why are most suburban houses in the US built with wood, instead of bricks and mortar?
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Europe harvested most of their wild grown wood over a century ago while North American was still mostly untouched. It was cheaper to use wood in the Us.
Cost is a big factor. Brick and masons are much more expensive than wood frame for houses. We use brick and cement block for commercial buildings. We use cement block for durability and rot resistance in some Southern and Western places. But overall, it is quicker and cheaper to do wood frame.
You’re actually hiding a couple of questions in here. The US specifically tends towards wood framed houses, while much of Europe tends towards masonry houses, with brick in particular more well represented than US practice. But there are also steel framed houses and concrete masonry houses.
* Why does the US do framed houses instead of masonry houses?
Frame building is faster and cheaper than masonry. It doesn’t have the extreme longevity that masonry can at the high end, but it’s easily past the expected useful life of the home. It’s also somewhat easier to gut and renovate, which also plays into the US housing market.
* When the US does build masonry houses in modern suburbia, why do they use concrete instead of brick?
Where the US does build masonry houses, it tends to do so via concrete blocks or ICF. There is a reason for that. The areas where this kind of building happens in the US tend to be places that deal with significant risk of hurricanes and tornadoes. While it is possible build equivalent resilience for those risks into modern brick masonry, it is significantly more expensive than equivalent concrete masonry structures.
Much of Europe uses concrete like this as well, though brick is better represented than in the US.
* Why does the US build frame houses with wood instead of steel framing?
Wood is relatively cheaper in the US market than elsewhere, and good enough for most single family residential purposes. That, combined with a lack of regulatory incentive, has meant a limited incentive for steel framing to supplant wood (as it has done, for example, in China). Steel framing also imposes certain architectural constraints on the house layout that run counter to US suburban sprawl: to oversimplify significantly, it incentivizes building up, not out. I don’t personally think that’s a bad thing, but high-end suburban housing in the US almost always elects for a larger footprint over adding a more than 2 floors.
Edit: I had conflated brick being more common in Europe than the US with brick being the most common in Europe. That is not correct. Clarified. Thanks u/Hamsparrow
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is how fast the US population expanded during it’s entire history. For example The UK doubled its population between 1850 and 1910, 18 to 32 million.
The US in the same time frame quadrupled its population, 23 to 92 million. That requires a lot of fast and inexpensive homes. Also home being built in new locations without skilled masons and other craftsmen available. A wood frame house really only needed nails a general idea and wood.
That culture and acceptance of wood frames has continued. Especially with how much more affordable houses are here compared to Europe.
So we can look richer than we are. On the flip side why don’t people in poorer countries build with wood. I am being halfway facetious, I know the history and arguments for wood here.
I live in a forest. My house (I think mostly 1760) is built of stone. How does that work then?
Cheaper, more convenient to DIY and to make DIY modifications to, cheaper, less damaging to self and surroundings in severely inclement weather and other natural disasters that the most obvious point of comparison (Europe) simply doesn’t have, and it’s cheaper
Wood framed houses also allow for more movement, especially when the soil beneath contracts/expands due to weather variations. They are also much cheaper to construct and more easy to modify.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wooden framed houses are also less likely to suffer structural defects due to the lightweight design and increased allowance for movement
A few reasons (from a UK perspective at least)…
Timber is quicker to construct, and takes less skilled workers – a house will be designed and the wall panels built in a factory, then shipped out to site on the back of a truck and assembled in place. This allows the trickiest parts to be measured, laid out and made on a big table in a factory, with all of the equipment and tooling they need in a clean, dry and stable environment, and the job outdoors on site becomes a lot quicker and easier.
Even if it is site built, it requires a lot less manual handling as all of the individual components are lighter weight. A 2m long timber beam can be lifted by a few workers, a 2m long concrete beam needs mechanical help.
Timber also allows for more options with regards to construction. Things like large windows and narrow columns are more problematic to design in masonry (which is rigid and inflexible, so needs additional help from steel elements and similar) but relatively easy in timber (where you can fairly easily design narrow panels to support significant wind loads, and larger openings are pretty simple).
Timber is also easier to insulate, as you can fit insulation between the studs (rather than building a masonry structure, then framing out the inside in timber to fit insulation and services). Great for more efficient homes.
Because brick and mortar houses made after the 1930s all use 100% Portland cement and are a giant ass-pain because they fall apart much more readily than their lime-cement mixture predecessors. Portland cement dries quicker and doesn’t require as much skill.
Source: live in a brick (facade) house built in the 1970s and have to repoint everything.
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