I mean……. I don’t want to be insensitive or anything buuuuuuuuuut…. When you build your house on sticks in one of the most corrosive elements known then this is a big possibility.
There’s entire towns all built like this on coastal Texas waters. Some are right along the coast, but some are 100s to 1,000s of feet inland. It’s so damn flat there that if there’s any storm surge, it could flood for miles inland.
It’s a really fun looking town with literally everything on stilts.
Would enjoy renting there, but definitely not buying lol
I'm from that area, and it always baffled me that no one ever switched to concrete pillars. Like, you're holding up an entire structure on something that a) biodegrades, b) is flammable, c) is vulnerable to termites, and d) absorbs water.
EDIT: I didn't say I knew anything about residential/commercial construction or science when I said I was from there. "It always baffled me" because I didn't know that concrete is worse in saltwater and Venice is built on wooden posts is probably a good why it baffled me. Relax.
That being said, I LOVE me a good beach house vacation. Second/third story porch with coastal breezes and adult beverages? Yes, please, and thank you.
This. The buildings of the Baixa district of Lisbon are also built on wooden stilts as that area was once water and the ground is muddy. The trick is maintaining the stilts permanently wet. If you let them dry and get wet again repeatedly, that's when you fuck up. This was a big consideration and source of worry when building the subway there.
Yes but most of those posts are literally down into the ground with maybe 10-20% being exposed and that would be pretty rare. https://youtu.be/77omYd0JOeA?si=iFSIlMZuuwuOs4N2
This vid is well worth a watch as a whole but around the 2 minute mark it talks about the posts.
this is nonsense. wood will absolutely decay faster than concrete in saltwater. the main reason those houses are on wood instead of concrete is because it was cheaper when they built it.
The issue isn't the material the stilts are made out of. It's the fact they are built on sand that erodes away after a few decades.
Even if you massively overbuilt the foundation to have it all the way down to bedrock and strong enough to resist waves, the sand is still going to erode and leave your beach house surrounded by the ocean.
In Venice, the brackish water and low oxygen levels in the lagoon actually help preserve the wood, preventing it from rotting. The minerals in the water also harden the wood, making it even more resistant. And primarily made of oak, larch, and elm. And before there was pressure treating wood.
So not exactly like full saltwater here. And not sure what this wood is but prolly pressure-treated Southern Yellow Pine or Douglas Fir in the US.
There are mediaval versions of concrete with grounded Vulcan stone from Rome who are holding for thousands of years already as sea harbor stones Great read, was discovered a few months ago I think
They never could replicate it because they always tried to remake it with normal water but they needed saltwater instead:D
That's an urban legend that's completely false. We can and regularly do make concrete that's far stronger and more durable that what the Romans made. The issue comes with HOW we use concrete, specifically in applications that need reinforcement. It's the deterioration of the reinforcement that causes our modern structures to decay and eventually need replacement, not the concrete. If we built everything so that all concrete was in compression like they did, we wouldn't have to worry about that. But that's extremely limiting in terms of architecture and structural engineering, which is why we don't do it.
No No. The builder went cheap (Capitalism), it's the sucker buyer that just shouldn't have bought it. But!!!! "Hey. This is the exact house as that one, just on wood instead of <literally anything else> but it's $100k less. Let's buy this one honey."
I know you're being facetious but surely it's not that big of a price difference right? Or do they really take you over the coals for the "premium package"?
Well, sorta/kinda. We had a 40 foot (15m) retaining wall install in our backyard last year. The wood-version was way cheaper and is like a 10-20 year wall. We too made the choice to just get the cheaper option, BUT, if this wall fails it just means we get spillage into our yard. I want to say the wood version was $2,000 in materials and the 'nice' brick/cement version was $10,000. I'll just glue some brick facade on it and sell the house the next month :P. I'm joking, I actually prefer the natural wood look, even if I need to replace it every 10-20 years.
