Comment on Americans are asleep, post European windows
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 9 months agoIt’s preferred because it’s cheap.
Nobody wants to pay a stone mason to put brick on the exterior of their homes. They used timber for a long time, but now all the new houses I’ve seen use the metal studs, which sounds great on paper until you realize it’s basically sheet metal stamped into a U kind of shape that’s the same size as a 2x4. It’s enough to hold up the drywall and maybe some pictures/paintings on the wall plus the occasional wall-mounted TV, but give it a couple hundred pounds of weight and it’s going to crumple into itself like aluminum foil.
Honestly, most of the strength in the wall is now because of the drywall. The “studs” just keep them from falling over.
Not saying timber was all that much better, but it could at least support someone standing on the top plate of a wall without folding in on itself.
Can I get my house built from concrete board instead?
peopleproblems@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I wish I could have a stone masonry building. My friend’s family used to own a hotel built by a stone mason. He invited us out to watch the company who bought it try to demolish it. Apparently they weren’t expecting proper brick and mortar to be so strong.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Yep, and a lot of modern brickwork isn’t designed to be structural, so many of the components used are basically poor substitutes for the “real deal” so to speak.
Stonework can be the strongest part of the building, or just little more than a facade.
In a nearby town, the second story brickwork of a building came off of the structure and fell into the sidewalk and road. I don’t believe anyone was hurt, but the point is, sometimes, the brickwork is little more than just a wall. Other times, it’s basically keeping the building upright. In that case, the building didn’t go anywhere after losing the brickwork.
I’m sure in your example, the brickwork was providing the primary support structure for the building, and it was built far better than what fell off of the building in my example.