241–250 of 562 posts
Why not get rid of all fire safety protections? We can really get moving then. The ADA is pretty onerous, if we just ignore that we can have it up in half the time! I don't REALLY need all that electrical grounding in my house, all that extra copper adds up you know, think of how many more houses we could build without it?
yes?
Why have regulations if they are enormously expensive and don't actually do anything for safety?
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That is of course the ideal, but what, you're just gonna trust them?
I don't trust a popup a single bit more than no popup. So it's not like I trust anything either way. Get rid of the popups. Any solution needs to be legal and not involve popups.
This is a fantastic article. Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket. Minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, square footage minimums, floor-area ratio restrictions, overzealous height restrictions, parking requirements, abuse of environmental reviews, historic designations, community reviews, overzealous MFH requirements (like double-stair), below-market mandates, all have work…
Don't forget about street widths being determined by the ability to turn around fire equipment.
> The common hallway that must connect the two stairs in a modern American code-compliant building cuts the structure in two, cutting off the possibility of floor-through apartments found in traditional American multifamily architecture like the New York City tenement or the Los Angeles dingbat. What requires a common hallway? The example single-stair plans seem like an equal number of staircases could be bolted on t…
> What requires a common hallway? Effectively, the building code they are talking about the value of changing. Fully enclosed stairways at the back for each "slice" would be cost prohibitive, and exterior "fire escape" type stairs are not allowed either.
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The intention of the double stairwell requirement, is that you are not supposed to have your access point to the stairwell by an obstruction, and there should be a maximum access time to the stairwell. One notable requirement of single-stair buildings where they are legal in the US, is that 1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress 2. the sin…
also fire suppression system (sprinklers) and pressurized stairwells are mandated.
The province of British Columbia (BC) seems to be considering it: * https://morehousing.substack.com/p/bc-single-stair * https://morehousing.substack.com/p/single-stair See also: > Number of storeys permissible with single exit stair around the world. * https://www.coolearth.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image-1.... * https://www.coolearth.ca/2022/03/16/building-code-change-to-... The diagram illustrates that the lon…
London has many high-rise buildings, but the many narrow roads and tight corners mean they don't operate the tallest fire trucks.
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Unfortunately people from the US (including those who have never lived in an apartment or thought about fire regulations before) instinctively get really worried about this whole idea and assume people are just going to get killed. Happens in this thread and whenever it is brought up in social media. The original article talks about statistics, various extra measures to ensure safety and limiting to buildings 6 store…
I think there is some of that certainly, but it's also worth being cautious anytime a developer says they want to abandon fire codes that were put in place to save human lives so that they can add greater density housing. Fire codes got where they are in part because developers were fine with packing people into unsafe housing situations. Let's not let our guard down entirely now.
There's an assumption here that the code was put in place to save lives. There's a whole lot of regulation that exists simply to make it difficult to build. Lots of people profit when housing is scarce (or unavailable to certain demographics), and want to keep it that way.
It is always worth asking what the point of a regulation is, and whether it accomplishes the thing it claims to be trying to accomplish.
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The reason five over ones are popular in the US has nothing to do with staircase requirements. The reason is money, like always. You can stick build residential buildings up to five stories and it’s way, way cheaper than reinforced concrete and steel. They are mega complexes because the financial stakeholders want to maximize the available land and rents.
“maximize the available land” Part of the author’s point is that single-stair buildings can be built economically on much smaller pieces of land. This increases the number of plots — especially in urban environments — on which you can build MFH, plots which developers today wouldn’t even think of. Legalizing single-stair buildings would not really change the viability of big apartment complexes, you’re right. But it…