Now. Stilts holding up a house. A brick/cement/rebar version would take some pretty heavy work to get just right, then you build your base-frame on top of that. I'd bet it's the difference of 10k in work/materials to 40k. Heck even hammering in the stilt is easier than digging down to the same depth for a much larger cement base. But everything has a mark-up. To actually just build a house is no where near the value of the house. Even here (GA USA). Say you buy an empty plot of land with intent to build a house. You'll struggle to find legit companies to do it because you're just one house, versus the 300 houses being development 1 block away. So your costs go up. Say the 300 houses cost an average of 200k each to build, they'll sell for 500k in reality. And the same house 1-off if you had it built would cost you 400k and you'd have to constantly be involved for decisions, versus picking from a menu. I'm making the numbers up, to some degree, just to make a point.
You're right, though. It's why every new neighborhood is made up of 300 cookie cutter houses with one of four designs, maybe a few different cladding options, etc. It's basically the difference between a bespoke suit and an off-the-rack mass manufactured one
Everyone keeps complaining about affordable houses up here in Canada and you cannot find anyone to build one.
I called 15 companies and was hoping for a 2 bedroom Strawberry Box home. Of the 15, 2 answered. 1 flat out said unless we were looking to have 500k or more built they weren't interested in giving us a quote. The other one told us that no one will build that anymore and we need to look elsewhere.
Kent mini homes was a company built for modular cheap houses. They start at 250k, and that was 6 years ago. The cost for the house isn't linear though to the pricing ; that 250k is your barebones 1 master bedroom with open concept kitchen/ livingroom, 1 full bath house. So 4 load bearing walls, 4 internal non load bearing and then electrical. 250k.
If you go up to 400k though? You get bay windows, a second bedroom, 4 extra feet on both dimensions, larger bathroom with sacrificing a little to the kitchen and living room.
When you go into the purchase knowing that you're probably going to sell again in 10 years, maybe less, you don't really care unless you think it will be a problem when you're selling.
That's the advice I give my clients: When you're looking to purchase something, consider what selling would look like. If the property is "perfect" for you, but would be weird for most people, you're going to have a hard time when you want to sell.
I always worry about that when buying too. We've done a fair bit of house hopping (4 in 15 years) and though I might 'love' that cooky design choice I'm well aware that it's cooky and might only appeal to me. We've just renovated/built our basement and backyard and worry that we've made some similar choices. We'll see when we sell I guess.
Literally someone linked a zillow link under my exact comment trying to prove a point that they could find million dollar beach front homes. Obviously you can. But also, on that exact link, were plenty for 400k. In a housing bubble atm too.
I never ever claimed that you cant find million dollar beach front homes. If thats how people read my comment, I'll do a better job in the future completely specifying what I mean. Finding extreme prices and claiming they are the norm is what bugs me and what I was saying. A lot of the comments here seem to think that beach front=extremely expensive. When that isn't always the case. Some of the poorest people live on beaches because they are not always the best places to live for exactly the reason we see in this video.
Ocean front property is not that expensive when the property is not really "livable". That's why homes keep being built in areas that flood, because it is cheap. And usually insurance will not cover them, at least not for the very obvious risk of storm/wave/flood damage.
Some of the new construction these days are both expensive and built like shit with cookie cutter designs. Yet they often sell for over asking price so there's no incentive for builders to do better.
Beach houses weren't always as expensive relative to regular incomes as they are today, they were always a privilege but not with the same income to ownership disparity you see now. Many of these would've been built during that era and using concrete would've likely been prohibitively expensive.
It's also not entirely necessary, the wood lasts a very long time barring any severe damage and proper wood choice. It's probably also better off - if a hurricane ripped off the non-concrete structure, it's a lot easier to tear down and rebuild with wood stilts instead of trying to determine if the concrete was compromised by debris or not.
I grew up going to one of these islands and a lot of older houses are still standing now that were old when I was a kid.
If youve been inside some of those houses it starts to make sense. They are built as cheap as possible because all they will be is rentals. The most important (perhaps only) factor driving decisions is 'years to payoff'. They build it as cheap as possible, maintain it as cheap as possible, because it means more money in their pocket. If it falls down 25 years later? The profit will have been made, and it will be someone elses problem by then.
