Ok, since I moved to the US from Europe a few years ago my perception of wood has changed a lot, especially for construction. Seeing this reinforces my view.

Wood lasts for fucking ever under the proper conditions. Old construction in Europe often only had the beams made of wood, and I always thought that was orders of magnitude more durable than wooden houses, like thousands of years vs decades. I don’t think that’s true anymore.

And this might be one of the few environmentally friendly decisions that Americans got better than Europeans, I guess. Wood is still prevalent in construction here, and as far as I know concrete and cement production are quite bad.

BTW, I’m a total ignorant about all this so just intuition and probably wrong

▲

barbacoa 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>concrete and cement production are quite bad.

Modern concrete construction uses iron rebar liberally. That means every concrete structure built today will crack and crumble in a few hundred years at most, as the iron absorbs oxygen, it swells from the rust. Which is a shame, roman concrete buildings without rebar will still be standing 1000s of years from now.

▲

nashashmi 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How about petrified wood? Would that also crack and crumble in the long run?

▲

foxglacier an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Roman construction was also much less efficient because they had no material (besides wood) capable of carrying load in tension. Rebar allows us to make cheap practical structures that are impossible with just concrete - roman style or not.

	▲	bdamm an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It would be quite fascinating to see what kind of structure we could produce if we decided to make the longest lasting cement structures we could create with modern technology, and assuming minimal maintenance over the lifetime of the building. A one-and-done kind of structure. I bet we could do fairly well. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. We've learned a lot about how to form exceptionally long lasting cement. We just choose not to do it that way, most of the time.

▲

NoImmatureAdHom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not totally a "decision" on the part of the Americans to use a lot of wood in construction. It's just that America has tons of space, including space useful for growing Douglas Fir and Southern Yellow Pine, which then can be turned in to 2x4s and other construction lumber.

Most of Europe long ago exhausted easily accessible natural forest resources, and where it's not densely populated tends to prefer using land to do other stuff (like grow food). Hence, stone and concrete and similar materials in European construction.

	▲	bdamm an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		While some lumber production happens in the United States, most lumber is imported from Canada. That's because while the USA does have good tracts of land on which lumber is grown, Canada has much, much more. This is why you see "Made in Canada" stamped on quite a lot of plywood and plenty of timer used in residential construction. The part that I don't quite know how to make sense of is why Canadian producers seem to have a near monopoly on sandpaper products.
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]