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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?

#191

Post by bluGill »

landemva wrote: post #127
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of regulations are designed to make new construction as expensive as possible and limit usable floor space as much as possible. No one should be surprised that fire safety laws are going to the extreme for safety at a large cost to floor space.

Municipalities in USA are adopting code for residential new construction to require sprinklers. Big cost that most people won't do anything to stop it because it is only for really big houses (for now). In fifteen years people will wonder why new housing is so expensive and every size house has sprinklers which the homeowner must hire someone to maintain. And pay for sprinkler inspection report prior to resale. On a…

I would install fire sprinklers in my house, but there isn't a simple form based code. When I install outlets there are a few rules (were to install them, how many on a circuit, and many other details easy to look up in a wiring for dummies book), plumbing has similar rules. For fire sprinklers I need to go back go engineering and calculate all the details, not only is that a lot of work, I'm not certified to do them so the inspector won't pass my work unless I hire one of the few (and thus expensive ) engineers who are qualified.

If fire advocates really cared they would figure out the rules to follow and that would make it much cheaper for everyone.

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

#192

Post by nullifidian »

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

A giant heavy emergency ballistic reserve parachute system (currently used on smaller planes) is a much better analogy than 8 doors, which don't change the equation that much. Let's waste 20% more fuel to be able to recover from the rare all engine failure.

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

#193

Post by bluGill »

bdowling wrote: post #124
dapids wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how having more legroom and less doors makes a aircraft go faster?

An airplane with four doors instead of eight would weigh less so the plane may fly a little faster. Legroom shouldn't affect the speed.

No, the limit of airplane speed is the speed of sound, as you get very close to that aerodynamics changes greatly. While you can make a plane go faster it is rarely done.

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

#194

Post by fivea »

stickfigure wrote: post #21
rococode wrote: post #7

Here's something that happened one week ago, a perfect (and sad) example of what happens when you only have one set of stairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire > The victims gasped for air and had difficulties escaping, as there was only one escape route, with the emergency stairs and elevators being located outside the clinic. > Experts were surprised by the fire's high death toll. The authorit…

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…

> When you have someone deliberately setting fires and blocking the escape routes with a knife, you have bigger problems than just one stairwell.

The software world is well versed in the concept of a single point of failure, and the importance of eliminating it and mitigating any chance.

And yet here we are downplaying a critical design problem because it was a single point of failure?

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

#195

Post by fivea »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99
0xdeadb00f wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> So how many exits are needed for extremely rare circumstances?

Keep in mind that the bread and butter of engineering is "extremely rare circumstances".

In civil engineering, infrastructure is designed with 100 year floods and 50 year seismic events in mind.

Blocking the only exit does not come even close to be a rare event.

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

#196

Post by bluGill »

kube-system wrote: post #154
afirement wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Response was the first thing that came to mind reading your initial post. I bet you have a full-time fire service close by your building. 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. I can think of several multistory apartment buildings that I know are in volunteer fire department districts off the top of my head. And it’s not like I memorize fire districts.

Volunteer firefighters live in rural areas and mostly serve farm and shall towns. Every suburb I've lived in has full time firefighters. Most people live in cities and suburbs not rural areas.

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

#197

Post by pas »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #12
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?

The standard is "Safety regulations are written in blood." That's short enough and better than indirectly referring to it via a named 'law'.

The regulations are not evidence based, they are outrage based though :/

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

#198

Post by grumple »

lcpriest wrote: post #179
brian-armstrong wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you want a deep deep dive into how parking has shaped our cities - I would recommend reading about the “high cost of free parking” and “parking minimums”. https://blog.getmyparking.com/2019/07/01/why-parking-minimum...

Right but the cities are already there. We don't have the luxury of redefining the American lifestyle and dependence on cars with a single unit of new housing. There's no benefit for the developer - leaving out parking (aside from the mandate to include it) makes the property less desirable.

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

#199

Post by pas »

chrisseaton wrote: post #181
afirement wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apartment doors, walls and floors can withstand many hours of continuous burn. The building would never be on fire, at worst you’d have one apartment or one floors public areas on fire before it’s put out. If my apartment was on fire, no alarms would sound in the building, only within my apartment, it doesn’t matter to my neighbours. There’s certainly scenarios in which you might need to evacuate, like a bomb threat,…

> Apartment doors, walls and floors can withstand many hours of continuous burn. 24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside. > The building would never be on fire The entire building was on fire. 72 people died. > The problem with Grenfell was that building regulations had been violated, at which point, all bets about safety are off. Mistak…

The correct approach is to design for the biggest common mistakes, not for all mistakes ever. We already do this for floods, earthquakes, wind load, etc.

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

#200

Post by sofixa »

chrisseaton wrote: post #181
afirement wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apartment doors, walls and floors can withstand many hours of continuous burn. The building would never be on fire, at worst you’d have one apartment or one floors public areas on fire before it’s put out. If my apartment was on fire, no alarms would sound in the building, only within my apartment, it doesn’t matter to my neighbours. There’s certainly scenarios in which you might need to evacuate, like a bomb threat,…

> Apartment doors, walls and floors can withstand many hours of continuous burn. 24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside. > The building would never be on fire The entire building was on fire. 72 people died. > The problem with Grenfell was that building regulations had been violated, at which point, all bets about safety are off. Mistak…

> 24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside

Because the exterior was flammable, which isn't the norm and is actually criminal.

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