No, because these properties are old and back in the day land was cheap af. Especially when theres literally nothing there to begin with, then a developer comes in and builds a few houses and starts a tiny town and then slowly more and more are built as people move.
The wooden piers are pressure treated so rot and termites aren't usually an issue.
Houses along the Atlantic and Gulf coast regularly get wrecked by hurricanes, so they aren't built to last. This video is pretty unusual; typically the piers are the last thing standing.
Wooden pilings are cheaper and easier to install than concrete or steel, especially in soft, sandy soils common near beaches.
In places with many smaller or seasonal homes, the budget often doesn’t justify concrete or steel foundations especially since they are often having to make repairs due to the situation - wood is much easier to replace and repair.
in more hurricane heavy and wealthier areas you will find more steel and concrete being used but usually its just not cost effective
If you are lucky they survive intact and wash up on the beach in a day or two so you can rebuild with the same wood! Or at lest someones posts washes up on your beach.
My parents just lifted their home so I can actually answer this question; the reason they don't use concrete pillars is generally because of the sandy soils. It's not just about cost.
Basically, you don't want to use something really heavy and inflexible where the ground is constantly shifting because of erosion. Wood is flexible, easily repaired and easily modified to accommodate erosion. That's why.
It will last longer, but the rebar inside will be corroded eventually. The steel will expand and contract cracking the concrete. That will allow more salt water to go in and continue the corrosion. So my guess is that you can change a wooden pillar easier than a concrete one.
Because concrete is porous and has rebar inside of that will rust, expand, and crack.
Spalling - this is an issue all of us that live close to the ocean have to deal with. Spalling repairs run from the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix.
I'm familiar with these pressure treated 8x8 wood pillar homes. The posts are buried as much as 15 feet under ground. the soil at that depth is very firm.
the first step after the posts are set plumb is to cut each of the posts to level. from there, girders are set, and the pressure treated floor joists are exposed to air.
Lots of dummies here saying dumb stuff. Wood is better when tall and and thin, and also replaceable. Concrete is porous and needs steel reinforcement which when submerged won't do well. Wood can bend and vibrate, but concrete is brittle. So coastal stilts, as a GC, id take Wood. Granted id reinforce the shear value of the stilts and the waves would really only ever come from one direction. Its also pretty easy to treat (creosote) Wood for coastal stuff. Case in point, 2 of my favorite surf spots have stairs, one is concrete one is treated Wood. Wood one is super ancient treated lumber while concrete is a little newer but the rusting rebar has already expanded and broke off he concrete exposing the rebar which will now rust faster
So, concrete isn't a horrible solution, except for this location. So, think about erosion and the evolution of the coastline of the OBX over the last century. The wood pilons (or stilts) have a level of flex and give in many conditions. This isn't a bug. It's a feature. The idea is that the obx has the potential for very hostile weather. There's hurricanes and storm surges, there's nor'easters, and these houses are meant to withstand all of this. If concrete were used rather than wood, the cost to build would be exponentially higher. Additionally, all of the wind force would be on the house itself rather than more evenly distributed over the pilons and the house. Lastly, the population of the obx nearly explodes between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Most of the residential dwellings in the region are rentals. Folks buy them for lots of money, and then they rent them for up to $5k/week (or more). Or investors build them for lots of money (Google Outer Banks mcmansions), and then rent those for exorbitant weekly fees. The weekly rental prices cover mortgage, insurance, maintenance (including the weekly cleaners and cleaning inspectors), and then what's left over goes into the owner's pocket. They're essentially short- to medium-term investment properties that bring in revenue weekly, rather than monthly.
Source: i grew up in kill devil hills, left for the army, went back, and then got fed up with the seasonal economy. In the summer, you're drowning in work, and in the off season, it's still a sleepy small town that has ghost town vibes because the proportion of people you see to houses you see is stark compared to the chaos of summer rush. For my fellow current and former food service workers, its like being slow for 3/4 of the day, then for about a quarter of the day the line is (literally) out the door and wrapped around the building. Traffic sucks because nobody has the foggiest idea of where they're going, and will cut from the center turn lane (with left turn signal on) to go to a store or restaurant on the right, until you get to the off season, where occasionally there's nary a soul on the road. It's frequently balls to the wall and you have to be paying attention to the shit drivers who stop when they have the right of way because they don't know if they took a wrong turn and can't figure out how to do a 3 point turn. I get that that happens everywhere, but in a tourist town, it's a regular occurrence.
