Concrete homes more ecologically friendly than stick built?

[Skovand]

     I have wondering about work done centered around the sustainability and ecological support on concrete and steel homes verse wooden stick built home. Wood homes , even when done correctly don’t last as long as concrete and are more prone to damage by floods, winds, fires and things like trees falling on them.  A concrete home can put up to much more damage. 
   Additionally one trend we are seeing is that bigger homes are being built taking up more area of the yard. That yard is then mostly replaced with small shrubs and wildflowers to reduce tree damage. The homes are not as strong and can’t support as big or compact rooftop gardens and suffers more damage from wall gardens. 
   But a home built with concrete and steel can more easily have a flat water proofed roof that can hold plenty of mineral soil or regular soil which more forbs, woody shrubs and even extra small trees can be added too. The ground displaced by the foundation could be replaced with a rooftop garden. Trees can be planted closer to it eliminating much of the fear of it falling and damaging the hole. 
also even with strict HOAs a concrete house can have any kind of sheathing. If it’s a flat room, and your family grows, you can add another layer later on and built up higher and still replace the lost habitat. 
 

was not sure where to place this. 

[TheVat]

Concrete production is currently very carbon intensive, while growing wood (or bamboo) actually fixes carbon and then sequesters it for a long time.  As a percentage of all homes, wood structures lost to fire or flood or wind is actually quite low (and with sane zoning laws and building codes, would be even lower).  What I've heard is that the cement industry has to decarbonize massively for it to be a solution.

35 minutes ago, Skovand said:

Wood homes , even when done correctly don’t last as long as concrete

This needs more research, imo.  There are wood houses in Europe that are centuries old.  My house has held up quite well for 120 years, and looks to be good for another century.  Woods like doug fir are quite sturdy.  And in earthquake prone areas or where there is any sort of ground shifting, wood flexes.  Not a virtue we usually find in concrete.

 

[Externet]

Hi. 

If sustainability takes in account abundance of the trees or the quarries to define as building materials,  trees have a shorter 'life' as a dwelling than stone/concrete.   For the ecological part,  deforestation can recover in about a century, quarries scars on mountains will not recover vegetation in a single century.

Against earthquakes, wood is flexible; concrete is not.  Against insects, concrete does not notice them.  Against floods, concrete wins.  Against wind, concrete wins.  Against fire, concrete wins by far.  Thermally, wood wins by far.  For each risk in the surrounding environment, there will be a better choice.   For cost of heating and cooling, wood wins.

What is wrong is using the same standarized construction methods for all the areas of a country without considering availability of materials against natural disasters for that zone...

Have lived half my life in first class concrete dwellings overseas and half on wooden + drywall (US style).   Felt safer on concrete, deterioration near zero in decades, felt the wood ones easily repairable / modifiable.  The thermal part being the most different, depending much on the particular climate as concrete ones appear less efficiently insulable.

About cost of materials, cement takes a lot of fossil fuels to manufacture and wood destroys forests, labor intensive to convert trees to houses. 

Personal skills are important to consider.  Many prefer mixing cement or nailing wood when it is time to alter or repair.  I would stick to concrete with thermal insulation.

[Skovand]

In America almost all concrete homes homes come with styrofoam built inside of it that stays there for as long as the house is standing. They are known for being far cheaper to heat and cool as well. Sure, forests can come back, but the biodiversity in a forest is far higher than where most quarries seem to be in America. Nothing can take in accountability for everything and everywhere. But when you look at 5,000 acres for a single large subdivision and it’s all wood homes that can’t handle roof gardens and insurance makes having trees nearby unaffordable and you realize that all of that displaced land could be on the rooftops of concrete homes surrounded by native trees, versus almost no trees and just some landscaping speckling the parameters it just seems that the concrete homes would ultimately result in dozens of times more biodiversity and biomass. I’m 35 and have lived all over and have never experienced a single earthquake but I’ve had snow cave in old roofs, trees smash walls , floods take out entire bottom floors and hurricanes and tornados take out entire subdivisions almost. Wooden houses almost never make it past a century without most of it being gutted and fixed. Concrete homes will go far past a century. 
 

I live in south Alabama. There are a few concrete homes down here. A few right along the beach. They have withstood every hurricane while some of the ones around them that are wood have been rebuilt 3 times. 

[Phi for All]

The dome homes are very interesting. A reusable air bladder makes the shape, then reinforcing rebar and cables are placed over the bladder and concrete is sprayed over it all. When dry, the bladder is removed:

They go up incredibly quickly and don't cost much. I wonder if the lack of corners is a good thing or not, since wood shifting relieves stress in framed buildings, but also creates a lot of cracks in drywall and some flooring.

[zapatos]

6 hours ago, Skovand said:

Wood homes , even when done correctly don’t last as long as concrete and are more prone to damage by floods, winds, fires and things like trees falling on them.

