Maggie's Farm

A very beautiful home! I was fortunate to visit the New England area years ago and found the architecture of your homes to be very beautiful.

I do have a question on American building; as I understand it, the majority of American homes are wood framed, generally built on concrete foundations or on wood pillars with an open area of about 2-feet between the floor and ground.

I'm curious why there are so few brick or stone homes. Especially with the hard winters you get or the extreme weather we see in Texas or Florida. It would seem a good stone house would be better insulated and more resistant against weather and insects. When I lived in California, brick homes were the exception and I came to learn the brick was only a façade, not a full brick on brick construction.

Almost all German homes are stone construction. Foundations and first floor ceilings are concrete to both insulate and provide sound deadening. Our exterior walls are made of a type insulated cinderblock which are anywhere from 36-37cm thick, and then plastered on the exterior similar to your stucco. There are actually two types of exterior wall stone; aerated concrete called Ytong and Hochlochziegel which is a fired clay. Interior walls are also the ytong type material about 12-16cm thick which area easily carved into to allow plumbing and electrical wiring. With the exception of the roof construction, there is almost no wood in modern homes today.

Heating is generally with room radiators (as found in older American homes) however floor heating is becoming more popular. This is where plastic tubing is embedded into another layer of concrete on top of the foundation slab.

Windows are thermal. Usually at least two layers thick. They are also double hinged, meaning one can open the window as you would a door (on the horizontal axis) or by rotating the handle up another 90°, the window hinges at the bottom to allow the window to tilt inwards allowing air circulation.

Built into and above the window frame is a system called rollladen (similar to the roll-up garage doors) which cover the windows from the outside. This provides two things; insulation and security as they cannot be opened from the outside by burglars as they are secured within a steel framed track. They are operated either manual or electrically driven. With the window tiled open and the rolladen partially closed at night we can get air circulation and still provided security.

Our exterior doors are metal, and set into steel frames with a locking system that has bolts which extend into at least three to four places along the left and right edges (like a bank valut door) when the door handle is operated. Suffice to say it is virtually impossible to kick in these doors.

Unlike American homes; which typically use shingles of either wood or asphalt, all German homes use tile roofing, basically an all weather version of Spanish tiles, but flatter, which interlock with each other so they can't be blown off the roof even in high winds.

Many German homes which survived the war, are over 500-years old and are still standing and inhabited. Known as "fachwerk" construction this is timber and stone. Most have been updated with modern heating and windows. Some even have double windows for better insulation; inner windows and outer windows. These homes fall under a legal protection known as "denkmalschutz" or monument protection. This ensures the owners may not make any changes to the exterior that would change the character of the home or structure and to preserve our heritage.

I have included some links to the construction materials and methods we use here you may find interesting. Some are in German, a few are in English. :-)

Building stones - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete
http://de.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dewiki/873903

Windows & Rolladen -
http://www.fensterversand.com/holz-aluminiumfenster.php
http://www.fensterversand.com/rollladen.php

How to operate doors, windows and rolladen (an American perspective) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCudaPpwoAM

Exterior doors - http://www.fensterversand.com/haustueren.php

Roof tiles - http://www.dachziegel.de/index.php?id=66&L=0&h=1&m=
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwCg-4ImG7A

Floor heating - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrWdQXUNi80

Modern Fachwerkhäuser - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ygI-o_-lrE

I recently finished "Over the Earth I Come" by Duane Schultz about the Sioux uprising of 1862, very interesting. I will have to look for Albion's Seed. Thank you for the recommendation.

Gruß - Karl

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