modern mass timber solutions rather than raw wood

Do you mean things like LSL?

I actually wonder what the longevity of LSL is compared to raw wood. Since it's a ton of resin mixed with wood, I wonder about the resin part of it.

It does seem much better to build with as bugs won't eat it and it's perfectly straight.

Laminated strand is certainly under the heading of mass timber, but I’m referring more to cross laminated timber (CLT). It still uses resin, but with much more wood it doesn’t suffer from the sort of rot and de-laminating problems OSB has, but it’s still highly engineered and highly precise like LSL.

Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) has become common in North America for beams and joists. CLT uses even larger components and is even more flexible. It’s just starting to be used but you can build everything from a house to 20 storey buildings.

I know nothing about this, but do you know what the environmental/recyclable potential of the resins are?

> I am not sure were you are reading that "timber frame house can last hundreds of years" but I don't believe that is correct, most timber frame houses have an estimated 30 year life span. A stone/brick house can last thousands of years.

I grew up in a four family timber house built in the 1960's. It's still standing. As are all the houses on that road which were all built at the same time. We moved to a timber house built around 1910. It's still standing - I walked past it just last year. My grandparents lived in a development of all wooden houses built in the 1950's. They're all standing.

Where did you get this notion they have a life span of 30 years? Norway has plenty of wooden houses that have stood for a 100+ years, and a huge bulk of post-war construction from the 50's and 60's in wood.

On the more extreme end, there are a number of stave churches in wood dating back to the 1200's. Of course they're the outlies that survived, and have certainly required maintenance.

EDIT: Here's a list of stave churches in Norway, and construction years. Some of these have been rebuilt during that time, but even those that have typically have a lifetime of each iteration measured in centuries, with a few exceptions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stave_churches_in_Norw...

As a fun curiosity, here's Vang stave church, "moved" from Norway to Poland in 1842, originally built in the 1200's. "Moved" because most of the material ended up being discarded because the builders handling the re-erection didn't quite know how and found it easier to replace most of it. So the current iteration is really "only ~180 years old, and might have been moved and rebuilt once before, but in any case each iteration survived rather a bit longer than 30 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vang_Stave_Church

30 years is far too low. Most homes built in the US will easily make it 70 years.

Heck, I’ve seen many trailer houses that are in decent shape and >30 years old.

The life span is probably more due to the lifespan of the plumbing. On high-grade copper(L- or K-) you can get a useful life of 50 years but PEX is only rated for 30 years, and the lowest grade of copper(M-type) has a similar replacement interval. The valves used in plumbing fixtures also wear out and need replacement periodically. And the valve housings do as well. The anode in a water heater will probably only last a couple of decades. These are all replaceable parts.

Siding is in a similar state, with many modern sidings have replacement intervals in the decades, and shorter time periods if you don't paint every 5-10 years.

If properly maintained and if parts are replaced in a timely manner a house can last indefintely. My partner and I own a house from 1935 that was last renovated in the 1990s, and I'm starting to have to make minor plumbing repairs. I think in the next 10 years or so we'll have to re-pipe and re-wire. But the framing and sheathing is almost all original, except for the roof deck which was replaced first in the 1990's and then parts were replaced when we re-roofed last year(the original roofer did not know how to frame to support a rake board).

Everything also changes if you factor in repainting and replacement of interior fixtures.

But still, if you maintain it and factor in all these repairs and replacements your house can last for hundreds of years.

For what it's worth, I have a 200 year old cottage that probably has a few centuries left in it, and the plumbing and wiring is all in conduits that are easily accessed. Maybe we should make it easier to replace this stuff without ripping the house apart?

> I am not sure were you are reading that "timber frame house can last hundreds of years" but I don't believe that is correct, most timber frame houses have an estimated 30 year life span. A stone/brick house can last thousands of years.

I have in fact lived in a timber frame house that was 400 years old and going strong. No idea about its history, but it was rather comfortable and cozy. It wasn't particularly well insulated though.

Timber frames can definitely last hundreds of years. I have multiple family members on my wife's side who live in houses with parts dating back 100-200 years. They've been kept up and more or less continuously occupied, but it's not as though that meant continuously conditioned as we would think of it until sometime in the 20th century.

Hell, you can drive through New England and see barns that are 150 years old that are only starting to fall down after 50 years of deferred maintenance.

