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Should we let Americans into a little secret?


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If a wooden house collapses

 

1.it will inflict less damage

2.it can be rebuilt rapidly

3.wood is renewable,bricks are not

 

I think the people in the USA are quite aware of different building materials and techniques without the intervention of an amateur from Sheffield with little engineering knowledge.

Really? A lot of Americans put their trust in 'God'. That speaks volumes to me, and suggests that they really would benefit from advice on just about everything else too! :)
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As a kid I grew up on council estates in England. When they were building the new part of Parson Cross us kids used to play on the building sites on summer evenings after the worlkmen had gone home for the day.

I remember well how the houses were built back then. The outer walls were two bricks wide with a space in the middle and constucted in trenches that had been filled with concrete about half way up. The inner wall which divided the rooms were of single brick construction. There was generally a fireplace in the living room and a fireplace up in one of the bedrooms.

Those houses were as cold as a well diggers ass in winter, the damp seemed to seep through the brick walls and the only way to keep warm was to huddle around the fireplace or an electrical heater.

They would withstand any gale of course except for a lot of roof tiles being blow off and a few glass windows blown in but in any quake they would come tumblinhg down or at least suffer significant damage.

 

Now the houses constructed in my part of the world are all wood framed, built on a concrete slab. The outer wall frames are covered with tar paper then mesh like chicken wire attached to the tar paper. This is done in order to secure the final coat of stucco which is plastered on very thick. On the inside insulation padding is secured to the wooden uprights and cross sections after the electrical wiring and outlets have been installed. Finally dry wall is nailed to the wood framing.

 

The inside dividing walls are done the same way, insulation padding installed both side of the wood framing then dry walling nailed to both sides. The attic, after air conditoing and heating duct has been installed is then insulated also. The windows are double glazed polymer and the roofs of red Spanish tile

 

This might seem flimsy construction by comaprison to brick structure but it's not. Very practical for California. Well insulated from cold weather (they get quite a lot of snow in the High Deserts and up in the mountains) and able to withstand most quakes short of an 8.0 killer

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Japan has more quakes and thousands of high rise apartment blocks are built from brick.

It's required by law that these buildings are quake proof and are built to move during them.

 

They must have special reinforcing of some sort. I've never seen a high rise done in brick.

 

When a quake strikes they tell you never to run outdoors, especially if you're in a building with brick walls. In a house you stand under the door frame or in a place such as an office, get under a desk

 

In any case if a monster quake of around 8.0 on the Richter Scale were to hit southern California with an epicenter in the LA area a lot of stuff would come down no matter how quake proofed or retrofitted against quakes it was.

 

There was a lot of damage done in the big quake in Kobe, Japan several years ago. Big quakes are just plain terribly destructive

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