Can you please provide some citations to support your assertions? Wood homes don't typically have the wood exposed to the elements and periodic maintenance keeps the walls and roof quite functional. What exactly is the duration difference of concrete vs wood framing?

6 hours ago, Skovand said:

The homes are not as strong and can’t support as big or compact rooftop gardens

Are rooftop gardens necessary in some way when building a home? What are the maintenance needs of rooftop gardens? What is the cost associated with building in this additional green space?

6 hours ago, Skovand said:

If it’s a flat room, and your family grows, you can add another layer later on and built up higher and still replace the lost habitat. 

If you want to add another floor to a concrete building then the rest of the building must have been engineered with this potential in mind when you first designed the building. You can do exactly the same thing with a wood frame house.

4 hours ago, Skovand said:

In America almost all concrete homes homes come with styrofoam built inside of it that stays there for as long as the house is standing. They are known for being far cheaper to heat and cool as well.

Can you please provide a citation? Concrete transfers heat easier than wood, and you can achieve the same R-value in any building with insulation. I had a brick home and in the summer we would turn the hose on the side of the house to cool it off inside. It was like a brick oven.

4 hours ago, Skovand said:

But when you look at 5,000 acres for a single large subdivision

How many of these exist? The median subdivision size in the US is 25 acres.

4 hours ago, Skovand said:

insurance makes having trees nearby unaffordable

Citation please.

 

4 hours ago, Skovand said:

Concrete homes will go far past a century. 

As will wood homes.

Edited December 27, 2024 by zapatos

[Skovand]

Sddsddssss

Edited December 27, 2024 by Skovand

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, Skovand said:

     I have wondering about work done centered around the sustainability and ecological support on concrete and steel homes verse wooden stick built home. Wood homes , even when done correctly don’t last as long as concrete and are more prone to damage by floods, winds, fires and things like trees falling on them.  A concrete home can put up to much more damage. 
   Additionally one trend we are seeing is that bigger homes are being built taking up more area of the yard. That yard is then mostly replaced with small shrubs and wildflowers to reduce tree damage. The homes are not as strong and can’t support as big or compact rooftop gardens and suffers more damage from wall gardens. 
   But a home built with concrete and steel can more easily have a flat water proofed roof that can hold plenty of mineral soil or regular soil which more forbs, woody shrubs and even extra small trees can be added too. The ground displaced by the foundation could be replaced with a rooftop garden. Trees can be planted closer to it eliminating much of the fear of it falling and damaging the hole. 
also even with strict HOAs a concrete house can have any kind of sheathing. If it’s a flat room, and your family grows, you can add another layer later on and built up higher and still replace the lost habitat. 
 

was not sure where to place this. 

I lived in a prefab concrete home, it wasn't very friendly to my ecology.

[Ariodos]

concrete and steel structures can offer more opportunities for landscaping and adaptation. But if you look deeper, you should also consider the environmental costs of producing these materials. 

[studiot]

Have you heard of the 3 point Cradle to Cradle Philosophy ?

 

Quote

Cradle to Cradle

In their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart presented an integration of design and science that provides enduring benefits for society from safe materials, water and energy in circular economies and eliminates the concept of waste.

The book put forward a design framework characterized by three principles derived from nature:

Everything is a resource for something else. In nature, the “waste” of one system becomes food for another. Everything can be designed to be disassembled and safely returned to the soil as biological nutrients, or re-utilized as high quality materials for new products as technical nutrients without contamination.

http://www.mcdonough.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/BioTech_header.jpg

 

 

https://mcdonough.com/cradle-to-cradle/

 

The original book is available very cheaply SH and very thought provoking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle-to-cradle_design

https://c2ccertified.org/topics/built-environment

Universidad EAN in Bogotá, Colombia is a groundbreaking redevelopment project that demonstrates Cradle to Cradle Certified® design and circular economy principles. © Jairo Llano – LlanoFotografia

[zapatos]

Concrete only performs well under compression. I wonder how much support must be built under a concrete roof to withstand the weight of a garden. Certainly you can provide similar support under a framed roof.

[TheVat]

16 hours ago, Skovand said:

Wooden houses almost never make it past a century without most of it being gutted and fixed. 

Please do us the courtesy of responding for requests for citation.

Having partially gutted a couple of century old wood houses, I can say that very little if any of the wood needed replacement.  And lath and plaster walls often don't require gutting, given the way lath makes plaster repair feasible.  So your implication that it is the wood that is the problem seems misplaced.  As others have noted different climates/bioregions call for different materials, each with different eco-liabilities.  (most lumber btw is NOT from clear-cutting virgin forest, but from what are essentially wood crop plantations - not great, often biologically diminished monocultures, but they consist of fast growing timber that rapidly absorbs carbon, so not the worst way, either)

13 hours ago, Skovand said:

Sddsddssss

Non responsive to previous post's reasonable request for citations.  Reported to mod.

