this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
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America, where houses are built out of wood and there's no such thing as insulation.
Wait what? Wooden houses are great! With insulation, of course
I remember being a kid and watching a few films where people fall over and put holes in the walls; I was so confused. I didn’t understand how people could put holes in bricks using their arms and legs.
thats just drywall. its shit but a lot of cheap builds use it.
Wait... What do you use to cover your (non stone) walls??? Is there some sort of beadboard or shiplap supremacy group I've never heard of?
yeah every place I lived in in Europe had brick walls for every wall
sheetrock with plaster on top
God I fucking hate plaster. Granted, my house uses oldish-fashioned metal lath and plaster, but it's such a ball ache. I wish it had been built with just drywall so I could use stud finders and shitty drywall anchors. Instead it's all fuckass toggle bolts and "use this giant magnet to find the stupid screw that attaches the stupid lath to the stupid stud." Ugh.
I have a relative that had these, he recently upgraded to drywall so he could easily make modifications.
sheetrock is literally a brand of drywall
Why would you have non stone walls?
Because there are earthquakes where I live literally all the time.
Interesting, I do live on a fault line (eger graben) and while the earthquakes are frequently here they are barely noticeable, they just sound like a loud car. Are the earthquakes wearing down the stone where you live, and what do you use for walls instead that can withstand bigger earthquakes?
Instead of building out of wood they should come up with a material made from carbon extracted from the air through an organic process.
Wouldn't the world be better off if we used building materials that were carbon negative?
There's parts of the country where it doesn't regularly get cold enough for insulation to really matter.
That said, my house in the Chicago suburbs is over 140 years old and was definitely never insulated underneath. By the feel of the walls in the winter any insulation that was in there has probably all collapsed as well.
Insulation in the floor is really much less important than walls/roof. Heat rises so if you wanna trap heat the ceiling is most important. And in the summer the basement is usually the coolest part of the house. Basically only matters if the floors being cold to the touch bothers you in the winter, and a very modest energy savings (likely never will recover the install cost).
Mine is a pretty backwards situation lol.
The crawlspace under my uninsulated floor will get cold enough a few times in the winter that we've had to install heat tapes to keep pipes from freezing. I put a wireless thermometer down there and it'll average temps in the mid-upper 30's January and February. No one walks barefoot in the winter because it makes your feet hurt lol.
As for the heat, being such an old house we have hot water baseboard heat. We finally figured out that we think they have it pumping the wrong direction, because the hottest water off the boiler heats the second floor before coming down to heat the first. This means I set the heat in the winter to 64 (one thermostat in the center of the first floor) and the second floor will be 78 in the bedrooms and the first floor will be 63-64. If we try to heat the first floor beyond that we have to open windows on the second floor to exist up there. And yes, this is with blocking the stairwell to reduce heat that rises through there. I'm also assuming there's not much attic insulation either because snow really doesn't stick to the roof. I'd check the attic, but there's currently no access and we'd have to decide which ceiling to cut a hole in for greatest convenience.
Some day with enough money it'll get fixed, but for now the focus is just keeping the bills paid.
But... Insulation also insulates in summer against heat?
Yes. I live in a hot area of the US. Walls and ceiling need insulation so you can keep the house cool. Usually by Air conditioner. Attics a lot of time are under insulated so cause a the AC unit to work harder to keep it cool. Attics are not livable or a good place to store stuff. Where I live most houses are built on concrete slabbing so you don't have a crawl space under your house.
Nowadays cold isn't as big of a problem as heat, which needs insulation too
Wooden beams for the floors is even common in houses made of bricks though. I live in the Netherlands and brick houses that have been standing for hundreds of years have wooden floors and the foundation is even standing on wooden piles. Wood isn’t as shit of a building material as you think it is. There are even modern apartments in freezing Northern Europe that are made with cross laminated timber. https://www.dezeen.com/2015/09/23/puukuokka-oopeaa-tallest-wooden-apartment-block-finland-wins-finlandia-prize-for-architecture-2015/
The problem in American buildings isn’t that they are made of wood it’s that they do it cheaply. Stick framing is the most common way to build a house in the US. You can build a very solid house out of wood if you opt for timber framing. Like in Japan there are wooden temples that have been standing for more than a thousand years.
How are you in my house!
What is your house made of, if not wood?
Brick, cement.
Well known for their insulative properties.
Yes, the bricks have holes in them, after building they are filled with air, which insulates. And often for the outer shell 2 walls are built with an "air" wall in between which used to be just air but now is filled with insulation materials.
There are many parts of the world where insulation is not a concern at all when building.
Sure but they didn't make reply to a comment thread specifically about insulation...
Even a brick house has wood in the walls, roof, and joists.
There is the old, classic cinder block home, as laid out in a vintage Popular Mechanics publication. You can find it on the Internet Archive & the other archive.
Slabs are generally not great, for repairs. I prefer a basement, but you do you.
No, no it doesn't. Or at at it doesn't have to. Wood is definitely not standard building material in all countries.
My familiarity is only via YouTube, wherein handy, woodworker types in Norway, England, and such fix their own houses. Did watch a guy use a steel I beam to fix his upstairs floor sag in a 200? year old house.
Can't speak for England, but Norway does use quite a bit of wood in construction. It really depends on the country and their habits.
Very US-centric view
No, it doesn't. Roof? Sometimes. Anywhere else? No.
Wooden walls? Like a fucking tree house XD
Wow, you sure are confidently incorrect. There’s paneling, wainscoting, and shiplap to name a few appliqués. Some people even build false walls to install pipes, cables, or extra insulation. It also helps with hanging things like TV’s or family photos. Not like a fucking tree house XD. Additionally, some old brick buildings you can’t modify due to historic building codes so the only way to “modify” the structure is to build around it.
Yeah, people even have furniture made out of wood! Incredible.
Not really what people mean when they talk about what a house is made of. Otherwise you'll have to add in a bunch of plastic and textiles as well.
Any chance to dig in on America.
What's wrong with wood? Please excuse my ignorance
Nothing much, really. It's just that in Europe we build houses out of concrete, which is better. Especially if You consider environmental hazards, which the states have more of, than we do.
I'm sure other oppressed populations suffer similar conditions.