Watu, you are looking at planks ready to be used to make walls etc. Question is, what happens between the tree and the straight, squared, white, handsome/beautiful plank of wood?
One quickly abandons the idea of a timber house. Unless one wont mind nafasi nafasi, gaps gaps between the individual planks on his wall.
Mathirebu
Na inachapwa gunia upande ya ndani. Zile za sisal. Unachungiliwa ama unachungulia watu kwa barabara.
Americans have this gentleman to thank for alot of their timber.
He was a devious, scheming Democrat politician who flipped blacks from Republican to Democrat but at the same time he loved poor people and through them he planted close to 3.5 billion trees. I respect FDR for that because in essence he provided housing for low class citizens via cheap timber through the NEW DEAL and the CCC.
But you look at Biden another Democrat and his Green New Deal he has no interest in housing the poor but just building billion dollar wind farms.
Bear in mind vumbistan is at the equator level. Americans experience 4 seasons therefore their houses need central/ducted heating and cooling. Timber frames are superb for carrying insulation material in-between the drywalling (gypsum chieth). Floors are wall to wall carpets/timber…sio tiles ama screed (imagine tiles plus snow/winter)
Timber also cost less because it is faster (maybe after pre-cast concrete) to work with than stone. Fundi wa maiyolo hulipwa xx€$ per hour. Bricklaying takes more times than timber pushing cost up.
They also move this houses like this. [ATTACH=full]416690[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]416691[/ATTACH]
Cool right. You can move a house from kamulu to Rongai… Easy to work with. Wazungu wanapenda DIY and constantly renovations. Timber is easy to work with and affordable than stone. Easy to repair (even after hurricane etc)
Historically timber was meant for the poor. Wood is free if you have land. And it’s far better than this :
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How do you pipe water to these settlements:
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Wood solves problems because the whole house including furniture and even plates and utensils were free.
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You just call your neighbours , knock down a few trees and you are ready to bring in a wife to a nice yet affordable home.
Anyone who had land and could grow seedlings, or lived near a forest could live a normal life :
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Americans used to live in mud houses before switching to wooden houses. So wood is not for the poor.
[SIZE=7]Why Are American Houses So Flimsy and Poorly Built?[/SIZE]
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[li]FRANTISEK78[/li][li]JUN 1, 2021[/li][/ul]
[SIZE=5]Cheap Construction[/SIZE]
One striking aspect of houses in America is the flimsy quality of even the most expensive ones. Houses are built literally like a house of cards. Weak beams, plywood, flimsy insulation, flimsy siding and roofing that either blows off in high winds or just rots away after a few years. It’s really no wonder that come tornado or hurricane season, houses are literally ripped off of their foundations and tossed into the air.
[SIZE=5]European Standards Are Different[/SIZE]
In contrast, houses and most buildings in Europe are much sturdier, being built with stone or cinder blocks or brick for the whole wall and inside walls. This is true for new houses and apartment blocks as well as old buildings. This is the reason we see buildings hundreds of years old still standing in good shape. In the United States a 50-year-old house is considered old and is torn down to make room for another flimsy yet expensive structure.
[SIZE=5]Flimsy Plywood Walls[/SIZE]
American houses sometimes do have the appearance of having brick walls; however, these are just stuck onto the outside of the plywood walls giving a false sense of quality and strength. It is understandable that using flimsy wood is cheaper than using stone or concrete, but this is not really evidenced by the prices of houses. I have seen multi-million dollar new houses in the States that are building using the same plywood, insulation, shabby roofing material as cheaper houses. The fact that walls are paper thin and conversations can be heard two rooms away is nothing strange in American houses.
[SIZE=5]Cheap Buidling Materials[/SIZE]
We also see quality problems in areas like rotting walls, water getting into insulation, termites and leaking roofs. Houses built of plywood and low-quality beams will not last all that long. Using staple guns to hold plywood to beams is usually going to end up shabby. Contractors tend to use the cheapest materials and thrown up buildings as soon as they can in order to maximize profits. For some reason this shabby building tradition has become the norm in the U.S.
[SIZE=5]Origins of This Building Style[/SIZE]
The origins of this building style can be drawn to the 1950s with the post-war boom period when Americans could suddenly afford to buy homes in sprawling new suburbs where almost pre-fabricated style identical-looking houses mushroomed virtually overnight. This is understandable given the economic boom coupled with the baby boom and rising incomes. However, US suburbs still tend to have a monotonous look to them, even in the nicer ones. Of course this is mostly due to the fact that many suburbs are developed by one builder who only has so many styles of houses to build. But the fact remains that the building quality has not gone up since the 1950s, and in fact may have gone down in many cases due to the economy and the fact that Americans have come to expect that their houses look in a certain style.