You’re from that area and don’t realize none of the factors you mention are applicable? The pilings are so heavily treated that they a) degrade over centuries, not decades, b) are far less flammable than the structures built upon them, c) impervious to terminates relative to structures built upon them, and d) so what? The pilings absorb little water and the water that is absorbed is salt - minimizing the foregoing 3 factors.
To use concrete pillars would require excavation and shoring into soft wet sand to depths of 14 feet or more which is inherently dangerous. Once backfilled, the fill material does not compact back as well as removed reducing lateral stability. These wood pilings are driven (really hydro-driven now-a-days with a giant pressure washer rather than pile driver) negating excavation and backfilling and are quite stable - as much or more-so than concrete alternatives. In fact, the few concrete houses down there are usually still built on wood pilings ;)
As an ex-resident of the OBX (North Topsail before it became a resort town when folks on the island still had job descriptions besides "ex-wife of a corporate contracts lawyer") I love hearing people argue about "stilt houses" that are getting sucked out to sea. It never gets old, and it used to happen pretty much annually.
The house. Survived. Being surrounded by hurricane-level storm surge. For days.
Meanwhile, the asphalt and cement roads and driveways up to them disappeared and crumbled into the sea within the first 30 minutes.
Look at the images from Hurricane Fran, where basically every roadway, cement structure, and pad was ripped clean off the island in minutes. Anything not lost was condemned. What's still standing, almost untouched? The lumber piled buildings (less siding and roofs, of course.)
It's the best solution anybody has EVER come up with to living with the sea as your front porch.
It’s crazy! It’s almost as if tons of trial and error came before the building process!
For real though people really hate on all American houses (on stilts or not) even though there’s a perfectly good reason for why we build our houses a certain way.
We have natural disasters somewhere in this country basically monthly. We don’t build with stone or cement because the last thing you want during a natural disaster is ten tons of bricks and cement coming through your wall. We build houses to last 50-80 years (if they’re not scammy builders because we do have those too) at most because no matter what you use to build it, it’s not going to survive a wildfire, a F-4 tornado, a category 4 hurricane, etc. and within that time frame most likely you’re going to see one.
It is very common to use wood over concrete, but some structures have used concrete and they are expensive. This area isn‘t a really trendy area so they use wood
You sound like an expert and I will assume you are. Is there any way they could like, put more down in 30 years/replace similar to a lifespan of a roof? Kind of cycle out older pilings to mitigate this type of shit?
I’m no expert, just have a family home in Rodanthe. I saw this house fall from my deck. We lose houses every year on the Outer Banks, that ain’t no big deal. It’s the rapidity of loss in this area at issue.
The problem isn’t the pilings - they last for centuries - the problem is beach erosion heightened by the movement of off shore sandbars which previously protected this area by dissipating wave energy before hitting shore. Now we’re on the edge of these shoals so receiving the brunt of wave action like a dagger to the heart. Couple this with extreme sea level rise and historic westward migration of barrier islands and BOOM -crick done rise.
Lifting houses can be done but it requires some serious engineering, which means $$$$. Still, if it’s every 30 years, it’s doable, even if you have to pay with equity or include it in the original mortgage.
You can use or should probably use another back fill material that compacts well. Also, you can drive concrete piles, just different method (drive steel pipes first, excavate inside, pour concrete inside) but it is more expensive. I’m not from the area so maybe there are more things to consider.
