Brick vs wooden house.

[Gatoblanco]

Does anyone have any comments about brick vs wooden houses?I am referring to SEQ is where I am intending to purchase.
Brick is low maintanence I understand. But then I guess you dont have a balcony perhaps.
Also are brick homes less easily modified?
I am just interested in general information or opinions people have on this.
Thanks
Jesse Taylor

 

[Raddles]

Hi there
the wooden homes I have visited have tended to be colder in winter and warmer in summer compared with the brick homes.
Wooden homes needed to be painted wheras if you choose a suitable brick, you won't need to render or paint those areas.
I am sure some of the builders on the site can give you more info
thanks

 

[MadMax2]

I have opposite experience. Impossible to live in brick veneer withour a/c. but wooden is doing fine. it cools down very quickly.

 

[Novar]

I'm with raddles

wooden homes I have visited have tended to be colder in winter and warmer in summer compared with the brick homes.

Last 6 years ...I've lived in both, currently in timber and feeling the summer big time.

Next house definately brick, without a doubt.

Less maintnance is an added bonus and less cleaning too. Timber houses especially older ones accumulate dust in nooks and crannies.
Another consideration in Qld is cyclones amd brick is a better option, not so much SEQ though. Don't think they venture that far south.

 

[Refugee]

Another one for brick here. But I have never lived in wooden so am biased. I was too scared to move into a wooden when we moved to Australia after hearing about the storms here...

 

[RPI]

Hi if your talking inner brisbane than timber. If there is a brick home in a street of qlders chances at sale time the dozer will come in and smash it to pieces.
Timber on the outside only needs paint every 10 years. I have done over a dozen homes in the last 7 or 8 years and a block of brick flats. Would choose timber on stumps anytime. Wait till the drought breaks properley up here and you will see the movement and cracking in all the slab on ground rubbish that should not be built north of Byron. (except for some more temperate areas like Toowoomba).

One of the first things you learn is a building course is that slab on ground brick veneer is suitable for southern climates not ours.

Here are my main reasons for liking timber on stumps (if you build in under a Qld'er for god's sake put a suspended timber floor otherwise you'll have the same problems as brick)

1. Movement
Any movement, subsidence etc on a timber house on stumps is not a big deal. House can be jacked and packed if it is a little bit or whole sutmp replaced. Slab on ground you need excavators, lge amount of concrete and very expensive underpining.

2. Water
A double storey timber house with 2 levels of suspended timber floors needs a lot of stormwater before you run into problems. Regs require a slab to be 150 above the surrounding ground level (though this is often reduced by lanscaping later on) suspended floor needs 600mm under bottom of bearer so you can add another 150-245 for joists on top of that depending on construction materials

3. termites.
with 600mm clearance under bearer if you find termites in your house just crawl under neath and spray the post they are coming up through. Much cheaper then if you get small cracks in your slab and the termites come up through that and start eating your frame -serious dollars

4. Flexibility.
Want to move a bathroom or kitchen, no worries your plumbing runs in the cavity under the house with a slab you are a lot more limited or its a lot more expensive.

5. Temperature
If you have a qlder built in underneath with a suspended timber floor you will not need air conditioning on the lower floor (I always put ducted through the upper floor)

6. Scarcity
In inner brisbane they are not making any more qlders and they are timeless. under demolition controls they can't demolish a house where there a 3 character houses in a row. There are a lot of places that this is no longer the case. Less around more demand. You can get good dollars for a new brick place but as they age their value doesn't increase in line with the qld'ers around them

That's my 2c

 

[topcropper]

I've lived in both.

As long as brick is fully insulated, it is way better.

Some silly people in QLD though have built brick houses and not put insulation in, and that is madness. I would bet a stinking hot brick house has no insulation.


I get extreme temps here. -5 in winter to 40 in summer. I grew up in an uninsulated wooden house [not a QLD'er] and it was painfull. I now live in an insulated fibro house, which is OK, but my parents live in a 10 year old insulated brick house with cement floor, eve's or big veranda's, and it is amazing. You hardly need heating or cooling.

See ya's.

