Lumber is not timber. Lumber can be moved about by a single pair of hands and fastened with nails...American construction takes advantage of the industrial revolution and uses commodity nails.
Worth noting that where Americans use concrete and brick, they also use steel reinforcing so that their buildings don't collapse brittle collapse from earthquakes and wind.
Lumber is cheap because there's lots of land where we now farm fast growing trees.
Wood frame houses are cheap today because of the invention of the stamped metal framing connector, which has enabled large elements to be made off site in high volume. It's also why houses typically don't have attics anymore.
That's really strange to me, every house I've ever lived in (5 houses since 1991 , all in the southeast, all new construction) has had an attic and I can't even imagine what a house without an attic would look like. (I guess a flat roof, but only weird modern houses and apartments have flat roofs and there are not many modern houses)
In a lot of contemporary construction it is an uninhabitable space between the eaves and roof. An analog to a crawl space.
In contemporary construction, habitable attics usually get listed as bonus rooms.
The GP is thinking of something reached by stairs. Nonhabitable attics usually are accessed by ladders or ladder like objects.
(Edit: to be clear this is for residential construction which tend to be small 1-2 story buildings.)
There are things called attic trusses:
* https://design.medeek.com/resources/truss/trussgallery.html
You can also use (vaulted) parallel cord truss:
* https://www.dimensions.com/element/truss-vaulted-parallel-ch...
See also various other configurations:
* https://www.menards.com/main/buying-guides/building-material...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oIeLGkSCMA
Ninja'ed
I would guess the decline in livable attics in new construction is mostly attributable to changing consumer preference.
Yes, it is. It doesn't have to be usable to be an attic. It just needs to be a space between the ceiling and roof.
Unless you use attic trusses:
* https://design.medeek.com/resources/truss/trussgallery.html
Or (vaulted) parallel cord truss:
* https://www.dimensions.com/element/truss-vaulted-parallel-ch...
As someone who framed houses as a job and designed and built three of my own I disagree with your take on attics.
It is common for houses not to have an attic because builders must build cheap to compete. Attic space can be cheap square footage, but it has to be part of the plan from the beginning and is difficult to make it an option to pick.
You can indeed have an attic with "attic trusses". They are still built out of dimensional lumber and stamped connectors - the bottom chord will be much larger. I've seen them span 36', not sure what the limit is.
On one house, to do a partial attic was only $2000 extra for the trusses. Attics present other problems/expenses too, like additional stairs. (Many plans didn't have a place where extra stairs can be added as an option AND work with the truss layout.
HVAC is another issue. You either end up with a second system for the attic or need to have space in the floor below to run ducts to the attic space. Again, most of your cookie cutter plans didn't leave a space for this. When walking my HVAC guy through my house to plan ducts he asked how much of this closet he could have for ducts. I told him "as much as you need to make it work correctly". From the look on his face you'd think he won the lottery. He replied "no one ever says that!".
Attic spaces require different insulation techniques, they aren't difficult, but cookie cutters don't like different.
I've used attic trusses on 2 of 3 houses. The one where I didn't was because stairs, HVAC and I didn't need more space (full extra height basement, daylight windows - that was enough).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/headway/how-an-american-d...
"What may ultimately force the adoption of industrialized housing in the United States is a skilled labor shortage. This has already affected one area of home-building: roof trusses, the structural timber frameworks that support a roof. Trusses require precisely cutting angles, a skill few workers possess, and so the structures are now mostly made in factories."
Keep in mind stucco is very common in Southern California. Basically a 7/8” thick layer of concrete on all the exterior walls. It is fire resistant. Many such buildings burned down.
This isn’t the three little pigs where the brick house is the solution. And that wasn’t the moral of the story anyway.
This isn't a 0%/100% thing, but it increases the chances by a big margin.
Because concrete and bricks are more expensive and for most places wood construction is perfectly adequate.
It's really very intuitive.
> Some of the homes in Pacific Palisades were 90 years old
90 years exceeds your lifespan, the lifespan of your children, and maybe the lifespan of your grandchildren depending on when in your lifetime it is built. Even if the house is never sold and is simply inherited, it is very likely that a home that age is lived in by someone the builders never met.
So if a house burns down once every 3 generations, what incentive is there to build it to be more fire-resistant? These fires are bad, yes. But LA isn't burning down once a year. LA is massive and only small chunks are affected by each fire. For reference, these fires are the most destructive in history and have destroyed an estimated 12,000+ structures throughout metro LA and Riverside. Per ChatGPT, there's an estimated 3 million buildings in LA County alone with the rest of the greater metro area (San Bernadino, Orange, Riverside, and Ventura counties) have an estimated 5 million.
So while, yes, the odds of your home burning down are elevated in metro LA, they are still quite slim. Slim enough that making the initial building even more expensive is not worth it, especially not in an area that also sees a lot of earthquakes.
I am certain either through insurance requirements or simple price comparisons, homes that are getting rebuilt will be done so using modern standards. Its worth mentioning that a lot of this is not so much a concrete vs wood discussion. You can absolutely build a wood framed home that is fire resistant.
It's definitely not protruding in my home... and it's all conduit in the walls.
Most useful was from my attic (not livable space) up in the trusses to my basement utility room. When I convinced a local WISP to use my roof for a back haul and access for the neighborhood it saved them (and me) from running wires all over the outside of my house and was a quick, clean install.
Conduit is common in commercial work here, but almost never in residential.
TIL about Class A wood. It is as fire resistant as concrete, apparently.
The biggest predictor about what burned: Age
> The architect says that he’s done hundreds of renovations in Southern California to make houses fire-resistant. Driving along a stretch of beach in Malibu this week, Dawson says that he counted five houses left standing; three were his projects. “I haven’t had any house burn that’s been brought up to the latest standard.”
> The orientation and exterior materials, including a metal roof and metal eaves, prevented a fire from sparking inside the roof, which is the way most homes burn down.
We know where fires come from, and under what conditions they spread rapidly in LA - because the santa ana winds blow generally the same direction. You can design neighborhoods and houses to survive that.
We also built right up into the hills, surrounding them with natural vegetation. Pretty, but basically a tinder box.
Being in the same category of a rating system does not mean it truly is as fire resistant as concrete. In Europe it would most likely not be classified as A1:
> An A1-Rated material is defined as a material that does not contribute to fire at any stage, including a fully developed fire.
The rating from the US is a bit more vague on the class A wood:
> Class A is the most desirable category for fire-rated plywood as it indicates a flame spread index of 25 or less.
"or less" isn't zero.
That's all I'm trying to say.
Concrete that can withstand M7-8 is a lot more expensive, mostly limited to commercial buildings. There’s plenty of brick homes in the rest of the country.
Contrary to common American percepctions, there are other places in the world with Earthquakes.
How about you take your stereotypes and go have a nice burger at McDonald's?
Reinforced concrete is used most of time only for the structure.
The walls themselve are masonry.
Commercial style construction with steel beams and reinforced concrete is extremely expensive, and not very warm/classic looking. It is used in a tiny fraction of extremely high end custom homes for wealthy people that like modern and brutalist style homes.