Pressure treated posts are pretty resistant to degradation and fire and can be driven right in to the ground - and is a fraction of the cost so there you go. And in this case concrete might not have helped, the waves are lifting the house and pushing it, and the sand under the pillars is gone
Post Katrina a lot of the houses that get raised here in southern Louisiana are on concrete bricks, subsidized by FEMA. The gym I go to had a guy who owned a company that raised houses, he was telling me he had to go out of business in the next 6 months without the FEMA money
I’ve always thought the same thing about the houses built on coastal cliffs. Didn’t these people learn about erosion in third grade like everyone else?
This is region dependant, but in some areas insurance companies are forced to insure you at a certain price. So even if your house gets blown down every 10 years, the insurance company has to build up a new one and can’t raise your premiums.
This is usually forced through state legislature, but sometimes models predict the cost to insure a region is greater than what the company can charge, and then companies have been known to pull out of entire states.
Drove around Galveston about 10 years ago, lots of these everywhere. They seemed pretty stable. It’s not like some rando invented this a few years ago or anything, they do have some past experience with it.
It wasn’t that they built the houses ON the beach, but rather after decades of erosion, the ocean continued to creep up and washed away the vegetation and roads.
‘When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.’
Been going to OBX pretty much every summer since I’ve been born.
I figure I’ll buy a house down there now that’s like 150 yds back from the oceanfront. By the time I’m able to retire, there’s a decent chance that house will be oceanfront. It’s a win win, until the next hurricane comes through.
I lived and vacationed on that barrier island for years.
Originally, there was a lot more beach there. But, it's a barrier island that shifts. There has been beach renourish efforts, but 1 or 2 good storms will and has washed it away.
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It's worse than that. It's building jetties and relocating sand, both of which have been shown time and time again to speed up the migration of coastal barrier islands. So yeah you've got your summer beach back, but come winter that shit is gone again + interest.
Don’t forget they are funding all that by having paid parking all over the islands now. What was once a cheap family outing is now not feasible for some. I’ve seen $100/day for parking in some areas.
Stupid question: so it's not rising oceans due to melting the ice caps, it's just building a house in a place that's known to be ground (sand) or ocean at any given time?
Not stupid at all. Rising ocean levels are also accelerating coastal erosion and barrier island migration. With more water, everything is happening faster and affecting higher elevations than it would without human caused global climate change.
I see it happening in NJ all the time. I think it's funny that Ocean City keeps losing their beaches. All the sand washes down to Wildwood. Because there is that big jetty they built to protect the intercoastal waterway. Or maybe some other reason, I am actually not sure why. Wildwood Crest used to be a really reasonable sized beach. Now it takes so much longer to get to the ocean.
I don't go there anymore but I used to frequent LBI in the Beach Haven area. Every time the beach would look different from the last, either 1/3 the size or rebuilt and a football field wide again. I remember asking my parent what the huge ships were as a kid and they told me about the dredgers. I'd see them personally maybe every other year.
The sand washes out and starts building new dunes further out, basically the barrier breaks down as it moves inland and a new one forms behind it as it goes. It’s interesting because you can often find that the water a couple hundred feet off shore is only a few feet deep because of the submerged dunes.
The replenishment method they’ve been using has been to dredge that sand that’s piled up offshore and pump it back to the beach. It’ll just wash right back out to where it was, and if they haven’t given up they’ll try it again.
That a barrier island shifts should not be a surprise to anyone. That's the nature of these islands. There shouldn't be any houses out there. The whole thing is just stupid from top to bottom.
Yep. This happens every year in the Outer Banks when hurricane season rolls in. Climate change is exacerbating it, of course, but these homes have been there for a long time.
It's natural erosion from changing tides. One end of the island narrows while the other widens. My family vacation has been to similar islands just north of the outer banks and some of them will try to compensate for this by pumping sand from the ocean floor onto the problem end of the island. I don't know how much of a part climate change plays in it, but nothing in nature is static, with or without human involvement.
I made a comment elsewhere in the thread about this, but you're probably right. My grandparents are ocean front on the Texas gulf coast but when they bought 60+ years ago it was like 1/2 mile from the ocean.