If you keep wood dry, it'll last a good long while. Whether you consider 100-200 years a long time, will of course depend on perspective:

"In Europe, they think 100 miles is a long way. In the US, they think 100 years is a long time."

- William the Conqueror

> estimated 30 year life span

Did you misplace a digit? If you're only getting 30 years from a wood frame house, you're definitely doing something wrong.

Different climate but I lived in two poorly maintained Queenslanders[1] which were a popular style of timber on piles here, both 50 years old and would easily last longer. One even had minor termite damage which was later treated.

Many people here do knock down rebuilds but most would easily last longer than 30 years. Many timber houses get re-stumped after a few decades and concrete piles seem to be a popular choice for replacement.

I see a lot of poorly built homes on slabs as well which seem to have a similar lifespan as the Queenslanders (anecdotally).

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture)

How is the relative cost? Timber is historically much more expensive in the UK than in the US, the major user of timber construction.

Correct, timber is expensive here - particularly over the last 3 years - but I believe a timber frame construction is still a little lower than a brick contraction in cost. SIPs (structurally insulated panels) are more expensive than brick, but I suspect that more to do with available expertise and the need for expensive cranes. (As an aside its fascinating visiting France where every house building site has a crane, none do here)

But many timber frame houses here are still build on massive concrete slabs, and that is still pouring money into the ground. We need to adopt innovations like screw piles that are completely concrete free.

Having had to buck timber trusses to a second floor roof, I think cranes are a wonderful invention and we should have more of them.

I know we have wet and cold climate in the UK, but it is also pretty mild.

We could have timber framed housing, as we don't get hit by natural disasters with the exception of flooding

Cement is used in most city infrastructure, for industrial builds, etc. The demand for it in the U.S. probably dwarfs the UK several times over despite lumber use for houses, and poured concrete no longer popularly used for foundations.

If you want to abate it, you'd need to look far beyond that particular use-case in the UK. I don't see low-hanging fruit here. Cement is reliable and inexpensive. There is R&D in the works for eco-cement, but this appears to be in early stages.

It's possible to reduce emissions in its production in the first place. Notwithstanding the calcium carbonate, energy inputs (which are very high) could eventually not rely on fossil fuels.

If the goal is to pursue an aggressive timeline for curbing CO2 emissions then probably CC & electrical will appear first.

Why aren’t they already doing that? If what you’re saying is true they would since the implication is that it’s cheaper.

Same reason most people don't write Rust: The talent, best practices, and vendor ecosystem are less accessible. Similar to Rust it's much more accessible than people _think_ though

Reduction is also item number 1 in their linked factsheet:

https://fcarchitects.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230206...

> Modernize building standards to favor low-carbon materials and circular use

> Promote low-carbon practices in industry and curricula

> Update building and infrastructure regulations based on required performance, instead of prescriptions on material conten

There is a good argument that buildings shouldn't last so long.

Buildings a mere 50 years ago probably have very poor insulation (and hence high heating/cooling environmental + monetary costs), have electrics that aren't considered safe today, have plumbing probably containing lots of lead, and are lacking amenities considered standard today (electrical outlet next to the bed for phone charging, mixer taps, etc). Those buildings probably won't resist fire for long, and probably won't be suitable for heat pump heating. Sound insulation probably won't be good, so you probably get woken by your neighbour having sex.

All those things are fixable for a cost, or livable with a hit to quality of life, the environment, the house owners health, etc.

If we assume that the requirements for a home continue to evolve, then we can see that something built today would be unlikely well suited for use in 50 years. Considering that, perhaps it's best to build something easy to disassemble and rebuild 50 years from now.

Sound insulation in older homes is much better than in new. Thicker and heavier materials are much better at absorbing or reflecting sound, especially low frequency. Fire resistance seems to be a wash. I've seen the aftermath of new and old construction. We don't seem to have made improvements in this regard, but we have made the likelihood of them starting lower in all kinds of construction.

The opposing argument for much of their down-sides is the up-front cost of building a new home has it's own environmental and financial costs. Much of the down-sides to older homes can be retrofitted for substantially less cost and impact than a new home.

We could get the best of both worlds by designing homes for upgrades with large conduits for wirings, easier access to walls and attics, etc.

