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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?

#201

Post by sofixa »

dpark wrote: post #122
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,…

> there’s more danger in hundreds of people fleeing in panic down stairs (whether that’s 1 stair case or 2) than staying inside. Is there? I’ve never seen people panic when a fire alarm goes off. Maybe if the fire alarm is going off as the building is filling with deadly smoke people would panic. But then that seems appropriate (or at least better than sitting and waiting to die of smoke inhalation). Pretty sure the…

The problem isn't only a potential panic. While the people are evacuating, how does the fire brigade get to where they need to combat the fire in the apartment?

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

#202

Post by pas »

lazide wrote: post #138
xboxnolifes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, since it was deliberate, the person could almost as easily blocked both stairs. It's not comparable to an accidental fire that potentially impress a single staircase

2 stairways are much harder to block than one, especially if they are at opposite ends of the structure. One person will struggle to keep them blocked. That’s a whole lot better than 1 stairwell!

Why? Lock one, go to the other, douse it with something flammable, light it.

Anyway. Most of the world does not go up in flames regularly, despite having not having this regulation.

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

#203

Post by pas »

petee wrote: post #37
ruined wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah. it is. but only in the same way that the prohibition of tetraethyl lead merely subsidized a slightly smaller amount of brain damage for relatively few children at the significant cost of the cheapest anti-knock agent known to mankind seriously, who is pushing this weird anti-fire-code agenda and why is it in slate

"Architects and developers", the people with a financial stake in recovering floor space, and sounds like they formed a lobby. Why its in slate is confusing, especially since the article definitely has a pro stance, with little research to back it up

> research

why is questioning a regulation that already lacks evidence for its efficacy requires research?

it's plenty of research to point at the other parts of the world that is not in flames despite higher urban density and only one egress per unit.

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

#204

Post by rwmj »

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…

But also in Japan they allow for rescue/escape through special windows which can be broken in an emergency (the ubiquitous red triangles you see on all tall buildings), so in effect there are many escape routes.

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

#205

Post by pas »

ruined wrote: post #29
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?

yeah. it is. but only in the same way that the prohibition of tetraethyl lead merely subsidized a slightly smaller amount of brain damage for relatively few children at the significant cost of the cheapest anti-knock agent known to mankind seriously, who is pushing this weird anti-fire-code agenda and why is it in slate

so mandatory CSAM scanners is too big government but the absolutely not evidence based fire code is great?

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

#206

Post by ckdarby »

rcthompson wrote: post #126

I live in an apartment with 2 staircases, an elevator, and a fire escape. Several months ago, there was a fire in a first floor apartment that blocked me from using ALL of them, via either unbreathable smoke or flames. I ended up just hiding in my room until the fire department dealt with it. I'm not sure whether this argues for more staircases or fewer. (In hindsight I did have other options, but this was my first f…

How? The staircases are usually located at opposite sides of the building. The entire first floor would need to have been on fire.

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

#207

Post by Someone »

sbierwagen wrote: post #152
Syonyk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Shelter in place as deadly Similarly, the standard instruction for earthquakes is "stop drop and hold", since the advice has to be fully general, covering all people in all circumstances, including highrises where evacuation is not possible. But I live in the ground floor of a not particularly well-built four story apartment building; my desk is eight feet away from an outside door. If there's an earthquake, I'm lea…

That may not be the best idea. Certainly, if the earthquake is strong enough to put you in danger on the ground floor, objects can and likely will fall down from those four stories while you’re exiting the building.

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

#208

Post by simonebrunozzi »

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…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire

Good point. But to be fair, you should consider the injuries and deaths caused by elderly falling off stairs - 1M injuries, 12,000 deaths in the US alone. [0]

Compared that with 3,700 deaths and 16,600 injuries for ALL fires, not just fires in buildings [1].

My view would be that stairs KILL, and that new buildings should avoid stairs (at least, within a single unit) at all costs. We should also rethink how we design stairs and stair safety, and adjust building codes accordingly. Of course, this will most likely never happen.

[0]: https://www.attorneywdkickham.com/stairway-staircase-acciden....

[1]: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/

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

#209

Post by johnhowardstein »

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.

The massive parking requirements for inner cities for businesses and residential areas effectively turn city centres into suburbs of concrete.

The increased density that comes from getting rid of parking means that driving is no longer essential.

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

#210

Post by chrisseaton »

sofixa wrote: post #200
chrisseaton wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> is actually criminal

So is arson. Newsflash: sometimes people do criminal things.

But we try to design to cope with it rather than just saying ‘but they aren’t allowed to start that fire so no need to guard against it.’

And it turned out it was the norm, hence the huge panic to fix it in so many buildings.

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