Why are medieval buildings made of squares and rectangles? 

you don't build it in autumn so it dries out slowly, you build it in autumn so that it dries out at all. it's a common misconception that warm air dries out walls quickly, this is not the case since the walls are actually colder than the surrounding air, you get condensation on the walls, making them more moist. it's a common problem in modern times, when people who do not know this, start building houses in spring, expecting to move in later the same year, they're asking to get mold. during winter the cold dry air, that central europe gets around january, dries out walls which is why traditionally, building a house would take two to three years, depending on whether or not you wanted a cellar. if you're building a cellar you'd spend one year digging out and building the cellar, let it dry over winter, then build the rest of the house up to the roof, let it dry over winter again and then you finish with plaster, installing doors and windows and then all the internal stuff.

​@@windhelmguard5295 I understand what you are trying to say, but you don't take into consideration the increased evaporation that summer with it's warm air brings. Condensation on walls might be occurring on an inside part of an uninsulated wall during winter... But that's because the inside air is at about 23 celsius, which can hold a lot of moisture... It's that increased insides moisture in the warm air that condenses on the colder wall... But, the same warm air (surely hotter in the summer) has the capacity to absorb moisture more and faster from a wet wall then the cold air in autumn or winter... Cold air is generally dryer, yes, but that's because it can't hold too much water... And naturally won't take away much of the moisture in your wall.

@@purpleldv966 i see you didn't get what i' talking about at all, yes warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, but that is only the case if said warm air isn't already moist to begin with, which it usually is because most of the warm air we get in central europe comes from the atlantic ocean. second problem is that moist air is heavy (meaning it sinks) and dry air is light, so it rises, similarly warm air rises and cold air falls. what this does to a building is that, during summer, the moist air sinks and collects in the lower rooms of the house, where it cools off and then just sits there. that's why your cellar is more comfortable than your attic during summer. during winter on the other hand the cold dry air from outside will sink into the lower stories where the walls (receiving warmth from the soil below) are warmer than the air, the cold air goes in, heats up from the walls and the rises back out, the moisture doesn't stay inside. you can trust me on how stuff dries in cold weather, i can hang my laundry outside at -20°C and it'll dry over night, whereas during summer it needs sunlight to dry at all.

@@windhelmguard5295 That's how I remember it. I'm 400 years old.

yes, horse is not a ruminant like the cow (or a deer... or a giraffe, you know, a very medieval european animal, lol)... horse lacks the "multipe stomachs" (actually a multi-chambered single stomach) of a cow, horse's digestive system is similar to the one humans have - a simple one... In my language, horse dung is (colloquially) called "doughnut" (the holeless "berliner" kind) >:D

and; what about Dragons?

lol he can still say "i miss my MACHICOLATIONS!" every day in his dream home.. ;)

MACHOLATIONSSSZZDBBGCJBU

my medieval dream home would have a moat with a drawbridge, to keep out surprise visitors.

Machicolatiooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon

You mean houses made of durt and straw and branches and dung? How expensive? For how much do the companies sell them for?

@@purpleldv966 I'm just spit-balling here, but they may be using another material that doesn't use dung. Not only could it prevent the spread of illness, but also may potentially be better in some way.

@@andrewmurray9701 today maybe... but back in the day, it was horse shit all around! :D But i'm very curious for what price people are willing to buy a primitive house today...

Shit is not an officially approved building material in modern Germany. You'd have to find alternative insulation, I'm sad to say.😀

I reckon they would be. I only saw new houses in a new district being built in a humble little place in Fegersheim, FR. As always, I saw tagging relating to the checking of the archeologist report prior to construction. Adds so much expense... but necessary do you not think? I always liked visiting the möbile and immöbile windows for fun and inspiration 😊😊😊

I heartily agree, but be advised, not much on youtube is peer reviewed for accuracy. Then again, I've had some professors who were clearly presenting their own personal ideas as facts and I could have called them out on it, but I wanted an A and didn't want another silly tit for tat contest so I yes sired my way through to my A. So in a formula: Learning = College Education - Personal Submission. But Usually Pure Learning adds experience to your life. If you haven't tested your ideas to see if they're correct or not, you haven't learned, you've just speculated. That's just my opinion though. There's unlimited room in the comments section to write your own and see if you can do better. Show me a college with unlimited class time to fully consider everyone's thoughts. Moral of the story = go to college if you must, but not an expensive one.