 

[natmarie73]

...eve's or big veranda's, and it is amazing. You hardly need heating or cooling.

thats the thing though - all the brick houses built today have no eves and no verandas to stop the sun beating onto the walls. Nor are they built with cross-ventilation in mind so you don't get any breezes when the windows are open. On top of that, the developers chop all the shade trees down so not even insulation can stop the heat build-up.

I'll go timber every time. Much better noise insulation as well.

 

[GreatPig]

We live in a full-brick house (no insulation) with suspended timber floors (no slab), and as far as temperature goes, it just lags more than anything. On a really hot day it's relatively cool inside, but then at night when a cool change comes through, the house stays hot most of the night due to the time it takes for the bricks to cool down.

From a structural point of view, at least in Sydney, it's great for the ease of maintenance (no painting) and I find it good for hanging things inside. A bit more effort to drill the cement render, but you can put things securely anywhere, and they stay there forever. The big problem with older houses in particular though is cracking if the ground moves. And I guess major renos would be more expensive due to the brick and cement rendered walls.

There's no reason you can't have verandahs and balcony's with a brick house though.

GP

 

[muney]

having been used to brick veneer in sydney..and coming over to perth recently (1 year) and living in a double brick home here..all i can say is that in summer ..the double brick is a killer..on consecutive hot days..the house will NEVER cool down..you are forever trying to cool it down (A/C always on)..i hate it..reminds me of a tandoori over ..similiar thing to this house..both are clay ovens..only thing in our case is that WE are the meat inside the oven..
i would have b/v anyday..i dont know why perthites have this fixation on double brick..waste of money..its not as if it snows here..damn even where it snows heavy such as the states/canada etc..they dont have double brick construction!
hopefully builders will slowly catch on and see that it is unviable to build out of double brick..

 

[marg4000]

Have lived in a brick veneer house in Brisbane for 28 years - built on solar passive lines (more good luck than good judgment) with great cross-ventilation.

Also flat on ground was wonderful for small kids and now somewhat ageing parents.

No cracks (touch wood), no insulation, ceiling fans, 2 x air-cons last 3 years only. Warm in winter and cool in summer. DD2 lived in a timber house recently and it was draughty and freezing in winter and a hot box in summer - they could not stand it and moved to a brick home.

Orientation, decent eaves and cross ventilation are more important IMHO rather than the brick or timber.
Marg

 

[Novar]

Orientation, decent eaves and cross ventilation are more important IMHO rather than the brick or timber.

Totally agree except for the last bit
It is so important to have cross ventlation and the right aspect N/NE to catch the breezes. Makes a world of difference to comfortable living if the rooms are positioned in the right area. Living/bedrooms on the cooler side and garage/ bathroom/ laundry facing west.

Amazes me how many people do not even consider these things when buying.

 

[topcropper]

thats the thing though - all the brick houses built today have no eves and no verandas to stop the sun beating onto the walls. .

Yep.

With all the environmental crap about these days, wouldn't you think these ridiculous box houses without eves would be banned. Such a simple way to reduce energy use. Especially in an Australian summer when the sun is almost straight up in the sky.

But I suppose house blocks in the city are so small now, and houses so big, the eves are gone so that the houses will fit.

See ya's.

 

[Perp]

Here, here! The Building Code shouldn't allow for construction of buildings without eaves - except in the most exceptional of circumstances. Why do people build them, and why do other people buy them? It's nuts!

 

[Nth Brisbanite]

I'm living in a brick house which is going to cost me $26,000 to get the foundations repaired because of the drought in Brisbane. If it was a wooden house, the cost would have been negligible.

Some of the Queenslanders in Brisbane are sought after with a price tag far exceeding a lot of the brick houses in this city.

When I lived in Melbourne, most people thought that wooden houses were far inferior to brick. Brisbane people don't have that attitude.

 

[Modal Harmony]

Live in brick every time! We had borax / shredded paper installed in our PPOR in 1994 & it made a huge difference to internal comfort temperature.

All our IP's are single storey brick. Main reason is maintenace issue (no external painting; reduced impact if white ants infestation occurs).