20 ms·
Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
- PebblesRox 5y agoJust the other day I was reading the Second Egress website (linked in the article) and found it fascinating. Lots of examples, images, details, data, etc. https://secondegress.ca/ https://secondegress.ca/
- pipeline_peak 5y ago> 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.
- lagadu 5y agoCan you post some data backing up that assertion? Neither you nor the article have posted any studies and I'm genuinely curious about it.
- PebblesRox 5y agoThis 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 https://secondegress.ca/Jurisdictions-1
- pipeline_peak 5y agoFatality rates sure, but what about injuries? People getting trampled over, falling downstairs.
- Sharlin 5y agoAnecdotal, but I've never heard of an apartment building fire where people get trampled trying to escape. This in Europe where many if not most countries do not mandate a second escape route for midrise buildings. It's simply not a problem. You're supposed to shelter in your apartment anyway, which almost always is much safer than the hallway in case of a fire.
- pipeline_peak 5y ago“ Overcrowding during emergency evacuation can cause crowd stampede and trampling that will lead to serious injuries or fatalities. ” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960077919304576 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09600...
- Sharlin 5y agoYes, but that is about large crowded events specifically, where the crowds can be tens to hundreds of times larger than the number of residents in a midrise, and remaining in a specifically constructed fire-and-smoke-resistant shelter (one’s home) is not an alternative.
- roywiggins 5y agoWhy not fire escapes?
- lcpriest 5y agoThere can be other regulations for single stair that can prevent this. Limiting number of units per floor or providing balconies that are ladder accessible. https://www.treehugger.com/single-stair-buildings-united-states-5197036 https://www.treehugger.com/single-stair-buildings-united-sta...
- petee 5y agoWhen 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?
- brian-armstrong 5y agoIs this basically subsidizing a slightly higher survival rate for a relatively few number of fires with a significant loss of space for everyone?
- dymk 5y agoWhy are you qualifying with “slightly” and “relatively few”? Relative to what?
- mikysco 5y agoPresumably relative to countries that don’t share these same 2-staircase fire regulations
- petee 5y agoIm 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
- Apreche 5y agoIf you want to save space maybe eliminate the parking lot/garage before you eliminate the extra staircase.
- brian-armstrong 5y agoWouldn't that make parking pretty annoying? Anecdotally, at least in SF, lack of parking options set a home's value back pretty far.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- als0 5y agoParking annoyance versus saving lives….I’d know what I’d pick…
- ncallaway 5y agoYeah, but you have to weigh that against the annoyance of slowly choking on black smoke, while the temperature rises and cooks you alive.
- brian-armstrong 5y agoI don't think anyone's weighing the two options against each other? The space used by a first-floor garage can't be used by stairs instead, unless it was like one really big set of stairs just to the second floor.
- josephcsible 5y agoBecause EVs that charge from solar energy can park in hammerspace instead of needing to use real-world parking spaces like ICE cars do.
- epistasis 5y agoIdeally 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.
- rococode 5y agoHere'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 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 authorities are investigating how victims became trapped and the floor filled up with smoke so quickly. > Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Yasushi Kaneko ordered the inspection of some 30,000 buildings in Japan that have three or more floors, but only a single stairwell.
- syshum 5y agoYea, every fire code I know how requires a minimum of 2 escape route for occupancy
- roywiggins 5y agoYou can satisfy that with a fire escape in a lot of cases, I would have thought?
- bobthepanda 5y agoIn practice, usually fire escapes are more harm than help. A fair amount of disasters happened where in the event of an actual fire, the fire escape had been poorly maintained and became overloaded so that they fell to the ground during the evacuation.
- Sharlin 5y agoAs the article states, there are lots of Western countries (including mine) that do not require a second stairwell for midrise apartment buildings. It's not a theoretical question. In a properly compartmentalized apartment building, you should not exit your apartment unless it's the one that's on fire.
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- Abroszka 5y agoIs it because of the building materials used? I think wood is super common in the US and wood burns easily. If one flat catches fire, all of them do.
- Sevii 5y agoWood is very common in single story houses in the US. Large apartment buildings are made of concrete and steel. The tallest wood framed project I've seen was 3-4 stories with the first two concrete.
