Today in the US, most houses and apartments are built using light framed wood construction. This system consists of load bearing walls made from 2x4s or 2x6s, which support a wood-framed floor or roof - usually either trusses, joists, or engineered i-joists. This system is a variant of a framing style known as balloon framed construction, and though it may not look particularly impressive, it’s one of the most important developments in the history of building technology.
Another advantage of this method is an improved ability to weather earthquakes, which is a significant consideration along the West Coast. During prolonged earthquakes brick and masonry break, and concrete cracks, but wood frames sway and spring. There’s enough “give” in the wood and fasteners that they can handle shaking without breaking. I mean, they’re not earthquake proof, the can still split and break, but there’s a reason you don’t see many brick or masonry structures in severe earthquake areas. Of course steel framed buildings do even better.
Thanks for preempting my question! I wondered why all the timber houses, as surely they don't last as long as brick. In England 90% of houses are made with brick. Timber framing has become slightly more common in new builds but they're notorious for being shoddy compared to older houses.
Thanks for this. I had picked up some of these changes from experience working on early 20th century houses and apartment buildings, but the history you describe makes everything fall into place much more logically.
This explains the rise of the McMansion. Or what I call "Drywall Palaces". Which is this sort of creativity-free "architecture" taken to extremes. The false finishes of fake stone and fake Tudor to try to make it look "architectural" miserably failing because it's applied to thin 2x4" stud walls rather than the thick walls created by the massive wood beams.
Not to mention the proliferation of roof elements to the point the roof is a conglomeration of dormers, fake dormers, the odd turret, complex valley systems and just outright over-complexity as if the builder is trying to compensate for the lack of creativity by throwing in the kitchen sink. I guess I have some emotional issues to work out here...
That photo of the stripped-down balloon frame is really pretty alarming. Every one of those I’ve ever worked on had lateral bracing cut into the frame, diagonal blocking that would extend from floor to ceiling. Some of them even had fancy knee braces above the interior doors. I can’t see anything in that frame that’s keeping it from racking especially with the sheathing removed
A lot of people bring up tornados as a knock against these, but the people living in those areas need houses to be rebuilt cheaply and quickly. I don’t think a direct hit from an F4 is something that even a robust steel framed house would survive. It comes down to calculating whether it’s worth the trouble to make the structure stronger or just good enough. Rural areas in tornado alley aren’t the highest income places either.
Steel is a much better material for framing. It's stronger, it reduces fire risk and it doesn't rot. The reason they still use wood is because welders and riveters are skilled labor. The way carpentry used to be. They would have to pay good wages and that would reduce their profits a little bit. Greed is a sickness that infects everything.
Here in the Pacific Northwest USA, lumber is relatively cheap and can be installed with two guys, a saw, and a nail gun. Hot-roll steel is about $1 per pound. I would love to see a cost comparison ($/square foot) and pros and cons.
The use of skilled labor increases the price of the home, and most homebuyers don’t think steel framing is worth the extra cost. If people were willing to pay the premium for steel framed homes, then the builders would build more of them.
They are wrong and it increases the price slightly but has big benefits. I invite you to Google steel frame housing and take a look at the companies doing this.
We bought and old farm was a house built in 1890s. True baloon construction. From the attic, w open walls, we could see two stories down to the stone foundation. Contractor we hired to rehab, was burning scrap as they do out here in the country, on a windy day and whole two story house went up in minutes.
Balloon framing went out in favor of what is now used, "platform framing", in the period between 1900 and 1920, because it requires long studs, two stories (16-20) feet or more, which were becoming scarce as the best old growth forest in MI was being clear cut.
Ballloon framing, with stud chases extending from the foundation sill to the top of the second storey, also created natural chase ways for the propagation of smoke and fire through ba wood-framed structure, resulting in routine tragedies, where small fires spread so rapidly that tenament families couldn't escape.
Platform framing, where each floor is framed in sequence: foundation wall, sill plate, floor joist system, floorboards or plywood, bottom plate, studs (92.6" to 10') double top plate, ceiling ( or second storey)rim joist and joists, etc ( rinse and repeat) is what you generally see today, because it uses shorter, standard lumber sizes that are easier to obtain.
Also, the evolution away from lsth and plaster to plasterboards (16" wide strips of 3/8" drywall) and plaster veneer, to the drywall with joint taping that vee see everywhere today, enabled framers to move away from systems mximising f vertical lumber to avoid cracks caused by expansion in horizontal framing ( a real problem in log cabins, which require all sorts of adaptations for cabinets and plumbing, like slip walls, pipe loops and slip joints in drain plumbing, because a log cabin, with most framing horizontal, acts kinda like a vertical accordion, which can tear apart cabinets and tile work.
Platform framing does introduce other issues that must be dealt with, most noteably the tendency of buildings assembled like layer cakes to rack back and forth when afflicted by wind or earthquake forces. Sheathing boards must be nailed in diagonally, or diagonal braces, made of wood or metal, must be notched into the vertical studs OR simply nail on sheets of plywood, OSB, or structural fiberboard (Thermoply, anyone,)
Now, of course, the advent of engineered lumber has enabled the construction of skyscrapers from wood. There have been relatively few built, but the same technology has been put to use to build power pylons out of laminated lumber, effectively creating 100+' power poles out of wood.
