surely you could choose to put in full walls, sheetrock or plaster or whatever, but you could also build enclosed runs under the floor and in a corner here and there. Pipes and electric don’t have to take up much room, and you could do most of that work from underneath.
“There are log cabins over 100 years old out there doing fine. IIRC many old building and temples in Japan are built out of wood with no nails, and they are still standing.”
There’s also a bunch of stave churches in Scandinavia built entirely out of wood, some of which date from the 12th century. eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgund_Stave_Church
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Are we all going to ignore the wood swelling issues that are going to crop up?
I feel like the humidity bits that are going to cause air sealing gaps are all being ignored. Less of an issue in the south of France along the Mediterranean but certainly an issue in Maine. You need to bring in lumber for furniture for at least two weeks before doing anything to it, wood exterior walls seem problematic.
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Exactly. So really there are two cavities between the interior and exterior wall, the one shown here that contains the insulation, and another that has the wires, pipes, etc.
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Yes, but doesn’t the brick-like construction process make that harder? I think with framed houses having all the electrical and plumbing done before the walls go on makes that whole process easier. Not saying it couldn’t be done in some clever pre-fab way, just that a framed house makes that easier.
@PatRx2: video says 15 days, no? And yes, I think that a framed house of the same size could be put up in the same time pretty easily. What usually takes a long time is the electrical and plumbing that happens between the framing and adding the walls. I don’t see anything in the video that makes the plumbing and electrical any easier, except that it might be omitted.
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There are log cabins over 300 years old all over the Alps. I regularly stayed in one that was built in the 18th century pre French-Revolution. Also the wood doesn’t need any treatment, has never been treated!
The roof is the biggest issue. These days it’s corrugated iron sheets. They are lowered down pre-fab from a helicopter–a sight to behold.
It is now more or less standard to build 0 energy houses in Germany. Most of these houses actually produce energy. I have a number of friends and family who live in such a house in Freiburg and Bavaria, both areas with bitter cold winters. All of these houses are made out of wood, cost no more (or are even cheaper) than traditional brick houses. Many European countries support i.e. subsidise sustainable construction methods and this seems such a project.
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True, similar thicknesses yield similar R values. Just doesn’t seem worth it to use this Brikawood system that costs 10x as much as 8" fully grouted masonry walls. Not to mention the lack of air ducting, electrical, and plumbing in the walls. And if you do get a pipe burst in the wall, how do you repair this? Brikawood is a boutique pet project.
Rammed earth construction is another similar style of building that incurs the same problems. Beautiful and expensive.
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There is a lot of really old houses made of wood in France, even in more northern regions.
Chalets in the French Alps and Half-timbered houses in Alsace are some examples.
Absolutely. And this prime, aged lumber was something that was ideal when technologies hadn’t advanced. In fact, given the age of that lumber by now it’s going to be better than a lot of materials. My mother in law’s house is about two hundred years old, her hardwood floor planks are about 18" wide, they’re amazing.
But we’re out of aged wood forests. Now we’re cutting newer lumber forests before they can get even 12" in diameter. Add the fact that we build things entirely differently these days and work harder to keep the interior envelope sealed when even a hundred years ago houses were designed to breathe and you have to realize that the conversation has changed.
We heated houses back then with fireplaces and furnaces that burned coal or oil all day long. Fireplaces burned easily obtainable wood, furnaces had oil tanks or coal chutes that let you run at a fairly high temperature. Many, many apartments in Manhattan still operate this way, with individuals having control over their temperature via opening the windows in the winter. But we’re getting smarter about this. Burning less oil, keeping that heat in. Using gas or electric heat pumps and thermostats that are programmed to come on an hour before the owners arrive home from work.
We turn systems on and off now and save energy. We keep heat (or cooling) inside the envelope and strive to air seal in order to do so. My home energy costs were slashed in half after I air sealed the house and it’s 95 years old. Systems, technologies, and philosophies have changed regarding what we can do and how we should do it. Air sealing is a major factor in home construction that shouldn’t be glossed over.
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Same deal in English. I’ve always heard an electrical outlet overloaded with plugs (like, eight shoved into adapters shoved into an outlet) referred to pejoratively as an octopus.
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No studs, just drywall on strapping. Think of it as a cinderblock building, only built with wood instead of concrete blocks. You run as much of the services as you can get away with on interior walls, where you can’t avoid it you stick them between the drywall and the exterior block. Brick or cinderblock makes for crappy insulation, wood is much better per inch than brick and the wooden blocks have big hollow spaces for filling with cellulose, so you get the super high r-rating you want for a passive house.