- skybrian 5y agoFire codes were recently changed and now buildings with 4 or 5 wooden floors are becoming common: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
- jakear 5y ago> 5-over-1 buildings often feature secure-access interior hallways with residential units on both sides, which favors a U, E, C, or right-angle building shape. L?
- unethical_ban 5y agoThis is a fascinating thing for me, and it makes me want to truly study architecture. Though, like so many pieces of art and society, America my home seems to be sliding further from anything that doesn't optimize for money, or... optimization. But the idea of code defining form, and how we can meld safety, efficiency and beauty together - that's interesting to me. I found this article [1] on the wiki page of 5-over-1 and find it hilarious. It's an interesting and biting critique of a number of styles that are applied to 5-over-1. I wonder if we will ever have again in this country truly beautiful housing for the masses, or if we will look back on the 2000s and 2010s US as we do now, looking at Soviet bloc apartments from the 60s and 70s. https://www.westword.com/arts/denver-is-drowning-in-awful-architecture-here-are-the-hateful-eight-7818984 https://www.westword.com/arts/denver-is-drowning-in-awful-ar...
- Grakel 5y agoA staircase takes up about the plan size of one bedroom. If that's too much, you're probably trying to cram too many people into a building. There's efficiency, and then there's, "more people live in this city than can all fit on the sidewalks." Maybe just don't.
- ahahahahah 5y agoI'm surprised that anyone could have that response after reading the article. It is very clearly talking about space wasted primarily in hallways and in the restrictions that requiring two stairways puts on floorplans.
- Grakel 5y agoYep, that's what I'm talking about. Those things are important negative space. What would you get, one more apartment per floor? Let's not crawl over each other like ants.
- Gigachad 5y agoYou could get larger units or cheaper units since everyone is paying for that floor space which is potentially not required.
- Pxtl 5y agoThe problem is the 2nd staircase creates the need for a hallway between the staircases. Look at the floor plans in the article. In one you've got units clustered around a staircase landing. In the other you've got a long hallway and 2 staircases with units along the hallway.
- Grakel 5y agoYes and when the fire alarm goes off every family crushes into that tiny space and tries to get down one staircase. Not to mention countless other bad situations. There's qualitative reasons not to maximize this. Build up one more floor, problem solved.
- will4274 5y agoFrom the article: > there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world Scott Alexander's recent article made me sensitive to the phrase "no evidence". https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence.... Alexander writes: > Science communicators are using the same term - “no evidence” - to mean: > 1. This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely true, but we haven’t checked yet, so we can’t be sure. > 2. We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop repeating this easily debunked lie. > This is utterly corrosive to anybody trusting science journalism. I rather suspect that having independent two exits from the building does make us safer during a fire, and that this article simply represent lazy unprofessional journalism. The thorough lack of outsider opinions (from anybody other than the author and the subject of the article) strongly reinforces this initial impression.
- somewhereoutth 5y agoI use that phrase when attempting to shed some light on a topic - but I use it in the strictest sense, to assert that there is no evidence to support whatever hypothesis is being presented by the prior argument. Burden of proof is a key idea I think - though sometimes it can be hard to ascertain where that should lie.
- will4274 5y agoUnless you're speaking to a specialized audience, probably better not to. Language is about being understood, not being right. If you use a phrase that is commonly used incorrectly, and you use it correctly, and your audience misunderstands you - you are communicating badly. Better to simply use phrases that aren't as commonly used incorrectly.
- somewhereoutth 5y agoOh they understand me alright!
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoI want to be kind to the author, he or she is seriously misinformed. An extra staircase is not wasted space. It’s a life saver and standards exist for a reason. Is sidewalk a wasted space, maybe slate should write a dumb article on how people can walk between the road and curb and save space. How about parks ? Should they be 1m x 1m square patches of grass.
- clavicat 5y agoWould it be possible to construct a building that has four sides of apartments surrounding a central spiraling stairwell, but the stairwell is also adjacent to a conventional emergency stairwell that can be entered from every floor of the central stairwell? You would have to shrink all the apartments on one side of a building to make room for it, but I can see the layout in my head. Furthermore, you could connect another tower of apartments to the same emergency stairwell.