Better, faster cheaper, we can argue call we want... it's still coming at us.'
I owned and renovated a house in northern Illinois just outside the Chicago Metro area. After tearing out the plaster and lath I found a remnant of a newspaper that was thrown into a wall cavity. It was published in Chicago in 1882 and was written in Swedish. The house was balloon framed.
I also worked on a faming crew when I was young and learned a lot of skills I still use today. This was during a boom cycle in residential housing. All of the houses were stick-built using platform framing. It is quick, efficient and, if done right, quite durable. Wind and tornadoes in that region can do damage to them, but most buildings never experience those problems. Now, if only dimensional lumber was more affordable......
You’re right about stick framing, it’s simple and elegant, infinitely flexible and adaptable, all the sneering about it going on in these comments is coming from people who are profoundly ignorant about how it’s actually done and why it works so well in North America. There’s a reason people build things differently in different places
The dumbing down of constructed homes. Instead of structures that weather the ages and can be passed down to many generations we get McDonald's style of building. Planned obsolescence.
Balloon framing is a specific subset of framed construction. Most modern, two story homes are not balloon framed. They are two seperate frames, stacked. In a balloon frame the load bearing members carry the load continuously from rafters to foundation. That's why, like in you illustration, the windows are aligned on both floors.
To European eyes it looks like American house are built of string and cardboard. The external walls using techniques that we might use for making an internal built in cupboard.
This is something I always noticed going to Italy over the years, where I have family. Houses are concrete and stone, walls 3x as thick. They look like they were built to stand for centuries (and many have!)
Our first house was in Montreal, at the edge of the city proper (near the end of the streetcar line from downtown - really, you'd occasionally see rail fragments when they dug up the main road from downtown).
Montreal had its own "great fire" in 1852, resulting in a building code that forbade wood-sheathed buildings. Ours was a two-story, balloon-framed brick-sheathed structure.
What was interesting was the exterior walls. The walls were "triple-brick" on the outside, then lath and plaster on the interior (yes, three layers of brick). No insulation at all (other than some air between the brick layers and between the brick and the plaster)
On cold days, we'd sometimes get frost on the interior walls.
Use it all the time , using cellulose breathable insulation , allowing moisture to vent out to the cavity. Well detailed timber frame is less labour demanding, time consuming and costly , and has less pollution factor than all the rest.
Another advantage of this method is an improved ability to weather earthquakes, which is a significant consideration along the West Coast. During prolonged earthquakes brick and masonry break, and concrete cracks, but wood frames sway and spring. There’s enough “give” in the wood and fasteners that they can handle shaking without breaking. I mean, they’re not earthquake proof, the can still split and break, but there’s a reason you don’t see many brick or masonry structures in severe earthquake areas. Of course steel framed buildings do even better.
Thanks for preempting my question! I wondered why all the timber houses, as surely they don't last as long as brick. In England 90% of houses are made with brick. Timber framing has become slightly more common in new builds but they're notorious for being shoddy compared to older houses.
Thanks for this. I had picked up some of these changes from experience working on early 20th century houses and apartment buildings, but the history you describe makes everything fall into place much more logically.
This explains the rise of the McMansion. Or what I call "Drywall Palaces". Which is this sort of creativity-free "architecture" taken to extremes. The false finishes of fake stone and fake Tudor to try to make it look "architectural" miserably failing because it's applied to thin 2x4" stud walls rather than the thick walls created by the massive wood beams.
Not to mention the proliferation of roof elements to the point the roof is a conglomeration of dormers, fake dormers, the odd turret, complex valley systems and just outright over-complexity as if the builder is trying to compensate for the lack of creativity by throwing in the kitchen sink. I guess I have some emotional issues to work out here...
That photo of the stripped-down balloon frame is really pretty alarming. Every one of those I’ve ever worked on had lateral bracing cut into the frame, diagonal blocking that would extend from floor to ceiling. Some of them even had fancy knee braces above the interior doors. I can’t see anything in that frame that’s keeping it from racking especially with the sheathing removed
A lot of people bring up tornados as a knock against these, but the people living in those areas need houses to be rebuilt cheaply and quickly. I don’t think a direct hit from an F4 is something that even a robust steel framed house would survive. It comes down to calculating whether it’s worth the trouble to make the structure stronger or just good enough. Rural areas in tornado alley aren’t the highest income places either.
Steel is a much better material for framing. It's stronger, it reduces fire risk and it doesn't rot. The reason they still use wood is because welders and riveters are skilled labor. The way carpentry used to be. They would have to pay good wages and that would reduce their profits a little bit. Greed is a sickness that infects everything.
Here in the Pacific Northwest USA, lumber is relatively cheap and can be installed with two guys, a saw, and a nail gun. Hot-roll steel is about $1 per pound. I would love to see a cost comparison ($/square foot) and pros and cons.