In fact, you can learn a career that is self sufficient (home business) completely from information that is freely available on the internet. The hard part would be trying to get employment from a company, though a home business wouldn't need that. My personal focus is on video game design.

The difference is a professor needs to have his stuff properly sourced, but on RU-vid there is no quality control worth mentioning. Reliability suffers as a result. Excellent example: Anti-vax 'documentaries' that try to persuade you to harm or kill children.

At least in Germany a university professor could tell hwat he wants and nobody could do something about it.

Professors and other Academics tend to have other thing on the side to then just hold lectures. Often they do other stuff then teaching to on the side. In fact the teaching for many is just the side gig. Personally I think that the future of education is a mixture of different sources. In the not so distant future guided by advanced software that keeps you engage and helps you find good sources. (Call then teaching AIs or Algorithms). The future will likely be decentralized learning available at no cost. The Utility of having a educated population is just far to great in the post-information era.

*inshulating

PhilBagels Moe or ship ?

Straw & Shite

I 'ship 'em.

shad & machiculations

Rod & Beam, don't forget these!

It can also mean something profane.😏 Now-a-days, anyway.

@@ecneicsPhD4554 what-

That was my first thought, too :)

And in norwegian "bindingsverk." You can perhaps immagine how that the languages have a common origin, and actually was almost the same 1000 years ago; the woodWORK ("treVERK") is bound ("binding") together by other material

@@Overlegen they are all Germanic languages I think

I'm in!

ok ,I'm late ?

AYE!!

I'm late to the party, but I literally just shared this to a friend, who wants to build a timber cabin, as an alternative idea.

I’ve got the woods, and a whole paddock full of horse manure.

Maleha: I live in the same region. Our house was built in 1920. The outward walls are stone to basement height, above that bricks plastered. But all the interior walls are halftimbered with a wattle and daub filling. I found that out when I was replacing the electrical wiring.

I'm in my twenties, but can you adopt me?

Me two?

Thompsonator469 Found a rare pokemon!

The fun part is of course going be the dung!

Where would you get the poop from tho?

Dutch analogue: vakwerk

Aetrion depending on the age of the building it is either called Tudor (ancient) or mock-Tudor (Victorian era or later).

In the USA we call that style hu house English Tudor

@@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819 No it is not, tudor describes the time period only. Half-timbering has been done for much longer. Tudor is a variation on half timbering and is usually much more decorative.

we do, the aesthetic is called half timbering, which literally means the same as "Fachwerk" and directly translate to one another. The material used varies, so this particular one is called wattle and daub.

Wattle not Waddle.

+Fran Ohmsford he said they put the hay-fed animal shit in there for the fibers.

Wattle and daub is usually called "Tudor style" by most architects.

So when I'm house hunting, and my wife points out a house and asks, "Do you like this waddle and daub?", and I retort... "No no no honey.... Its WATTLE,. not waddle. The spelling police on Shad's channel told me so....", then I can expect to be sleeping on the couch for being a jerk. Got it.

So you like having bruises?

I would if i could~ but me and my friend are still practising with modeling and coding before doing anything like this

me too, instantly imagined a dirt box with a door

Ever heard of mud bricks?

They are also known as "post and beam". The same framing is used in straw bale buildings. The English name for dirt houses is "cob construction", but Americans use the Spanish term adobe.

He didn't say it in so many words, but he did refer to them as being 'cost effective'.

@@Mihoshika True, he did ... though I would have liked to see him dig into it a bit more, ease of maintenance, and cost of maintenance, is an important part of a building after all.

Well said, good to know.

You're really into building eh?

EWe have a lot of ply-wood tents in the USA which try to look as if they are something special by adding an attempt to look classy by adding a few Fachwerk features. they usually fail to dress up the cheap overall appearance of Fake Fachwerk. The way to see a difference is by noticing the rigidly straight lines in the careless American reproductions. The European originals often use naturally irregular pieces of wood which take a little more work but add the beautiful curved lines we see at the beach. If ladies were shaped with straight lines there might never be a next generation.