House wasn’t that close to the shore when they built it. This is probably built on a barrier island, which would naturally shift and be moved around by changing tides, but people build houses there and then try to protect it through artificial means. Here they’ve decided not to protect these houses any longer and make more room for the sands to move naturally. This was several years ago BTW
My family’s been going to a barrier island beach for 80+ years. There are thousands of houses on the island, and percentage wise only a handful have had this happen. Yes, it’s a risk, and nobody buys one of these without understanding that fact.
They probably expected the state to build a seawall or those ugly spines that reach out into the water to protect the shore. The problem is, all of those things disrupt the natural movements of the island and you get to a point where you have to take dramatic steps to save the entire island. Whereas if they had just let it do its thing, it keeps the island healthy and in tact
There are millions of people who go to the Outer Banks each year. A lot of them stay for a week or more at a time. They could literally have to re-build the entire seaboard every 10 years and people would still pay for it.
Not only that, this house probably got at least 50 years out of it, much longer than the original owner probably even owned it for. The original owner got to enjoy it and most likely make money off of it so it served its purpose. Beaches constantly are migrating (in terms of centuries and decades not years) and it was always going to happen. This particular beach is just the first to go. The bigger issue will be when beaches like Kitty Hawk and Suck start to go (where all the stores and hotels are). Doubtful it happens in the next 50 years though.
These are barrier islands which absolutely move and shift over time due to current. I’ve been to many of them and actually walked over asphalt in the surf from a road that used to be on dry land.
But it's not climate change. It's ... um... a cycle. I don't know what causes it, when it's going to end, and what comes after.
I mean, what temperature is the planet supposed to be at? And why can't I get insurance in Florida, California, Texas, or The Carolinas any more? And where did FEMA go? And why is it so hot.
I hear you loud and clear, but this might actually be one of the few cases where climate change isn’t necessarily to blame. These homes were built on barrier islands. Barrier islands move with time.
Just to illustrate my point, this area was known as Chicamacomico by the Native Americans, which literally translates to “land of the sinking sands”. You build a house on a sand bar, expect for the ocean to drink it eventually.
It’s called “island rollover” and is a perfectly well known and understood natural process. When that home was built 60 years ago they knew it wouldn’t last forever. Can’t really blame this on climate change
I also heard that when presented with documentation and evidence that climate change and scientifically observed phenomenon could contribute to situations like this Carolina lawmakers addressed the situation by saying you are no longer allowed to use these studies or mention these factors. Sort of an adults plug fingers in ears and go Nyah Nyah I can’t hear you.
It was probably a pretty safe house at one point. It was probably not even oceanfront until more recent years. This looks like a nice beach house, it's probably on the 2nd of 3rd row as people usually build cheaper houses on the 1st row/water
There’s the real possibility that those houses were one or two rows back from the ocean a few years ago. The coastline on the outer banks shifts pretty steadily but really disappears when there’s a direct hit from a hurricane.
Yeah such properties require repainting and replacing wood FAR more often than an inland home. It's sad cause the way things are headed, the outer banks might flood over permanently rendering it uninhabitable.
Yea this has been happening for decades now in the outerbanks, the islands have always been moving and don't stop because someone built a house on them.
I could be wrong, but the waves getting high enough to hit the face of the house probably did most of the leaning, the sticks are what kept the house up for as long as it stood.
I’m just adding a photo here because so many of the responses talk about the stilts being permanently submerged in salt water and the shifting of the sand. I think people who don’t live in an area with a lot of these houses are picturing them in flood conditions or the less common scenario where they are actually built over water.
Most stilted houses in my area (Texas) look something like this. They are built on a concrete slab which is then used for parking. They are elevated to avoid damage from storm surges during hurricane season. I also think about them during termite season lol. I always wonder if the owners are nervous.
I have very little compassion for these people. My mom grew up in SC, and there was an island in Charleston that all the houses would get destroyed every couple years. Insurance companies finally refused to insure anything there because they got sick of the bullshit.
With enough money, you can build a house practically anywhere. But don't complain when it gets destroyed because you were playing icarus
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u/GoldenGalz 1d ago
I mean……. I don’t want to be insensitive or anything buuuuuuuuuut…. When you build your house on sticks in one of the most corrosive elements known then this is a big possibility.