- twobitshifter 5y agohttps://compote.slate.com/images/68185c52-46c3-448f-9cdd-96d110253084.png?width=1280&rect=887x591&offset=0x0 https://compote.slate.com/images/68185c52-46c3-448f-9cdd-96d... It seems possible to add a second stair case to this design. You’d just mirror the first over to where the courtyard is. You’d lose the courtyard and ability to see your neighbor, but it looks like the building could still be made to jut out some past the stairs to keep light on that side.
- syshum 5y ago>>Bobby Fijan, a developer in Philadelphia I am also sure this developer would love to accept full responsibility should a fire occur in a single stair building that prevented people from evac, I am sure this developer would not hide behind the building codes, and exclaim they are not liable because the building was "built to code" after lobbing to have the code changed, no no...
- handmodel 5y agoThe Slate article doesn't directly state this but does mention that many of the safety rules have been in place for decades - some since the 1940s. Presumably - construction materials + fire fighting methods have improved dramatically in that time so buildings are much safer now. I dont think its unreasonable to want very safe buildings but clear that by the rules staying the same means they are using a different risk calculation then when they were created.
- ruined 5y agoi wouldn't really expect that to be the case. we've got a lot more plastic furnishing/building materials now and perhaps there's tradeoffs but it's still basically just condensed oil. think of your couch as candyfloss gasoline. most residential structures are wood frame, even apartment buildings are often just a few wooden-frame stories on top of a single-story concrete podium. internal firewalls are probably the most significant improvement. you still don't want to be trapped on the wrong side of one with no way down.
- emodendroket 5y ago> Presumably - construction materials + fire fighting methods have improved dramatically in that time so buildings are much safer now. I wouldn't be so sure. Fire prevention methods have improved, but instead of booking the safety gains, this has been seen as a reason to allow wooden structures that previously would not have been legal to build (the famous 5-over-1).
- handmodel 5y agoFWIW fire deaths have gone down by half since the 70s. Perhaps you could attribute this to fire alarms or better automatic sprinklers but overall this is a very good trend given population trends. I'm also fairly certain that better fire retardant materials are used now and that's why wooden structures are allowed. Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Trend-in-US-fire-deaths-11_fig2_312511670 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Trend-in-US-fire-deaths-...
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- jcims 5y agoI live in a three bedroom ranch-style home and designed the floorplan myself. Every room save for my bathroom and my office has two egress routes and they all have windows. I’m sure a statistical analysis could be constructed to justify the decision to eliminate two stairwells. I wouldn’t be interested in living there.
- ghotli 5y agoHey what tool did you use to design the floorplan? Pen and paper?
- jcims 5y agoThis was 2007 and I did it out of necessity because we couldn’t find a floorplan we liked. I did most of my thinking on paper and used sketchup to visualize, check measurements, etc. We were dead-set with sticking to a budget and I think it really allowed us to maximize the utility per square foot.
- freemint 5y agoDo you talked about the floor plan and the reasoning behind it somewhere? It might be interesting.
- jcims 5y agoNo. It probably isn’t that interesting. I lived in a two story home previously and i just felt kind of vulnerable having only one way down to the ground floor. Having two young girls at the time i wanted to avoid that. We also built out in the middle of the woods and i wanted to maximize our mobility in case anyone decided they could break in without getting caught (in fact you could bulldoze our house without getting caught) Everything else flowed from that. One interesting side effect is that i can put an exhaust fan in a window of my office and by closing select doors can pull fresh air through the entire house by cracking two other windows open.
- Dylan16807 5y agoIf hallways are designated awful, then that middle design definitely shouldn't end with all that dead space. And why is the hallway wider than the right design? So that's floor space saved: https://i.imgur.com/Z9OdYkE.png https://i.imgur.com/Z9OdYkE.png And if it's acceptable to combine staircase and hallway, as long as there's another staircase available, you can do even better: https://i.imgur.com/Wa7p4sy.png https://i.imgur.com/Wa7p4sy.png The second might be too risky, but I don't think the first one adds any risk.