@@williamwigham7866 I love me some Fachwerk ladies. Sturdy and curved, oh my!

I think I can.

@Srithor lol

Don't forget the Limes.

Srithor lol, the exploitation of illegal immigrants as slave labor is so funny!

Oh boy, here we go getting political.

That's why they stopped using thatched roofs

@@charlesholmgren679 BUT... BUT.... WHAT ABOUT THE DRAGONS?

That’s just Sybil Shepherd

The dragons set your home on fire. The dung in the daub makes the fire burn hotter. So the dragon gets a well done lunch.

Simple Solution: Do not marry one.

There's even a fun word for that: coppice.

That _is_ a fun word. Makes me wonder if the word "copse" is related. Edit: It totally is! These days, a "copse" is a small wood standing apart from larger wooded areas, but it seems that it may once have been a specific word for a cluster of coppiced trees. Thank you for enlightening me.

most people don't know it but in historical times wood was a lot more important. In Europe there was no land that wasn't used for something or another. If the land was good to be used as a field it was used as a field. if not it was used to grow wood. Pretty much all forests were fully planned and managed. Also they didn't stop there, they altered entire landscapes to their benefits, in other cases they chopped down the woods till nearly nothing was left (at the time of the roman empire over 1/4th was covered in woods, but at WorldWar 1 it was down to 5%)

That game is racist. All the characters are cisgendered white imperialists.

its not racist, just set in a time period where what you describe was normal and being different and/or not an imperialist would get you killed very easily. It was also rare to see people who weren't from your town or the neighbouring places simply because travelling was difficult (obviously, imagine having to go from Prague to Edirne by horse or on foot...)

or, we could just say rammed earth construction is easier than both

If you look at it, log cabins where common where there was enough wood to justify building a house of massive wood.

Well of course, but that has little to do with my point.

I was thinking about a preserved cabin I saw at Grande Teton National Park while watching this video. The construction was certainly much less sophisticated... Even assuming that something like daub was used to patch the extensive gaps (you could look through the cabin in some places), it had to have been a rather drafty build in a place where the winters aren't forgiving.

Most cabins like that would have been sealed with mud between the gaps while the home was inhabited, but because it was literally just jamming some dirt in the holes without any preservation, once no longer maintained it erodes.

That's exactly what it is called, how is it that no one knows this????

@@Alexandra_Hill Yeah, but it wasn't originally a Tudor style. It was being used long before anyone ever heard of Henry Tudor, and it was used in lots of European countries. The Victorians started building in this style again and called it Tudor Revival or Mock Tudor. But, if we're talking historically, the first several centuries it was used, no one called it Tudor at all.

@@LynxSouth Ah right, didn't know that, thanks for the info.

@Илиан Алексиев Dragons don't pair well with thatched roofs: the thatching too often catches fire when the dragons sneeze or cough, and the dragons accidentally drag the thatching off the house when they take off. A lot of interspecies hard feelings got started this way. The dragons are better off living in the treeless hills of Scotland (there's also less air traffic up there).

@Илиан Алексиев Yeah, many baby dragons get sucked into jet engines, so they are better off in areas with less traffic. Expulse your dragons to the scottish mountains today - Think of the baby dragons!

I love them. It pisses me off, that some were forced to cover it up due to isolation or fire hazard regulations.

In french it's Colombage. There are a lot of those in rural villages.

A interesting fact is that in medieval times you would not have seen the Fachwerk. To prevent the wood from decaying because of the weather the whole wall was covered in a layer of mortar. The wood only got exposed in later times because people like the look.

I never heard of it before, but it makes some sense. However, AFAIK covering the wood can cause sweating and rot from within, which is something people experienced after the German government forced them to dump isolation material on their historic houses. PS: I wonder how churches looked back then. I saw a few with paint residues indicating that they were completely covered in some kind of painting. Shad referenced that fact in his video on Kingdom. It really pisses me off, seeing some churches where the paintings are allowed to peal off over time, while the church swims in money.