[SIZE=5]American Preference for the New[/SIZE]
Unfortunately it is unlikely that many U.S. houses or other buildings will still be around say 500 years from now. The American mindset of bulldozing the old and building something new instead every few decades keeps us from having a sense of history, at least where architecture and physical structures are concerned.
All great civilizations have left structures for us to admire: Rome, Egypt, Greece, Byzantium, Incas, Aztec etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely that American civilization will leave any impressive physical structures behind for posterity, as even skyscrapers are often leveled after a few decades to make way for new ones. This is also a part of being a consumer society that throws away the old to make way for the supposed goodness of the new—and at the same time discards vestiges of our past.
https://hbre-mn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/new-construction.jpg
https://cdn.jhmrad.com/wp-content/uploads/wood-american-style-house-plans-design_174455.jpg
Mti ni free, nyasi ni free, matope ni free , mawe ni free. Hizo ni vitu Mungu alipatia binadamu bure ajenge nazo.
You can plant your own trees and harvest your own timber and build your home with that timber. You can use the grass as sod or thatch or for joinery or even for furniture, floor mats and sleeping mats.
You can use the free matope as is for mud huts or as baked bricks and tiles.
The Sod houses you have posted were constructed in the prairies where there is no timber.
You see when you were an American frontiersman, you built using the materials you found in the land you have chosen to settle on. Plus you often relied on the skills you acquired back in Europe or skills taught to you by the local Indians if they were friendly.
The sod house as seen in your photos had a simple wooden frame covered with prairie grass roots. The timber sometimes came from breaking down the family wagon.
The interior looked like this :
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Halafu on the sides inapigwa hio matope ya root system ya prairie grass.
Prairies ni huko kwa manyasi. Flatlands e.g Montana, The Dakotas, Texas etc.
Prairies ni kama tu Kenyan savannah grasslands with one lone tree several kilometers away.
Just like in Africa, these prairies many times become deserts if humans overgraze cattle and don’t plant trees to stop wind and water erosion as can be seen in pastoralist territories. The American prairies for instance became dust bowl deserts due to overcultivation in the early 1900s. FDR’s army of tree planters reclaimed these flatlands by planting trees from one end of the U.S to the other criss crossing the prairies.
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Inaitwa the Great Plains shelterbelt to slow down the complete desertification of the American plains and flatlands. Otherwise U.S ingekuwa Sahara desert leo with minimal population due to stupid human activities :
Great Plains Shelterbelt - Wikipedia
These trees were also very critical in matters housing. The U.S population was rising due to the newly arrived immigrants and they needed cheap, easy to construct and planned environments.
In the 1860s in the cities to slow down the growth of uncontrolled slums, the U.S govt adopted box houses for immigrants.
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Thr box house also known as the American four square could be ordered of a catalogue or magazine.
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1906 earthquake wooden shacks housing San Francisco. Still in use today.
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Shacks housing today. Very expensive.
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Prior to this events the frontiersmen who lived near forests built Log cabins as early as the 1500s. Examples from early Finnish settlers exist.
The early log cabins were built from hewn logs placed in each other with mud plaster to cover the gaps cc @kipuke :
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Wealthy city folk could afford cut timber beams that were simply stacked on each other like this :
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As far as U.S timber goes hii ni mambo inasomwa upto phd level.
The history is too massive dating back to early European influence. With lots of politics thrown in there because the immigrants who went to the U.S were often those who had been banned from owning homes in their home countries.
Some of the oldest structures on earth are made from wood e.g this Japanese Temple built in 700AD.
So.
Quite interesting! Well, its good to learn.
Why cant we deal with real questions. Are there hurricanes in Kenya? And do you think the roof of a Kenyan stoned house will withstand a hurricane if one arises out of Lake Victoria?
Note that those wooden houses in the States actually withstand the hurricanes. Its the roof that gets sheared off and weakens the overall structure of the house. A house made of stone in Kenya will be slighly better, but overall will suffer the same consequences. Take a look at the path a hurricane( really tornado :rolleyes::rolleyes:) travels. Some houses survive, some dont. It depends on the shear forces on the roof not the body.
Mbona hizo granary zote hapo kwenu zime survive over 50 years and are built of wood. How come ants didn’t decimate them.
In a place with no thieves, you can even build a paper house
Kenya problem - insecurity
O Rly?
Yes sir. Did you read my explanation of events. A hurricane shears off the roof which then collapses the building. Do you think your Kenyan house in Lavington will withstand a hurricane?
If just one hurricane or tornado passes through Nairobi, it will carry all houses with it. Seems you never studied Geography and the strength this natural events have.
Even one high magnitude earth tremor is able to bring down over 99% of Nairobi apartments
If you consider wood prices in KE, these would be almost double the price of Ndarugo. There is what you see outside, then the stuffing using iron wool etc, and a special board inside for interior wall. Halafu uachie tenant upate aligongelea msumari akianika alphabet chart ya mtoto.