211–220 of 277 posts
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>European standards mandate passing all wiring through corrugated tubes. Incorrect. It's usually done, because it's a good idea, but nobody says you have to.
Maybe in your country. In Italy it's illegal not to use appropriate corrugated tubes.
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Ultimately houses are built in the way that works for the region they're built in. Europe has few trees and few earthquakes (outside of Romania, Italy, etc). Masonry houses make sense. In California unreinforced masonry is illegal and trees are plentiful. Making houses out of sticks is rational even if it's unsightly. Those asphalt roofs though...
It's not the unavailability of trees. European countries have wisely decides that cities built of wooden houses are prone to massive fires. USians haven't learned that lesson and the Los Angeles fire isn't going to be the last one.
Or the dozens of structures in Italy that came crashing down, like the various bridges over the past twenty years (250 bridge collapse events in Italy between January 2000 and July 2025).
Yes us Europeans are indeed superior and we never pick the wrong building material ever.
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They're happy until the long-term effects hit them, as stick frame houses need repairs a lot more often. Nowadays, European companies have developed many modular building techniques that have reduced the labor considerably, from robots that 3D-print concrete walls, to LEGO-like hollow bricks.
> Nowadays, European companies have developed many modular building techniques It's so fun watching Europeans reinvent the Soviet approach to building that they used to mock and shit on
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Interesting comment with worthwhile content, but the writing style strongly smells of ChatGPT, and the phrase "For someone in your position" is incongruous (who is being addressed?). Did you use it, and if so, would you mind sharing the prompt?
“Terrestrial develops a robotic approach to earthen construction”. person you replied to claims to be a founder of this company, according to LinkedIn Other “tells” in the comment are the subscript “2” and the full spelling of the chemical. Also 3 emdashes
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I think it's just what you get used to. Every method has ups and downs. And different regions are going to gravitate to different materials based on availability (for example, my Indian coworkers just cannot fathom why we would ever build houses from trees instead of reinforced concrete; doesn't it rot?!!). I don't think of the walls as especially flimsy, though. Built correctly, they are totally fine. Yes you can pu…
> cannot fathom why we would ever build houses from trees instead of reinforced concrete Steel-reinforced ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) has become a much more common frame material for homes in the US, especially in the hurricane-prone southeast.
The closest major earthquake zone is in South Carolina, which had M7+ earthquakes as recently as the late 19th century.
Given how prevalent strong earthquakes are across most of the US, I always wonder if the few areas on the map without a known seismic hazard means we just haven't discovered it yet.
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“Terrestrial develops a robotic approach to earthen construction”. person you replied to claims to be a founder of this company, according to LinkedIn Other “tells” in the comment are the subscript “2” and the full spelling of the chemical. Also 3 emdashes
I use subscript 2s and emdashes. Your "tells" seem to be based on the assumption that humans will not bother to learn key combinations.
A huge share of the gypsum used in drywall is *synthetic gypsum* — a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) at coal-fired power plants. When SO₂ is scrubbed from exhaust using limestone, the reaction produces calcium sulfate dihydrate, chemically identical to mined gypsum. In the US, FGD gypsum has accounted for roughly half of all gypsum consumed by the wallboard industry at its peak. The "cheap, uniform, and f…
Interesting comment with worthwhile content, but the writing style strongly smells of ChatGPT, and the phrase "For someone in your position" is incongruous (who is being addressed?). Did you use it, and if so, would you mind sharing the prompt?
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Concrete or brick buildings are effectively illegal in much of the US because they aren’t safe. Large parts of the US are prone to earthquakes far more severe than any in Europe, a fact learned the hard way. It destroyed all of the prior masonry and brick buildings in the US so that type of construction is no longer allowed. Your choices are pretty much wood-frame or steel-frame construction. That said, plenty of ste…
Very interesting perspective, thanks. One of the other comments mentioned that in Tokyo they heavily use concrete blocks. Not sure how accurate that is but how does their approach differ to the US?
Some recent skyscrapers in severe seismic zones don't use conventional reinforced concrete. Their cores are built from welded steel plates, between which they pour concrete. It is much less labor-intensive and purportedly has excellent seismic properties.
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Eh, people have a terrible time renovating or adding anything in housing in Europe. A lot of construction doesn’t have those tubes. It’s hard to articulate how wildly different habits are in Europe vs US around things like ‘what electrical appliances I have’ partially because of this. Housing tends to be a lot smaller too, largely due to population density differences, but also overall differences in economic earning…
It's not any different from having to renovate a 40's house in the US. You'll have to redo all the plumbing and electrical system to current code. Corrugated tubes have been common since the 90s and mandatory shortly thereafter.
It absolutely is different from typical US housing, because unless you want to run surface mount everything (which most people don’t in residential), it’s an insane amount of work to run new anything.
‘40’s homes in the US, you typically just tear down to the studs, re-run new stuff, and throw up new drywall. Boom, done.
Unless you’re in a place that did block/brick etc like some of the big cities, then yeah it’s a nightmare there too.
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Nobody does it. Not even supposedly "luxury condos". And that's assuming it's really that cheap, which it isn't because to be effective, one needs to stop all sound transmission, not just for walls, but floors too, as well as interrupting the noise transmitted through the house's wooden structure. It's quite expensive.
> one needs to stop all sound transmission One does not need to stop all sound transmission.