TheExplodingChipmunk Not true for every region. I think in northern Germany the Fachwerk is more rectangular and plain, but in other regions, Baden Württemberg for example the Fachwerk is often very elaborate and fancy because it was visible. I be heard a part of a radio interview with an expert on that topic who explained that they also examine the properties of the old houses for earthquake prove houses. The Fachwerk is often so interlocked that it won't give in, even if you remove large beams, it gets crocked bit it will stay functional

Whitewash, or...lime paint is a low-cost type of paint made from slaked lime and chalk, sometimes known as "whiting".

It doesn't stop erosion but having that extra layer between the dirt and the weather probably didn't hurt.

whitewash may not have any effect on physical erosion, but trees around the world are whitewashed up to around waist height to protect the wood from bacterial infections, and from insects laying eggs. as an extra perk, layers of whitewash eventually exfoliate making it less necessary to wash the walls.

@@samikay9599 Actually, a good layer of whitewash (made properly) is a very good waterproofing. One of the reasons adobe buildings are whitewashed is to prevent rain erosion. (Grew up in rural South America, first hand experience!)

@@samikay9599 When allowed to harden properly, and as the layers build up, it is very resistant to water and normal rain and wind erosion so will protect cob and daub pretty effectively. I have quite a bit of experience with it :)

No, no, that was funny.

Genius. Have you ever considered comedic writing?

Starts unscrewing pommel.

Santiago Nogueiras ... they had apples

I laughed. ^_^

Step one: buy a cow.

Then tell your "friend" to not do that bruce v_v

Ravensburger: One simple technique to make whitewash was to use milk! Milk would never be used on the inside of a building, but was often used to "paint" the outside of the building. And there was not much smell associated with said walls since the water evaporated away, leaving the less smelly solids on the walls. I would suspect that chalk was either added to the milk, or used by itself sometimes.

Wiki it like I did. It was a mixture of slaked lime & chalk that cured after applying & drying to give better weather resistance, to simplify.

the Knights of Shad. machicolations is their battle cry.

The Knightly Order of Shadiversity!

marebbpc Jesus Christ, I thought there was nothing lamer than Chadley's blazer, then I read this comment.

I like that second one

@Sith'ari Azithoth i like that idea~

@Rayane Larchmont It's all about that peach bass.

yeap, plastered battens/slats were the industrial evolution of wattle and daub.

The problem is that Haiti has suffered from extreme deforestation. Not a lot of usable timber is available.

Matthias Gut American Indians of the Mississippian period also. There is a picture of one in the Wattle and Daub article on Wikipedia.

I actually missed this in the video. You don't need timberframe for wattle and daub, simple posts rammed into the ground do just as good if you only want one floor.

@Ricashbringer You're absolutely right. I've chosen the example of stilt-builders just because they've been present in the area where i live in and their techniques have been really advanced. @TheWampam To be fair he did mention it at 1:48, he just didnt go into detail.

yeah, wattle and daub is caveman-era stuff. well, not really, since they live in houses not caves but you get what I mean shad's talking more about how they filled out a timberframe, a thing we do even today, with this very cheap method to make a modern house out of basically dirt

@alnoso To be fair, nobody was talking about a "caveman-era". I actually don't see what argument you're trying to make, sorry. I personally mentioned the stuilt builders during the Stone age which precedes even the earrly middle ages by about 7000 years or more where the same building methods were used. Maybe not as "shiny" as in the middle ages onwards but the same principle. People do live in what can be described as houses since thousands and thousands of years, it's not like we lived in caves and the next thing was the medieval timberframe house. Btw my initial comment was not meant as criticism of his video but solely as an addendum.

Diakun I see what you did there ;)

Canada's got wood....

Tommy O Donovan So? I dont think Canada had any mediavel era, and their colonial history starts from the 16th or 17th century, pretty late.

@@tommyodonovan3883 and lakes, and builds chiefly out of wood when off the grid. Log cabins galore.

Stone Rich meant that you could build you house completly out of stone. The first floor was kinda standard at least in the south.

TheWampam later on, yes. Although i can't think of any houses here i my area from the medieval period that are completely made of stone, apart from town halls, churches and defensive structures of course. All the rich merchants houses that enrich our town centres are from the Renaissance era.

Franz Bauer Same expression about "stone rich" exists in Swedish.

Usually it is way easier to build stone houses in mountainous regions, there is stone lying around everywhere, while in the low lands it's much harder to find.

Nie drüber nachgedacht, danke!