Hey everyone! Dana here.
I’m not a builder, neither of my parents are especially handy...you know, fixing broken
stuff around the house.
We didn’t talk about construction materials at home when I was growing up.
I had never really considered what the apartments or houses that I lived in in America were
made of.
As long as they didn’t contain asbestos and were signed off by the relevant authorities
as being safe to live in I didn’t really ever give the construction of those buildings
much thought.
That is, until, I moved to Germany.
On my very first meeting of a bunch of Mr. German Man’s friends -- this was back when
I still lived in Prague, and I met his friends here in Germany -- one of his friends asked
me about this topic.
Why are American houses made of wood?
The tornadoes and hurricanes tear them apart.
It’s a bad house design.
Why does America do it that way?
I just stared at him blankly with no idea what in the world to answer.
To be honest, I kind of thought maybe he was joking.
But when I chuckled he didn’t chuckle back.
He was totally serious.
He really an answer to his question from me right in that moment.
And of course I had no answer for him, and so the evening moved on, and I quickly forgot
about his question, never really ever expecting to be asked about building materials ever again.
I thought that had simply been something on his mind because he in particular was especially
interested in construction materials in America.
But then I moved to Germany, and to my utter surprise, I found myself getting questioned
by different people about the wood structures in America over and over again.
The first few times that I got asked the question my answer was like: because they just are.
But the more I got asked about it, the more that I thought about it, and the more I started
to question it myself.
Yeah, why are houses in America made of wood?
Wood rots and wood can be eaten by termites and wood doesn’t do so well in a flood and
can be ripped apart by tornadoes.
Why aren't they built with concrete and stone bricks like they are in Germany.
So I did a little search online and quickly realized that actually, the answer is not
so far off from my initial response of: because they just are, I guess.
As far as I could find, houses are made of wood in America because...
There’s a lot of wood in America.
Especially when the Europeans first settled there, with huge forests all around,
wood was simply one of the most abundant and easily accessed resources.
So it just kind of make sense that they would start making houses with it.
And once you start doing something one way, sometimes you just kind of get stuck
doing it that way.
Wood was there, so the builders made houses out of wood.
And they in turn then taught the next generation of builders how to make houses with wood,
who taught the next generation about wood, and so on and so on and so on.
And importantly, Americans also learned to like the way that wood houses look.
Whereas in Europe, techniques in masonry developed.
So that's all that I know about why wood in America, but one assumption that I often hear tied in with
the question about wood homes in the U.S. is that if America would make homes out
of stone like people in Germany do, then tornadoes wouldn’t destroy them.
So I end up often getting the question: why don't Americans build concrete or brick homes
to protect themselves from tornadoes?
And what I could find on that is that to actually make a tornado-proof house, just
making the building out of stone, concrete, bricks...literally taking a building out of concrete
in the middle of Munich and sticking that in Tornado Alley, in the path of a really
strong tornado, that would not be enough.
That would not do the trick. That's not a tornado-proof house.
Because tornadoes don’t just produce really strong winds, they produce really strong winds
and with those winds they whip up huge objects like cars and trucks and buses and they hurl
them through the air.
So the tornado-proof houses would need to be built not just to withstand strong winds,
but also to withstand a bus coming at it at 200 miles per hour, which is about
320 kilometers per hour.
So, yeah, just making the homes out of concrete or stone would not actually make them tornado-proof.
You would need a special design and special materials, windows, doors that could take a bus coming
at them at 320 or more kilometers per hour.
And that could withstand the pressure that comes with those swirling winds.
And if you want to do that for all the homes in Tornado Alley, that would be a huge undertaking
and cost because Tornado Alley is really, really big.
Like way bigger than all of Germany big.
And as people wrote in the comments of my video on hurricanes and tornadoes in the U.S.,
Tornado Alley is so big, such a big area, that it's possible to live there for many
years and never actually see a tornado.
So my question for you is: Do you have any ideas or any more insight into this topic?
And if you could have your house built out of any material in the world, what material
would you want it made of?
Please let me know in the comments below!
Thanks so much for watching and liking and commenting and subscribing to my YouTube channel.
I really hope that you enjoyed this video, and I also hope that you will enjoy the bloopers
that are coming up next. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
And they in turn then taught the next generation how to make build with houses.
Build wood with houses. How to make build with houses. Ding dong.
Bllll.
It's so cold in here. It's snowy outside. I see the snow.