- throwaway984393 5y agoI'm curious why they don't just make one open-air stairway, and build ladders into the buildings' walls. Multiple permanent ventilated escape methods.
- Gigachad 5y agoCan you imagine hundreds of people trying to rapidly descend ladders. A good chuck of the population physically couldn’t do it. Not to mention mistakes from the rush. And to actually save space you would have to make these ladder decent zones very small which would be dangerous itself.
- throwaway984393 5y agoHow about a spiral slide?
- Gigachad 5y agoI can imagine larger people getting stuck and causing blockages. I just can’t see any system better than stairs for fire escape. Even if we did eliminate the second fire escape, that saves something like 1sqm per unit which is probably worth like $10,000. If we split this cost over the 50+ years the building is expected to last for, it isn’t much of a cost if it provides even a small amount of extra safety.
- afirement 5y agoI 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. My building specifically asks residents to shelter in place. If a fire in my neighbours apartment meant I needed to escape, certainly an extra egress point would be nice, but the solution to that problem seems to be… better fire isolation. [1] The grenfell disaster (mentioned by the article) was so deadly because people sheltered in place as instructed… but that building had been modified without following regulations.
- Syonyk 5y agoIn 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 me as an American, like utter insanity. If the building is capable of withstanding it and the correct techniques are applied quickly, great, but "not in the building" is my strongly preferred place to be in the event of any sort of structure fire/damage/etc. It's not that it can't work - it's just that when something major has gone wrong, history tends to show that lots of other things end up going wrong as well. Also, that "The building as designed" and "The building as built, after 40-50 years in service," frequently don't share as much as one might hope in terms of safety features. There's a long recorded history of structure fires that have destroyed supposedly "fireproof" buildings. We might know more now, but in a battle between Murphy and engineering hubris, Murphy seems to find a lot of ways to win. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-25_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-2...
- afirement 5y agoI 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.
- GiorgioG 5y agoI try not to take architecture and safety advice from someone with degrees in French and American Studies.
- phendrenad2 5y agoJust think of how much smaller cars could be if we removed seatbelts and airbags! There's no evidence that people who ride in cars are safer than people who ride in school buses (which have no seatbelts or airbags).
- Aerroon 5y ago>Just think of how much smaller cars could be if we removed seatbelts and airbags! A stairway is going to take up a lot more space in a building than seatbelts and airbags are. By my estimation my apartment building would lose over 10% of its living space by doubling its amount of staircases. However, I doubt that it would make a big difference in the cost of housing itself. It seems to me that housing is pricey because it's an investment rather than the labor cost being prohibitive.
- epistasis 5y agoThere's a lot of evidence that cars are made far safer with seatbelts and airbags. I don't think there's as much for school buses. The types of crashes, the skill of the drivers, the seats themselves, the size of the passengers versus the size of the seat backs, and the weight of school buses versus cars are quite different.
- phendrenad2 5y agoYou mean comparing school buses without something and cars with something isn't fair? Just like comparing buildings in the US with something vs buildings in Europe without something isn't fair?
- cesarb 5y ago> Just think of how much smaller cars could be if we removed seatbelts and airbags! I remember when cars had no airbags, and only lap belts on the front seats. Adding seatbelts and airbags didn't change the car size. The only difference I noticed in general was the loss or shrinking of the glove compartment (for the right airbag), and (for the left airbag) the horn button moving from the center of the steering wheel to somewhere else (usually one of the stalks).
- throwaway55421 5y agoWhat probably makes sense is to enforce that a measure of equal fire risk reduction is applied if reasonable. The easiest way to achieve this is probably external ladders for most buildings and putting disabled occupants on the ground floor or just in bungalows or something. Sheltered housing is pretty common in the UK. A fully covered, fancy carpeted staircase seems OTT if its' purpose is basically to be a fire escape.
- neilwilson 5y agoPerhaps the solution is not to have apartments, and instead spread people and activity out across the country. Particularly pertinent in the Covid era when we have seen what living on top of each other leads to.
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoYou have to first spread jobs out across the country, which is the hard part. Good luck! The white collar remote workforce is only a small section of the population.