Edited December 27, 2024 by TheVat
add

[studiot]

Just now, zapatos said:

Concrete only performs well under compression. I wonder how much support must be built under a concrete roof to withstand the weight of a garden. Certainly you can provide similar support under a framed roof.

That may have been the edwardian view of concrete, Though monsieur Fressynet might have disagreed even then.  But fibre concrete has been around for some decades now.

When I worked at the Building Research Establishment in the 1960s there was a department working on it.

 

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

That may have been the edwardian view of concrete, Though monsieur Fressynet might have disagreed even then.  But fibre concrete has been around for some decades now.

When I worked at the Building Research Establishment in the 1960s there was a department working on it.

 

So you can build for instance a flat roof made of concrete as the OP suggested?

[studiot]

Just now, zapatos said:

So you can build for instance a flat roof made of concrete as the OP suggested?

 

Sure, our local readymix offer to deliver the concrete with the reinforcement already mixed in .

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

 

Sure, our local readymix offer to deliver the concrete with the reinforcement already mixed in .

I wasn't so much asking if you could buy it. I was curious how you go about turning ready mix into a slab resting on four walls, and how well its strength supported that much weight across its span. I've never even seen a concrete roof around here.

[studiot]

4 hours ago, zapatos said:

I wasn't so much asking if you could buy it. I was curious how you go about turning ready mix into a slab resting on four walls, and how well its strength supported that much weight across its span. I've never even seen a concrete roof around here.

My ground floors were originally traditionally suspended timber, but they had rotted and were very draughty
So I opted to replace them with a suspended concrete slab.
Reinforcement was required for structural reasons.

Ready mix offered to 'include the reinforcement' in the form of fibres (carbon ,steel,glass have all been used).

I actually went for traditional steel mesh reinforcement.

In England the loading codes are more onerous for floors than roofs.

Indeed the loading can often be negative or partly negative on a roof.

[TheVat]

6 hours ago, studiot said:

Indeed the loading can often be negative or partly negative on a roof.

I can't find the emoji of the head with question marks exploding from it - let's pretend it's there.  How can roof load be consistently negative?  I will guess you mean wind uplift, where high wind creates a pressure differential so the roof is a bit acting like a delta wing.  Here of course we deal with high positive load, thanks to heavy snows.  My house has 25 ft spans, so I have a hard time imagining me and my loved ones under a concrete slab with a foot or two of snow on it.  That's easily 20-60 lb/SF.  

[studiot]

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

I can't find the emoji of the head with question marks exploding from it - let's pretend it's there.  How can roof load be consistently negative?  I will guess you mean wind uplift, where high wind creates a pressure differential so the roof is a bit acting like a delta wing.  Here of course we deal with high positive load, thanks to heavy snows.  My house has 25 ft spans, so I have a hard time imagining me and my loved ones under a concrete slab with a foot or two of snow on it.  That's easily 20-60 lb/SF.  

I thought that might evoke some comment.

😀

Yes I mean wind loading.

We have seen the effect in many recent videos of the storms that are sweeping the planet.

Here in Somerset it is interesting to compare my house with that of my immediate neighbour's.

My house was built immediately pre WWII, when building largely paused and has concrete roof tiles.
My neighbour's was built after WWII when building recommenced and has fired clay roof tiles.

The concrete tiles are about twice as thick and heavy as the clay ones and did not suffer in the recent spate of high winds.
A significant number of my neighbour's (gosh I wish that word was shorter) caly ones were stripped by the same winds.

Another comment about materials.

My roof timbers are pitch pine, the resin in which apparantly is very protective from woodworm.
Post WWII we started using Canadian softwood timbers in a big way and they are not self protecting and have left owners with a big problem.

 

[TheVat]

6 hours ago, studiot said:

Another comment about materials.

My roof timbers are pitch pine, the resin in which apparantly is very protective from woodworm.
Post WWII we started using Canadian softwood timbers in a big way and they are not self protecting and have left owners with a big problem.

Yep, the softwoods can be a problem here if codes don't demand proper barriers against pests.  There is a cedar that grows in the Pacific NW, Western Red Cedar, which is quite durable and naturally insect resistant, but it costs more, so less used in the postwar building boom.  

Interesting bit about the concrete v clay tiles.  Clay is popular in the Southwest here, lasts long, withstands searing desert heat and is eco friendly, but quite a bit of labor to properly install.  Asphalt shingles, which are used so much elsewhere in US, really do poorly in hot desert. 

6 hours ago, studiot said:

A significant number of my neighbour's (gosh I wish that word was shorter) caly ones were stripped by the same winds.

If you find a shorter way to type naybr, you likely would cease to be English, so caution advised.