The use of skilled labor increases the price of the home, and most homebuyers don’t think steel framing is worth the extra cost. If people were willing to pay the premium for steel framed homes, then the builders would build more of them.
They are wrong and it increases the price slightly but has big benefits. I invite you to Google steel frame housing and take a look at the companies doing this.
We bought and old farm was a house built in 1890s. True baloon construction. From the attic, w open walls, we could see two stories down to the stone foundation. Contractor we hired to rehab, was burning scrap as they do out here in the country, on a windy day and whole two story house went up in minutes.
Balloon framing went out in favor of what is now used, "platform framing", in the period between 1900 and 1920, because it requires long studs, two stories (16-20) feet or more, which were becoming scarce as the best old growth forest in MI was being clear cut.
Ballloon framing, with stud chases extending from the foundation sill to the top of the second storey, also created natural chase ways for the propagation of smoke and fire through ba wood-framed structure, resulting in routine tragedies, where small fires spread so rapidly that tenament families couldn't escape.
Platform framing, where each floor is framed in sequence: foundation wall, sill plate, floor joist system, floorboards or plywood, bottom plate, studs (92.6" to 10') double top plate, ceiling ( or second storey)rim joist and joists, etc ( rinse and repeat) is what you generally see today, because it uses shorter, standard lumber sizes that are easier to obtain.
Also, the evolution away from lsth and plaster to plasterboards (16" wide strips of 3/8" drywall) and plaster veneer, to the drywall with joint taping that vee see everywhere today, enabled framers to move away from systems mximising f vertical lumber to avoid cracks caused by expansion in horizontal framing ( a real problem in log cabins, which require all sorts of adaptations for cabinets and plumbing, like slip walls, pipe loops and slip joints in drain plumbing, because a log cabin, with most framing horizontal, acts kinda like a vertical accordion, which can tear apart cabinets and tile work.
Platform framing does introduce other issues that must be dealt with, most noteably the tendency of buildings assembled like layer cakes to rack back and forth when afflicted by wind or earthquake forces. Sheathing boards must be nailed in diagonally, or diagonal braces, made of wood or metal, must be notched into the vertical studs OR simply nail on sheets of plywood, OSB, or structural fiberboard (Thermoply, anyone,)
Now, of course, the advent of engineered lumber has enabled the construction of skyscrapers from wood. There have been relatively few built, but the same technology has been put to use to build power pylons out of laminated lumber, effectively creating 100+' power poles out of wood.
Better, faster cheaper, we can argue call we want... it's still coming at us.'
I owned and renovated a house in northern Illinois just outside the Chicago Metro area. After tearing out the plaster and lath I found a remnant of a newspaper that was thrown into a wall cavity. It was published in Chicago in 1882 and was written in Swedish. The house was balloon framed.
I also worked on a faming crew when I was young and learned a lot of skills I still use today. This was during a boom cycle in residential housing. All of the houses were stick-built using platform framing. It is quick, efficient and, if done right, quite durable. Wind and tornadoes in that region can do damage to them, but most buildings never experience those problems. Now, if only dimensional lumber was more affordable......
You’re right about stick framing, it’s simple and elegant, infinitely flexible and adaptable, all the sneering about it going on in these comments is coming from people who are profoundly ignorant about how it’s actually done and why it works so well in North America. There’s a reason people build things differently in different places
Used to cover lots of fires. The fire chiefs would often talk about the balloon framing complicating their work.
The dumbing down of constructed homes. Instead of structures that weather the ages and can be passed down to many generations we get McDonald's style of building. Planned obsolescence.
Balloon framing is a specific subset of framed construction. Most modern, two story homes are not balloon framed. They are two seperate frames, stacked. In a balloon frame the load bearing members carry the load continuously from rafters to foundation. That's why, like in you illustration, the windows are aligned on both floors.
To European eyes it looks like American house are built of string and cardboard. The external walls using techniques that we might use for making an internal built in cupboard.
This is something I always noticed going to Italy over the years, where I have family. Houses are concrete and stone, walls 3x as thick. They look like they were built to stand for centuries (and many have!)
Our first house was in Montreal, at the edge of the city proper (near the end of the streetcar line from downtown - really, you'd occasionally see rail fragments when they dug up the main road from downtown).
Montreal had its own "great fire" in 1852, resulting in a building code that forbade wood-sheathed buildings. Ours was a two-story, balloon-framed brick-sheathed structure.
What was interesting was the exterior walls. The walls were "triple-brick" on the outside, then lath and plaster on the interior (yes, three layers of brick). No insulation at all (other than some air between the brick layers and between the brick and the plaster)
On cold days, we'd sometimes get frost on the interior walls.
This is similar to cars. We went from "body on frame" to "unibody" construction.
Use it all the time , using cellulose breathable insulation , allowing moisture to vent out to the cavity. Well detailed timber frame is less labour demanding, time consuming and costly , and has less pollution factor than all the rest.