- unethical_ban 5y agoIf we're talking about cost reduction, "expand roadways, sewage, water, power and public transit rather than build extra stairwells" is an argument that falls apart quickly.
- Pxtl 5y agoThat might work if not for climate change.
- epistasis 5y agoThere's plenty of space to spread out, it's not like this is a hard thing to find. Yet those areas tend to not be nearly as productive, and they have far fewer amenities for living. If that's your thing, great, do it, you have your pick of geographies because nearly all of the US is empty space. But if that's not what a person wants, and instead they appreciate the things that humans can create and do for each other when there are many nearby, there are very very few locations available, the are all extremely pricy because the supply has been artificially constrained by reggulations of people who live in cities, but apparently don't want to live in cities.
- kurthr 5y agoI'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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g
- ggcdn 5y agoA 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 https://images.app.goo.gl/kz1826Y8xydc9G9L8
- bdowling 5y agoI'm going to guess that codes don't require two stairwells if there is only one apartment per floor.
- tzs 5y agoThey use scissor stairs. That's two stairways in one stairwell, with the stairways winding around each other. They count as two exit stairways if (1) the stairways are enclosed in and separated from each other by masonry or masonry equivalent construction having at least a 2 hour fire resistance rating, and (2) the exit doors are 15 ft or more apart. While they might work as far as providing residents two routes out in an emergency, they do present challenges to firefighters [1]: > Jack J. Murphy, a former firefighter, fire marshal, and current chairman of the New York City High-Rise Fire Safety Directors Association, has inspected some of these buildings and says they present unique challenges for firefighters. For one, the buildings’ small footprints mean very narrow scissor stairwells that can have five or more turns between floors. “What would that do to my hose stretch?” Murphy said. The compact size also means tight quarters for operation and medical staging in an emergency. [1] https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-media/NFPA-Journal/2017/March-April-2017/Features/The-Outliers https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-medi...
- kurthr 5y ago
- unethical_ban 5y agoArchitects (and society) should periodically question the layers of safety codes that define our art, architecture and design. It didn't occur to me that staircases in these large apartments are /required/ to be shut off from the hallways, and have a permanent feel of "fire escape". They are not a part of the building, they are acoustically unpleasant, and all-around a bore. Imagine an apartment building with curved, open staircases leading to each floor! Perhaps "Apartment Simulator 2022" will come out soon.
- lazide 5y agoA lot of People have died over the years from that kind of design - which is why it isn’t used any more. It can quickly turn a first floor smoldering fire into a whole building conflagration.
- unethical_ban 5y agoUnderstood, and I'm willing to be wrong on this. My point is, over time and technology we accumulate restrictions that may no longer be as necessary as they were when they were put in. What if we don't need isolated stairwells so much anymore due to materials and fire suppression(sprinkler) regulations, for example? That's my point.
- lazide 5y agoAh, well I’m sure some enterprising architect is already arguing with a building department about it. You definitely see them in some hotels and commercial buildings, though my understanding is despite sprinklers, they need to have autoclosing fire doors if that is the case, which are terrible to deal with every day. :s The problem with sprinklers in California is if there is a serious earthquake, pipe breaks mean you lose fire water pressure right when you might need it most, and whole blocks can burn down. Been awhile since that happened though so maybe the building department forgot?
- josephcsible 5y ago> Architects (and society) should periodically question the layers of safety codes that define our art, architecture and design Architecture and design, okay maybe, but art? > They are not a part of the building What does this mean?
- 8bitsrule 5y agoThe first person I ever saw laid out on the ground during a fire had been sleeping in an apartment building which had only one exit, at one end of the building. The fire-escape stairs on the other end was missing, and the door bolted so it would not open. The fire was raging near the only stairway. It was the only access firemen had. The young kid was dead. "Seattle-based architect Michael Eliason" is a complete idiot.
- lcpriest 5y agoIn the article, the architect spoke about how the goal of single stair buildings is to kill that hallway - one stairwell with the doors to each apartment on the stair itself, then narrower lots; similar to how it’s done in Europe. He points out that the long corridor type of building you are describing is often caused by the need to make a Teo staircase build financially viable.
