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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#981

Post by kylehotchkiss »

datavirtue wrote: post #908
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the sense of entitlement towards every nuclear family owning a building constructed with stone, steel, and concrete. None of these things are available in a level of abundance to grant them to every person alive. While concrete only construction is more common in developing countries I certainly question the quality. I lived in an apartment like this in South Asia and it had no weather insulating a…

Termites are only a problem if you enable them with a source of moisture. If you have termites eating your house something else has gone very wrong.

Southern California would like to chat. They’re so pervasive here that the fumigation chemicals used are one of the states largest greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#982

Post by drysine »

dml2135 wrote: post #915
drysine wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'll develop mass production de-salinification plants and have enough water. And then you'll have the brine problem.

Can you explain this problem for those unfamiliar?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/slaking-the-world...

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#983

Post by avianlyric »

icehawk wrote: post #521
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space. This simply is not true for a furnace or electric resistive heat. My furnace produces 0.9W of heat for every 1W of energy input. More efficient ones…

There’s a reason I say living space, I.e. a space with people living in it.

A living space will naturally heat itself with zero furnaces or electric heaters. Because the living things inside it will always produce heat (at least until they cease to be living). On the other hand, you’ll have a hard time getting living things to cool any space they occupy.

> On the other hand my air conditioner moves 3.5W of heat outside for every 1W of energy input.

Heat pumps work both ways, and it’s still easier to heat a space with a heat pump than cool it. Sure your AC can move 3.5W of heat for 1W of energy input. But that means 1W of energy allows you to remove 3.5W of heat from a space. But if you used the heat pump to heat the space, you would get 4.5W of additional heat, because that 1W of energy used to power the heat pump becomes waste heat that can be trivially captured and used to heat the space.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#984

Post by avianlyric »

loandbehold wrote: post #839
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

Cooling takes less energy per BTU moved vs heating. In AC/heat pumps that's represented by SEER rating for cooling and HSPF rating for heating (heat pumps). Modern ACs have SEER ratings for 20+ and HSPF ratings for 8+. What it means is that on average, spending 1 BTU equivalent of electrical energy cools down the house by 20 BTU. Similarly for heat pump it means spending 1 BTU of electricity heats up the house by 8 B…

You can use a heatpump for heating as well. Then not only do you get all the energy moved by the heat pump to warm a space. But you can also use the waste heat created by the heatpump for heating as well.

In a cooling scenario, all waste heat is just that, waste. But in a heating scenario, waste heat isn’t waste, it’s additional heat you can use, and reduces the total amount of energy you need to inject into the system.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#985

Post by avianlyric »

szvsw wrote: post #469
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

A lot of what you said is intuitively/directionally correct, but misses a lot of important physics related to heat transfer in buildings and operational questions of space heating equipment. This is your most accurate/relevant point: > All of this is ignoring the fact that it’s easy to create a tiny personal heated environment around an individual (it’s called a woolly jumper). Whereas this is plainly wrong: > It’s m…

Everyone seems to be making the same mistake here. As you say:

> Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation

You know you can use a heatpump to heat a space as well right? Then you get to move 3 units of heat into the space, plus you also get to use that extra unit energy used to power the heatpump, because the heatpump turns the unit of energy into waste heat! (After all energy can’t be destroyed, so it has to go somewhere).

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#986

Post by avianlyric »

leguminous wrote: post #550
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

This is a good point that I had not considered, and I will add a few additional thoughts: * In cold weather, solar heat gain can work in your favor as well. Much of the effect will depend on the orientation, shading, and properties of your windows, though. On the other hand, as another commenter pointed out, more sun in southern, cooling-dominated climate can also mean more, cheaper electricity. * If you have a heat…

> If you have a heat pump water heater, it will actually _cool_ your space significantly. The heat is transferred from your home to your water and mostly goes down the drain with it.

In a cold environment, you can just take that energy from outside. If you’ve got a heatpump, then you can always set it up make sure that waste heat produced can be used to heat a space, and make sure that it’s always scavenging energy from a place you either want to keep cool, or from outside.

> Phoenix, on the other hand, is the hottest city in the country and its summers are some of the hottest in the world. In general, the hottest cities are still closer to what we'd consider room temperature than the coldest are.

If we’re talking survivable environments here, then phoenix isn’t a good choice. Places like Delhi are better where not only are the temps high, but so is the humidity. At times hot enough and humidity enough that the wet bulb temperature rises higher than human survivable conditions, in which case, without heat pumps, it’s literally impossible for humans to survive more than a few hours.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/wet-bulb-t...

