STEEL HOUSES VS WOODEN HOUSES

Steel houses are built for over 50 years in New Zealand. In Australia, over 50% of the new houses are built on steel structures, in Hawaii 40%, and in Japan over 150 000 steel houses are built in a year. Wooden houses have always been built, we want to show why it is time to use less wood and manufacture steel structures for houses, which will only bring advantages.

• The weight of the structure in a steel house is almost 3 times less than in a house with a wooden structure and 20 times less than in masonry; the weight has a strong seismic influence and also the different foundation type should not be neglected;
• If the prices of wood and steel structures are comparable, steel has a resistance advantage;
• A steel frame house has incomparably higher fire resistance than a wooden frame house;
• Sound resistance is improved, dry wood has high resonance;
• According to “the myth of the wooden houses” a wood house resists for over 100 years, but the wood from which they used to build was different. Modern ways have not improved the quality of wood. Any type of wood is used. In the past, fewer houses were built and the wood was carefully selected. If we remain honest we understand that the techno-scientific revolution has not improved all things;
• Light steel profile frames are produced by high-precision machines. They are cold-formed, cut, drilled, and printed with assembling codes. They are pre-assembled in the factory but they can also be assembled on-site, resulting in the optimization of costs;
• The assembling time is much lower for steel houses than for wooden structures;
• In order to work with wood, you will need a team of skilled carpenters, taking into account that the wood is modified due to the temperature. Even if the wood is dry it takes humidity from the atmosphere and dries again in the sun. The steel, on the other hand, remains the same, temperature deformation tolerances being very subtle;
• A steel house will work as a lightning rod so it is not possible to catch fire in case of lightning or thunderbolts. For steel houses a few lightning rods (with high costs) can interfere with strong lightning;
• The electromagnetic waves pass by the steel structure and allow (with very few attenuations) usages of the internet, television, radio, or telephone. A great advantage is that the steel structure forms the Faraday Cage (shielding) which isolates very well the house from the electromagnetic fields of high-tension networks, which are felt very strongly in wooden houses;
• There is thermal insulation which allows for building high thermal resistance steel houses. This is where the wooden house has a slight advantage, the wooden structure being thermo-insulating;
• The warranty imposed for steel houses according to the law in force is the normal life duration (98 years). If the law provides this life duration, the real-life duration will be higher. Check the warranty for the wooden houses;
• The plane surfaces with panels can be easily replaced for very low costs, the house is keeping in this manner its market value during its lifetime. The wood is exposed to must, termites, or other diseases which may compromise the wooden structure;
• The electrical and sanitary installations are easy to introduce through the steel structure which is automatically perforated in the factory;
• If we expose zinc-coated steel and treated wood, which one do you think will last longer?!
• Steel houses are built with 3D engineering drawings, and files that remain, and if necessary adding or removing them is very easy. It is not the same thing for the houses made by a craftsman with his “enchanted chainsaw”;
• Let’s not neglect our ecological concept: “it is better to melt our old cars and turn them into house structures than to cut our forests.” I would conclude that it’s time to make superior use of wood for veneers and finishes and to manufacture structures for houses from 100% recyclable metal structures, with a higher, faster, more economical, better processing degree.