So there was a new development in my area of standalone houses planned in my area, with nice brick façades, so I went along to the model house to find that the exterior was not brick at all, but plastic printed to look like bricks.
Due to the earthquake risk in Japan, I wasn’t actually expecting a house actually made of bricks, but brick tiling on the exterior would have been nice at least.
Being the dozy bastard I am, I’d never really paid attention to housing materials before, but on closer inspection all the recently-built houses in my area seem to have this plastic cladding on the outside, whereas there is more variety in what older houses are made of.
So my question to anyone who has bought one of these is – what’s it like? Am I misguided in my gaijin thinking that plastic cladding looks cheap and naff? Is it not plastic but “resin” or some composite super material that is suited to the Japanese climate?
13 comments
It’s just a type of siding. You don’t have [vinyl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_siding) or other plastic based siding where you come from? Siding is an alternative to paint and typically lasts longer. Just like paint, there are cheap and expensive options. It sounds like the ones you are seeing are the former.
Life in plastic? It’s fantastic.
A house of bricks wouldn’t last long before developing huge cracks. If you want a modern house it’s going to have cladding on it. The house is made of wood, not plastic.
It might be insulated siding. My friends were just looking at this for their home. The brand they were looking at was aluminum with a styrofoam backing, about 2” thick.
It’s not plastic but a special type of siding. It protects from fire spreading out and into your house. Also, this material is often hydrophilic, so it doesn’t attract dirt, dust and water. It stays clean and it’s also easy to wash.
Under that you have the insulation, house frame (wood or steel), walls, etc.
Yeah most of it is engineered plastic to resist the uniquely harsh natural environment in Japan
It’s pretty weird coming from the Uk where we can live in houses that are 300years old without blinking an eye, but a 20 year old house is starting to be valued as worthless by the bank!
I still haven’t worked out how much of the whole ‘30 year life span’ is due to material degradation or if it’s to do with construction industry racketeering. Sure, concrete gets gradually spalled and cracked by the temperature changes and earthquakes, so I get that. But then you have this insistence that houses need to be repainted every 10 years because the paint doesn’t last that long, which is nonsense.
I have it. It’s decent. It does indeed stay much cleaner than painted which inevitably looks gross after a couple years. (Part of ours is white, still looks great).
I mean wouldn’t that be the same a siding? Not really a big deal. Pretty much 0 buildings in Japan are brick, especially houses.
Most detached houses in Japan are like this. In Japanese it’s called サイディング (siding ?). The sidings are attached to wooden frame. The wooden frame are built on top of concrete.
If you want real bricks, you have to installed many other things to keep your house “in-spec” with the government’s earthquake regulation, which means you have to pay much more for your house.
I live in one, no difference whatsoever, except for how it looks on the outside, e.g. Siding says “I’m normal salary man”, Bricks says “I’m a wealthy mofo!”.
When I built my house, i was told over 90% of new detached homes have some form of siding and they fall into four main categories of siding types:
・Ceramic-based
・Metal-based
・Wood-based
・Resin-based
Again, I was told ceramic is the most common now and are made with some form of concrete mixed with fiber. You can get different thicknesses of the siding and if you handle it you can see that it feels much like a sheet of concrete with either a printed pattern on it or ceramic glaze that has the pattern/colors embedded in it. As you go up in price, the thickness of the siding goes up as well as the quality of the pattern/glaze that is put on it.
I agree my grandma’s house has it and it looks cheap imo. Definitely durable and I don’t actually care about it a lot so not an issue
It’s the further development of tiles used on the older buildings. Tiles looked a lot like a WC and plastic at least mimics some traditional materials. The reason for that is the humidity. Tiles in the bathroom are good at keeping humidity inside, while tiles on the outside keep the humidity outside.
I live in one of those plastic houses. It’s ugly, but otherwise it’s alright.
It’s not plastic, it’s vinyl siding and has been a staple of the building industry worldwide for literally decades (at least 50 years if not longer).
In this case they’ve just molded/painted it so it resembles something other than the boring fake wood clad vinyl siding you are probably used to seeing so it’s more aesthetically pleasing.
Go to any hardware store website from your home country and type in vinyl siding brick print and look at all the options that will pop up.