How much can you save on bills with wooden houses?

On average, a house in Wood well designed can reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling from 20% to 50% compared to a traditional, older home. If we take the example of a house of about 120 square meters, the traditional one, built in the 1990s, has energy costs, including gas and electricity, equal to 1.800-3.000 euros per year, while the house in Wood A modern class A or NZEB house often has an energy cost of 600-1.200 euros per year. But where can you build a house in WoodAnd how much does it cost? What are the contraindications?

In Italy, a wooden house can be built practically anywhere, as long as the land is buildable and the project complies with local urban planning and anti-seismic regulations.

The limitations almost never depend on whether it is “made of wood ”, but on:

• urban planning destination of the land,
• landscape constraints,
• municipal regulations,
• permitted heights and volumes.

We recommend consulting local builders and companies specializing in this type of construction and asking for multiple quotes. Be careful and don't rely too heavily on the prices you find online, especially if they advertise higher prices. wooden houses At 500-600 euros per square meter, they probably only include exterior walls and load-bearing beams. Add everything else and you can easily get to 1.800-2.000 euros per square meter.

Furthermore, it is never a good idea to save on the quality of the Wood: for load-bearing beams, fir is preferable, and if you use birch or pine, they are certainly cheaper, but keep in mind that they need to be treated before becoming building material.

Of course there are several factors, apart from the quality of the Wood, which affect, as in the case of cement, the cost of a house in Wood. About You will find all the detailed information on the price of the house in Wood, also based on the surface area, as well as on the elements that determine the cost. In order to guide your choices and avoid waste. The Italian regions where the wooden houses The most widespread are Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto and Lombardy.

Maintenance costs

Maintaining a wooden house isn't much different from maintaining a concrete structure. Consistency and regularity are essential, but don't overdo it to avoid waste. Repainting the wood should be done every five years, and to avoid losing the building's original color, we recommend using natural products. Among the areas that should be thoroughly inspected annually are the gutters, where mold is more likely to form.

A wooden house isn't a temporary luxury. It's simply not true that, given its characteristics, it's destined to last only a few years. On the contrary. In theory, a wooden house , with the right amount of regular maintenance, can last half a century or more. Much will also depend on the quality of the material used, and if it's good wood , signs of deterioration won't appear until after 50 years. A well-designed and maintained wooden house can last 80–100 years or more , and in many cases easily exceeds a century.

It is not a “temporary” technology: there are wooden buildings still inhabited by:

• several centuries in Japan,
• over 500 years in the European Alps,
• ancient wooden houses in the Nordic countries still perfectly functional.

The actual duration depends mainly on:

• project quality,
• moisture protection,
• ventilation,
• quality of the pose,
• maintenance over time.

The real enemy of wood is not time, but:

• infiltrated water,
• condensation,
• construction errors.

Other advantages of a house in Wood

When we have the opportunity to buy, or build a new home, there's a question we can ask ourselves: Aside from the obvious energy savings, why buy a wooden house ? The most important answers, in short, are these:

• il Wood it is a very comfortable, eco-sustainable, elegant material;
• le CASE​ in Wood they have the advantage of being silent. Wood absorbs noise very well;
• The anti-seismic performance is very high, thanks to the flexibility of this material. In the event of a strong earthquake, the house in Wood it swings, but it doesn't come down: that's why construction in Wood it is very widespread in Japan, a country extremely vulnerable to seismic risk;
• the house in Wood it has faster construction times than any concrete house;
• il Wood It resists fire very well and has low thermal conductivity. In the event of a fire, only the outer layer of the material burns, and carbonization is much slower than in masonry structures;
• le CASE​ in Wood They last a long time and thanks to modern technologies they have reasonable maintenance costs.

Wood , from an environmental standpoint, has a very important advantage: it is the only truly renewable material, and compared to steel and concrete, it has a positive carbon footprint throughout its life cycle. While concrete, widely used in the construction industry, emits 0,3 tons of carbon dioxide per cubic meter, wood absorbs one ton.

Myths to debunk

There are at least five false myths that confuse the wooden house market and create perplexity when choosing this type of sustainable construction.

• “They are only good for the mountains or as a tool shed”: that of the huts and the classics houses from the garden in Wood, is just a small niche sector compared to the larger and more innovative territory of frame or X-Lam constructions. wooden houses which make use of these technologies are in fact aesthetically identical to the houses in concrete because the wooden parts, both external and internal, are completely covered with common building materials.
• “They are precarious housing”: the current ones CASE​ prefabricated houses have a living comfort far superior to that of normal houses because they are made of Wood, the thermal insulating material par excellence.
• “Dangerous in case of fire”: compared to houses built in steel and concrete, the CASE​ di Wood they only burn on the surface and do not collapse on themselves.
• “Not very stable in the event of an earthquake”: the wooden houses They are flexible and light and therefore reliable in the event of seismic events.
• “You can't apply for a mortgage”It is possible to apply for a special type of mortgage (SAL) that allows you to finance the construction of bio-sustainable buildings, just like traditional ones.