>> by designing homes for upgrades with large conduits for wirings

Why isn’t this more common? I’ve watched a few spray foam installations on youtube where they just spray directly over romex / wiring / cables .

I think this is kinda needed for air tightness, but shouldn't stop anyone from running empty conduits for future use...

Because that allows contractors to sell empty conduits at a large margin. Every conduit and potential outlet is charged for through the nose.

The best apartment building I ever lived in in NYC was built in the 1920s and was built "naturally fireproof", where there were thick masonry walls between each unit to prevent the spread of fire. I literally never heard a single neighbor, anywhere, ever. Not my same-floor neighbors, nor the people above or below me.

Compare that with newer buildings I lived in, where I would be woken up at 3AM by my upstairs neighbor's cat running around.

It's surely cheaper to rewire and refit, than to knock the whole thing down to the foundations and start again.

Doing all those things at once, it's usually cheaper to knock down and start from scratch.

The problem lies in a homeowner who doesn't have much spare cash - so they rewire one year... and then a few years later they replumb... and then a few years later they replace the roof... etc.

Overall, they spent more, but in small increments so it didn't feel like more.

Typically regulations allow things to be 'grandfathered' - so renovating a house allows you to avoid getting permission to rebuild, which may be denied.

The idea that periodic replumbing and rewiring and replacing roofing felt costs less overall than a complete rebuild is questionable enough in terms of financial cost, even more so in terms of carbon output cost.

Sure, the [carbon] accounting looks a little different if you're having to pull out most of the load-bearing walls to accommodate a change of use and underpin to build on top or considering replacing old masonry with something built to maximise energy efficiency. But rebuilding entire houses to keep up with the latest fads in mobile charge ports and mixer taps is about as good for the environment as "fast fashion"!

Beyond finances, there's simply the nightmare of -- where the hell do I live while my house is being rebuilt? We've put off kitchen & main floor renovations for a half decade simply because we don't want to deal with the hassle, a rebuild is another thing entirely.

Many houses are naturally unused for months at a time - for example between tenants if let. Between owners when sold, or after the inhabitant passes away.

If the house is big enough you just do a room (or two) at a time.

> Doing all those things at once, it's usually cheaper to knock down and start from scratch.

This must be regional. In the PNW we'd never knock something down for that. Stripping the drywall out and redoing the plumbing/electrical/insulation is quite a lot less expensive than putting up a whole new structure.

> Doing all those things at once, it's usually cheaper to knock down and start from scratch.

This has never been my experience. I've done a lot of this kind of work, in several different cities (all US though).

A full rip & replace of plumbing, electrical, and roofing should cost about 20%, and require about 10% of the time, compared to building new.

Plumbing should last 50 years (rough plumbing -- fixtures are decorative and usually change with taste before failure). Electrical should last longer, but systems older than 1970s probably need updating. Roof should last 25-30 years depending on style/material.

My house was built in 1885, timber framed. There's no rot, it's been maintained, re-plumbed and re-wired a few times, and new owners only need to keep with basic maintenance. It's been insulated as well, utility bills are in the $90-150 range depending on how extreme the seasons get. The structure has another century left in it, easy.

I had a house built in Ireland and the architect was a huge pain in the ass. She wanted concrete _ceilings_ ffs. In a single story dwelling. She also thought it was ludicrous I wasn't using concrete blocks, and anything like a pier or post and beam foundation was completely out of the question.

The funny thing is that the houses here are pure shite so it's not like this approach has been working for them. Utter, abominable, crap. Ugly, too.

I was able to get a timber frame and wood ceilings but still have a concrete foundation. The builders were so proud of it being an insulated foundation (KORE) but you wouldn't even _need_ that if the house were lifted off the ground, like it should be.

I asked one forward-minded engineer about it and he said it was down to people being brainwashed by "concrete built is better built" ads from the 80's and centuries of complete deforestation.

> The best way to reduce carbon emission from cement would be to use less of it.

Disagree.

I think we need to return to the future through rediscovering Roman Concrete [1] and making structures that can last thousands of years.

Concrete also, can be recycled and used again.

Because we are in a deglaciation period currently, in general I am skeptical about moving to a low CO2 environment which is not normal for the earth. However, I am sensitive to the fact that we must be stewards and caretakers of the earth and make the best use of resources, while polluting less, and moving to a more sustainable future through a grand conversion process eventually.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-cas...