Replies

My foreign born wife wonders why people build homes out of wood in coastal areas. In Europe, wooden houses are a curiousity and an oddity.

If these houses were built of mortar concrete and brick with ceramic or metal roofing, all one would need to do is close up the shudders and the house would still be standing when it all blew by. Of course the odd tree may fall on one or some such, but wind would not blow off the roof and destroy it if it were built right.

Houses in Bermuda are made of masonry--their *roofs*, too! The concrete roofs are cleaned carefully, painted with non-toxic paint, and the water drains off the roof into cisterns. Bermuda has scarce sources of water.

The fact that there are government bailouts is just part of the problem. Private insurance is a form of cost-shifting not too dissimilar from taxation. Of coursem, you can choose to go without insurance for some things, but many times we are much constrained against doing without (licensing of cars, home mtgs--requires insurance).

While you worry about how fed funds are not being used accding to good libertarian principals, I worry more about the increase in premiums I'm going to have to face.

If these houses were built of mortar concrete and brick with ceramic or metal roofing, all one would need to do is close up the shudders and the house would still be standing when it all blew by. Of course the odd tree may fall on one or some such, but wind would not blow off the roof and destroy it if it were built right.

Along the gulf coast (Texas to Alabama, or just about) the soil is “gumbo.” It has a lot of clay in it. It is like concrete when it is dry, but turns into something resembling chocolate pudding when it gets wet. It expands a lot when it gets wet and shrinks/cracks/contracts a lot when it dries. Building on a slab isn’t the best idea (though they still do it). Most older homes are built up 18” – 3’ on piers. You can’t really build a brick/stone home like that.

At the very least you’d have to pour a footing for the brick/stone to rest on and you’re going to have nothing but problems with it settling.

Also, the entire Gulf coast area doesn’t have a single rock anywhere, so any stone you use is going to have to be imported from somewhere.

In northwestern Florida they used to build cinderblock houses, but the soil was more sandy there and they didn't have so many problems with the ground settling.