- pas 5y agoAh. An anecdote and an ad hominem. The perfectly balanced reasoning cocktail known to mankind. The best way to make policy universally. Anyhow, funny story regarding dead people after a fire. He jumped out of a balcony. The fire was in his apartment. The firefighters were already at the door. It turns out the dude was off his meds. (Or never on them.) Because no one gives a shit about mental health. But maybe let's mandate bars on balconies so people can't jump out.
- pessimizer 5y agoThat's not an ad hominem. Calling someone an idiot because of what they say and do is not an ad hominem, it's literally the only reason to call someone an idiot. Calling what somebody said wrong because they are an idiot is an ad hominem.
- rcthompson 5y agoI 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 fire and I didn't know what to do.)
- campl3r 5y agoAt least here in Germany that's the default. Fire and smoke will absolutely not spread between (fire-)units. Staying put is absolutely fine, obviously if you can get out that's encouraged but with a single set of stairs staying put isn't a death sentence at all.
- nerdponx 5y agoFor the benefit of other people who haven't been in a serious building fire: what were your other options?
- sbierwagen 5y agoWindows.
- rcthompson 5y agoEvery building is different, so my advice might not be useful for you. I'd recommend researching your building and figuring out several escape strategies, including the details like how you will protect yourself from the smoke (smoke will be EVERYWHERE, and you really don't want to breathe it in). If a fire is something you're worried about, I'd recommend writing/printing out your escape plan and posting it somewhere, e.g. in your closet, because there's a good chance you will be too scared to remember it when the time comes. Based on my experience, my one very general piece of advice that everyone should take into account is this: figure out if there are any "single points of failure" in your escape plans. That is, is there a single location where a fire could start that would block ALL your escape routes? In my case, the fire was on a first floor apartment across the hall from the elevator, between the two staircases, and also directly below my apartment's fire escape, so this single fire blocked all 4 of my easy escape routes. If you identify such a situation, think about what you will do if a fire does start there. All that said, here are some things I could have done, which I came up with after the fact. Obviously I haven't tested any of these, so take them with a grain of salt: Break into someone else's apartment and use their fire escape on another side of the building. Find a way up to the roof and walk across to the other side of the building, which has its own separate hallway with 2 staircases and an elevator. Alternatively, I could have tried to break through my bedroom wall into the adjacent unit, which connects to the other side hallway. If it came to it, I probably could have got my quilt soaking wet in the bathtub, draped it over top of my body for protection, held my breath, and sprinted down the stairs and out of the building. It turned out that while the smoke was going up both staircases, the fire was limited to only a single apartment unit, although of course I didn't know this at the time. Outdoors, the fire was only blocking the staircase side of the fire escape. I could have descended down the other side of the fire escape by hanging down off the side and dropping down to the floor below me, one floor at a time, and then jumping down to the ground. I have a long rope in my closet that I could have tied to my radiator and let out my bedroom window on the other side of the building. This would have been quite risky, because there's a lot of unknowns: How much weight can the radiator hold? How much can the rope hold? Am I strong enough to support my weight with my arms on a rope? Lastly, it turns out you're unlikely to die from jumping out a 4th story window. (International note: 4th story is 3 floors up from the ground level floor) You're not terribly likely to walk away from it either, but a broken leg is better than dying in a fire.
- black_13 5y agoIt would be a lot cheaper if you created mid rise buildings and turning homes into an investment
- wolverine876 5y ago> The purported reason for such rules is fire safety, though there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world, where one-staircase construction is permitted even in buildings eight, 10, or 20 stories high. That is quite a thing to dismiss. Is there evidence otherwise? Shouldn't we be looking at evidence that two staircases improves safety regardless of location?
- lcpriest 5y agoEurope resolves the fire issue in other ways. Regulations that limit the number of units per floor (4 for Germany, 8 for Austria), regulations for maximum distance to stairwell, and often building height. The building height one is significant as the balcony is often the second means of egress, via a fire truck ladder. https://www.treehugger.com/single-stair-buildings-united-states-5197036 https://www.treehugger.com/single-stair-buildings-united-sta...