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#987

Post by avianlyric »

triceratops wrote: post #716
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference. In Alberta or Minnesota, where the delta in the winter can be as high as 60 degrees centigrade (-40 outside, +20 inside) but only 20 degrees centigrade at most in the summer (+45 outside, +…

> Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference.

That’s moving the goal posts. You can always use a heatpump to heat a space.

Any space you want to keep comfortable will always be easier if the outside is cooler than your target temperature. Everything in that space is going to produce heat as a natural consequence of expending energy into any form. It’s always possible to add insulation to minimise the amount of energy you loose into the surrounding environment, and you can always modulate how much additional energy you let escape using a simple opening in that insulation.

On the other hand, if the external space is hotter, then you must always expend additional energy to move waste heat energy accumulating in the space into the high energy space outside. There is no passive manner that can allow you to cool a space surrounded by a hotter space, you’re always fighting against the temperature gradient. And if you want your living, heat producing, organisms to keep living, then you need to get rid of the heat they produce.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#988

Post by avianlyric »

overflow897 wrote: post #489
avianlyric wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat th…

"cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.

Add insulation, and use a heatpump. The more insulation you add the easier it easy to keep a space warm. Add enough insulation, and eventually the waste heat production from human activities inside the space will equal or surpass the heat loss through the insulation, removing the need for additional heating.

Insulation obviously also helps keep a place cool. But no amount of insulation will ever remove the need for cooling if the outside is warmer than the inside. Energy is always going to move from a hot place to a cold place, but at least insulation lets us control how quickly that happens.

Also the limit on air sourced heat pumps in cold conditions is basically caused by water freezing on the evaporator coils, effectively adding a layer of insulation that limits how much energy can be drawn from the air, we’re not really limited by the refrigerants. As other have mentioned you dig down to find a better source of heat, and often you don’t even need to dig far, a 20-30cm trench is often enough. Although in super cold climates you’ll need to go deeper to make sure your through the frost layer in the winter.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#989

Post by dietr1ch »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #944
dietr1ch wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here in the seismically stable UK I don't think the US has enough seismic activity to be much different. Chile and Japan do fine with solid construction and periodic 6-8 Richter earthquakes. California is allegedly a seismic state within the USA and it rarely sees a 4 degree one, and when it happens it makes it to the US national news (and sometimes even to the news back home, but as a comedy break because people d…

I think you underestimate the frequency, strength, and geographic distribution of strong earthquakes in the US. There is nothing comparable in Europe. You have to engineer for the strongest earthquake, not the average one, and on the US west coast that is M8-9+ depending on the specific location. The construction techniques in Japan and US are very similar because both have similarly extreme earthquakes. The entire w…

> There is nothing comparable in Europe.

Right, Europe has little seismic activity, so the rare 4M_W earthquake takes down random 400yo buildings easily. My point was that building with bricks was not a problem, Japan and Chile build houses and skyscrapers just fine.

> I think you underestimate the frequency, strength, and geographic distribution of strong earthquakes in the US

Sir, I'm from Chile. Beyond earthquakes in Alaska the US is no match, and that land it's not even close to the US. I promise you the Danish construction code has not been heavily influenced by Greenland.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#990

Post by jopsen »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #640
jopsen wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably they will, at one point maybe that banks wills stop financing it. But only when you can't get mortgages, people will begin to stop, and even then some will continue. It'll take a long time for these changes to trickle out. Especially, when real estate prices in LA are so high. It might be faster to fix this with zoning. Or if the area is so desirable, find a way to engineer your way out of it.

We don't want fast fixes. Things change, building materials could change, fire fighting methods could improve etc. If we can send the right signal via the right price for the risk, people can react accordingly to either reduce or avoid the problem.

> people can react accordingly to either reduce or avoid the problem.

Yes, but lots of people won't be consider all factors when buying a house.

Prices are high, houses aren't on the market long, when you do find a house that matches your criteria, are you going to consider if it's safe from floods, fires, earth quakes, etc?

You're already factoring in schools, distance to work, shopping options, etc.

Not to mention the fact that you're mostly worried about whether the house has mold, termites, pest, or construction deflects, how long time to the roofing need to be replaced.

Asking normal people to factor in natural disaster probabilities is difficult.

Maybe, it's better to not allow construction is such places through zoning.

I bet most home buyers spend more time looking for pests, mold, leaky pipes, etc, than they do investigating wild fire risks.

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