Judging by the amount of time construction projects take here in Toronto, the house in the video is very competitive time wise – 15 days from bare foundation to a complete, insulated, and sided exterior shell with finished roof (needing only varnish/paint and door/window installation) is pretty good.
ETA: Definitely an exterior varnish, not paint. show me someone who wants to paint the outside of one of these houses and I’ll show you someone without a soul.
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What happens when a good strong wind tries to lift off that roof?
Ah, I dunno man - I use glue and screw and I feel pretty worn out.
ducks tomatoes
Eeeeh, whaddya you know from comedy. That stuff kills, kills I tell ya! ;D
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Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!
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My mistake. The walls were up fully in 5 days. Either the roof took an unconscionably long time to make (which would surprise me - preformed trusses should make that job as easy as standard construction), or they just took their final shot 15 days later. The way the trusses were going up, I’d be surprised if the roof framing took more than 1-2 days.
Not similar - quite a bit better for wood. Most wood isn’t at similar thickness to brick when it yields similar R values.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, don’t you think? Duct work in a bungalow isn’t necessarily going to be in the walls: a sous-sol plenum is both simpler and more efficient. The only duct work is going to be the chimney (assuming a furnace rather than electrical heating).
Piping and wiring? Bring it up from a sous-sol entry, add breaks in the interior wall similar to the kinds of breaks they use for doors, windows, etc. (but much narrower). Cover it with a removable panel, and you have something more accessible than you get in standard construction. Not that difficult to do. Failing that, them up through shallow pilasters on the inner wall. Evidently the kit allows for services. It wouldn’t surprise me if that allowance takes one of these two forms.
The company quotes construction costs of ≤ €1,000/m2. For 120 m2, that comes to about $128,400 at worst case (at 1€ = 1.07$). Average American construction costs come in at approx. $150/ft2 (How Much Does it Cost to Build a House?). 120 m2 equals about 1,290 ft2, which comes to about $193,500. The company claims the usual cost of standard wood frame construction is €1,600/m2, which comes to $192,000 for this floor area, so we’re passing the sanity check so far. (Average French costs don’t appear to be much different from average American costs, which doesn’t surprise me.)
Now, are you going to tell me that grouted brickwork construction is cheaper than wood frame construction? By more than 10 times (if this wood brick construction is 10 times more expensive than grouted brickwork)?
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I’m not a fan of wood shavings as insulation. Our house in Winnipeg where the winters are pretty cold was built in the 40s and had wood shavings. We did a lot of renovation on it, and when we opened up the walls - the wood shavings had settled down to the bottom 3rd of the wall. We replaced it all with fibre glass, which also doesn’t burn like wood shavings do.
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As I said, suitable for the French climate, which gets nowhere near as cold as Winnipeg (or Ottawa, for that matter). Fibreglass or blown foam would probably work fairly well with this setup, however.
No it’s not, unless they’ve done some special prep on it. It’s ok, but if the alternative is to build out of, say, an actual insulation system, there’s no contest (and in comparison with SIPs, no contest in terms of speed of construction either).
Yes, correct, but let’s quantify things a bit, shall we?
R values for common building materials are listed here. Wood isn’t listed, but this page says softwood (like what these wood bricks and all common construction lumber are made from) averages 1.4 per inch. Right off the bat, and pace @heng, we see that that’s as good or better than just about any common construction material that isn’t actual insulation.
Note that stone, brick, and concrete are all really crappy insulators, around 0.2 per inch for brick and cinderblock, (values in the table are not all per inch so you have to divide). Also note the huge difference between an insulated wall studded with metal studs vs an identical insulated wall studded with wood. Metal conducts heat really really well, which is why you don’t want to use metal studs on exterior walls.
Cellulose isn’t listed, but this page says 3.5 per inch for loose fill which looks like what they’re pouring into the wall cavities in the video. So if those are 10 inch thick walls in the video, they’re made up of solid wood cross pieces at around r-14, plus insulation filled cavities at around r-30 (r28 for the fill plus some for the inner and outer wood). Bump those numbers up if the walls are closer to 12 inches thick.
I suspect a major factor in their calling these houses passive is the way their walls are made up of tight fitting interlocked pieces, so you have essentially no air leaks in the wall.
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hey you might want to kill the identifying info from that post…
ETA: @thomasaquinas you didn’t have to axe the whole post just the email address, etc.