- paoheu 5y agoIt will be cheaper when housing is not used for investment
- ineedasername 5y agoThe whole time I was reading this I couldn't stop thinking, "Sure, we can get more usable space if we ignore modern fire safety precautions." And also "pushing apartment capacity a few % points isn't really going to move the needle much on the housing crisis in many areas."
- lcpriest 5y agoI don’t think the goal is to increase the apartment capacity of existing multi-stair buildings. Allowing single stair buildings facilitates multi family dwellings to be built on much smaller lots - even those that currently contain single family homes. Changing that regulation is the basis for why cities like Paris can’t maintain New York level postulation density without many buildings greater than 6 floors.
- ineedasername 5y agoGood point: I'm in a suburban area where land is much easier to come by, so it's less of an issue. Although even then, 3-bedroom apartments are as rare as... Something very rare. (It's Christmas, metaphors fail me at the moment.) Anyway, if they built floor plans like this then I would want to see some seriously bulked up building codes to deal with fires. Also it always strikes me as odd that sprinkler systems are used to help with the fire, but smoke is what mostly kills and I rarely hear of emergency ventilation systems tied to fire alarms. If anyone knowledgeable on that sort of thing could chime in, I always love to learn why my ideas are wrong/bad.
- yes_really 5y agoFor people commenting that it is worth to sacrifice living space for a little bit of security: do you live in the suburbs (in order to have more space) or do you live in a smaller apartment in the city (in order to have a shorter commute)? The risk you avoid by reducing driving is much, much higher than the risk you avoid by having a second staircase in your building. People choose money/comfort over security all the time, but then act like making that choice is absurd and only a monster would do it.
- maximus-decimus 5y agoIs it really? Based on micromort stats in the U.S., walking and biking places is way way more deadly than driving a car per km. unless you drive everywhere while living downtown (which sounds unlikely), there is gonna be some sweet spot where you need to drive but don't live too far from where you need to go.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoPer kilometer, yes. But people living in the city in apartments within walking distance of their workplace go far fewer kilometers per day. I spent a couple unfortunate years commuting some 160 km per day (by car). No one walks or bikes that far every day.
- maximus-decimus 5y agoright, but my point is that driving 16kms to work is not any more dangerous than biking 1km to work. Based on the states, driving 160kms per day is not more deadly than biking 10kms, so living 80kms from work and driving is the same level of danger as living 5kms form work and biking. and that only accounting for deaths, I have to imagine getting in a non-deadly bike accident is more damaging than a non-deadly car accident, although I don't have data to support or deny that theory.
- JulianMorrison 5y agoWhat's wrong with a second (simple, metal) staircase on the outside, like seems to be a thing in old city houses?
- lrem 5y agoI recommend reading https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protected-files/srecon18americas_slides_reilly.pdf https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protec...
- baybal2 5y ago> North American multifamily building with nimbler designs from South Korea, China, Sweden, Italy, or Germany. In those countries, apartments in midrise buildings may be served by a single stair, often encircling or adjacent to the elevator At least in China, this will be 180° opposite of what fire code says: a minimum of 2 staircases
- Symmetry 5y agoGenerally the obstacles to cheaper housing are political. For a building of a given footprint and height its normal for people to show up at planning meetings asking if they could maybe have fewer, larger apartments than they intended so that the new building causes less traffic. We have the technology to build buildings pretty high and the capital cost to do so is a small fraction of the reason housing prices are so high in major cities. I'm open to the idea that at the margin a little less safety for a little smaller cost might be a good or bad tradeoff but this isn't a decisive battle.
- timeon 5y agoNumber of staircases in my country is given by distance from furthest point (max 20m so you need to have 2 staircases if there is corridor longer then 20m). But when the distance is satisfied capacity can by met by dimensions of the particular staircase.
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- renewiltord 5y agoA classic example of the safety ratchet and status-quo-ism. All these arguments work for mandated helmets in cars and other such things people would think absurd. After all, 2 isn’t a Schelling point. So why not four staircases?
- bradlys 5y agoThis is hardly the issue within the USA though. The biggest issue we have is a general resentment towards building anything. Once we've built up a lot - it would be a good discussion to have about whether what we're building could be improved. For the time being - we just need to build anything.