American modern, single family home building standards are a total joke compared to much of Europe and Japan / SK.
Almost all new homes are made of (dehydrated) wood, dry wall and fiberglass insulation, not brick, not concrete, not masonry.
Any brick, or masonry you see is very likely to just be a superficial thin veneer, concrete is basically only used in foundations, and that’s becoming less substantial and more rare as well.
Its also become very common for just plastic (polyurethane, vinyl) to be used in flooring, external siding, and roofing.
The only exceptions to this, for single family homes, are basically from before the 1960s, and most of these are basically falling apart as the cost of maintenance is unaffordable to most people living in them, with the exception of some basically wealthy ‘old money’ neighborhoods in certain areas.
When I was working construction, we had to put so many doodads onto buildings made of plastic or shitty plaster to look like brick/stone/whatever. And it was all cheap garbage, but the bourgeois owners wanted it on their buildings.
I have a story about these horrifying $50,000 plaster columns this trophy wife wanted that didn’t actually support anything and didn’t match the rest of the house. But hey, it’s your money. Don’t listen to your architect or the stone masons you hired who all recommended doing it for less money using matching hand-cut stone. They also insisted on ordering this expensive ass fireplace mantle made of shitty material instead of letting the carpenter or mason do a custom, more personal piece.
There was so much shit going on with that house and it had over $1 million budget pre-recession. I imagine there’s even more in LA.
I thought Home building standards in Japan are also, just seen on a technical level, fairly bad because it’s common to just bulldoze and rebuild? Excluding something like earth quake resistance
Live trees have lots of water.
American modern, single family home building standards are a total joke compared to much of Europe and Japan / SK.
Almost all new homes are made of (dehydrated) wood, dry wall and fiberglass insulation, not brick, not concrete, not masonry.
Any brick, or masonry you see is very likely to just be a superficial thin veneer, concrete is basically only used in foundations, and that’s becoming less substantial and more rare as well.
Its also become very common for just plastic (polyurethane, vinyl) to be used in flooring, external siding, and roofing.
The only exceptions to this, for single family homes, are basically from before the 1960s, and most of these are basically falling apart as the cost of maintenance is unaffordable to most people living in them, with the exception of some basically wealthy ‘old money’ neighborhoods in certain areas.
When I was working construction, we had to put so many doodads onto buildings made of plastic or shitty plaster to look like brick/stone/whatever. And it was all cheap garbage, but the bourgeois owners wanted it on their buildings.
I have a story about these horrifying $50,000 plaster columns this trophy wife wanted that didn’t actually support anything and didn’t match the rest of the house. But hey, it’s your money. Don’t listen to your architect or the stone masons you hired who all recommended doing it for less money using matching hand-cut stone. They also insisted on ordering this expensive ass fireplace mantle made of shitty material instead of letting the carpenter or mason do a custom, more personal piece.
There was so much shit going on with that house and it had over $1 million budget pre-recession. I imagine there’s even more in LA.
I thought Home building standards in Japan are also, just seen on a technical level, fairly bad because it’s common to just bulldoze and rebuild? Excluding something like earth quake resistance
The government passed the Long Life Housing act in 2009 to try to change that.
Building codes in Cali are different due to earthquakes, and wood becomes a much more tenable option for many.