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Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

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Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#91

Post by bdowling »

petee wrote: post #27
brian-armstrong wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this basically subsidizing a slightly higher survival rate for a relatively few number of fires with a significant loss of space for everyone?

Im not sure if I am reading your comment right, but if you're offering a choice of less space or higher survival... I mean, think of all the wasted space and weight having 8 exit doors on a airplane; they don't crash often

> think of all the wasted space and weight having 8 exit doors on a airplane

If we could choose to fly on the same plane with 4 doors that would give us more legroom and get us to our destination in less time, I believe a lot of us would make that choice.

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#92

Post by ggcdn »

kurthr wrote: post #85

I'm looking at Billionaires Row in Manhattan, and I don't think they have two staircases. At 1400ft tall and 60ft wide, I don't think they have room. Regulations are for little people. And since they're really financial instruments, the buildings are still only half full! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g

A scissor stair can fit 2 stairways very compactly, looks like this is used on 432 park ave, for instance.

https://images.app.goo.gl/kz1826Y8xydc9G9L8

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#93

Post by afirement »

Syonyk wrote: post #87
afirement wrote: post #52

I live in a London apartment building with a single staircase, which is standard here. The difference in principle seems to relate to “what happens when there’s a fire?”. Here, we don’t need to escape if there’s a fire in the building[1], because regulations demand walls, floors and doors that can withstand many hours of fire, which provides more than enough time for the fire service to attend and extinguish the fire…

In the USA, the Sept 11 WTC collapse was another one of those "Shelter in place as deadly" incidents when "something that couldn't happen" (skyscrapers collapsing from impact/fire/{conspiracy theories go here}) did. They were "designed to withstand an airplane crash" - and, previously, other buildings had [0]. "Stay in a building that's actively on fire, don't worry, people will come and take care of it!" sounds, to…

I understand the point you're making but it doesn't consider that fire safety is made up of layers, including (but not limited to) construction, equipment, policy and response. "Ah shit my building is on fire, I better run" makes so many assumptions that it cannot be considered a meaningful fire safety strategy. For example, what if I am asleep? what if I am deaf? what if I cannot walk?

Certainly, there's disasters where multiple catastrophic failures result in horrific outcomes, but if we design policy around "absolute safety is impossible, so run" then we'll be less safe and more anxious. The safest buildings are big well-managed apartment buildings with shelter in place policies, because robust strategies that have been implemented from the ground-up are always going to beat half-baked strategies implemented based on an approximate understanding of single family home building regulations.

As glib as it is to acknowledge, apartment buildings are so safe because safety is built on the back of loss. I am benefiting from the lessons learned from every disaster that has come before.

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#94

Post by PebblesRox »

lagadu wrote: post #4
pipeline_peak wrote: post #2

> there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world Except, you know, all the tenants above the first floor scrambling for their lives on a single stairwell.

Can you post some data backing up that assertion? Neither you nor the article have posted any studies and I'm genuinely curious about it.

This page makes a claim and has links to sources at the bottom:

“International Fire Death Rate statistics show no correlation between the allowable building height for residential buildings with a single egress stair and fatality rates. The U.S. NFPA attributes the worldwide trend in decreased fatality rates between 1979 and 2007 to improved in firefighting capacities, stringent regulation of combustible materials in construction and increased requirements for modern fire safety measures like sprinklering and automatic fire alarm systems.”

https://secondegress.ca/Jurisdictions-1

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#95

Post by ramshorns »

petee wrote: post #33
istinetz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in the comments is raising the (valid) fire safety argument; however, I'd like to point out that this is a non-obvious trade-off. How many house fires are there? How many of them are in tall buildings? How many of them would block just one stair, and not two? Yes, there is a probability that an extra stair will save your life; however, this is a very tiny probability, against a certainty of extra living spac…

The problem is that you can't track how many disasters were prevented by having two means of egress, so I cant imagine there are real statistics on that I hate the space argument because its a money argument, not a real quality of life issue - make the building 1 floor taller, or don't cram your residents just because you wanted to milk 4 apts instead of 3 on a floor.

The amount of available space isn't the only benefit of using only one staircase. It also means the units can face outward in multiple directions and there's a more central common area.

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#96

Post by bdowling »

kurthr wrote: post #85

I'm looking at Billionaires Row in Manhattan, and I don't think they have two staircases. At 1400ft tall and 60ft wide, I don't think they have room. Regulations are for little people. And since they're really financial instruments, the buildings are still only half full! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g

I'm going to guess that codes don't require two stairwells if there is only one apartment per floor.

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#98

Post by Pxtl »

petee wrote: post #3

When the hallway is on fire and the only option is the stairs behind you, I really doubt you'll care about the space 'wasted' on them. And in response to Grenfell, the argument is tenants don't like fire drills; just wow. Eventually everyone forgets the reason for regulations...is there a named law for this phenomenon?

Can we not go above 2 storeys at least? It seems ridiculous when many detached houses are 3 storeys and sure don't have a 2nd stairwell.

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#99

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #69
stickfigure wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A security camera in the building showed that Tanimoto tossed a bag, probably containing petrol, at the emergency exit. Tape is also believed to have been used to impede the use of the door. It is believed this was done so that clinic occupants would have a hard time evacuating. Investigators also found evidence of additional traps in the building.[21][22] The suspect was found to possess a knife, and blocked a perso…

To be fair, one person has less of a chance of blocking all 5 exits if that many exists and they're spaced out well enough

So how many exits are needed for extremely rare circumstances? 5 stairwells plus two elevator shafts could take up >80% of floor space in a lot of high rise buildings...

Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

#100

Post by epistasis »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #9
Apreche wrote: post #6

If you want to save space maybe eliminate the parking lot/garage before you eliminate the extra staircase.

Wouldn't that make parking pretty annoying? Anecdotally, at least in SF, lack of parking options set a home's value back pretty far.

Ideally these apartments could be rented to the many many many people that prefer to not have a car of their own. Especially in SF, there's a need for more apartments like that.

To solve the parking problem, SF should require a dedicated parking spot be obtained before allowing a person to register a car with a San Francisco address. Alternatively, start charging reasonable rates for street parking, and have hugely increased rates for permits beyond a person's first.

"Free" parking has an extremely high cost on every aspect of city life.

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