6 ms·

You can pay the greenie winnie tax and go full passive house and be completely off grid sitting pretty in an airtight optimally efficient home: https://www.yout

You can pay the greenie winnie tax and go full passive house and be completely off grid sitting pretty in an airtight optimally efficient home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhbLjEKKLVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhbLjEKKLVM It would also triple the construction cost of the house. Reasons. But hey, $0 energy bill. Most builders don't do any of that stuff, like at all. Just the bare minimum required. They aren't incentivized. Most consumers would - and do - opt for single pane windows over dual, and dual over triple, 'etc. Even when the windows would "pay for themselves" over their lifetime.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
toast0 4y ago
The bare minimum is a lot more than it used to be. My parents' house was built with zero attic insulation, and I believe no wall insulation either. Just framed, drywalled insided and stucco outside. I can't imagine there's any fire blocks between studs either.
- notch656c 4y ago
  Upping the codes to require new construction to have those things, while not razing your parents' house, shows it's all about the pyramid scheme and not about actual safety. If it were about actual safety and such things are considered unsafe then unsafe houses like your parents home should be bulldozed for the good of the people.
  - frankus 4y ago
    I think it shows that there's at least a basic cost-benefit analysis taking place, where things that we've learned provide a safety benefit that can be added at minimal cost during construction are required, but bulldozing a house because it will burn down 15 minutes faster doesn't pencil out.
    - notch656c 4y ago
      And yet if I built a new house against code they would still make me go back and fix it, even though I could make the exact argument you made about the old house not penciling out to go back and make them fix it.
      - toast0 4y ago
        In theory, building inspections at each stage of construction should find omissions and other non conformance while it's economic to fix them. I do acknowledge that building inspections have a lot of issues, one of which is different inspector, different rules, and a later stage inspector may have you redo something the earlier stage inspector said was fine (sometimes, even with the same inspector!), but the idea is there. I've heard that locally, a lot of inspections are done by video conference now, and contractors find that goes a lot faster and more direct. Not sure if that'll stay post-covid. It's also difficult to know what's on the inside of built houses (which is why inspection is supposed to happy during construction, not after). Commercial buildings often have both plans and as-built drawings; but residential buildings don't, and when you get on-site and the plan doesn't match the house, you really don't know what's in the walls. Some sort of government driven new code compliance inspection for existing housing stock seems really expensive. Even public use buildings take a long time to get code compliance updates, such as retrofits on unreinforced masonry buildings in many places, and there's both more risk and more enforcement power for public use buildings.
      - gamblor956 4y ago
        No, not even remotely the same. The old house was up-to-code, and considered safe for habitation, when it was built. Your new house was not. Very importantly, if you renovate an old house, regulations may require you to update the house to modern building code standards for plumbing, electricity, etc.
        notch656c 4y ago
        Yes that's the scam. Magically the houses are not held to the same code. Got mine, fuck everybody else.
  - phlipski 4y ago
    By your logic every single house in Florida (and those along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts that are in the path of possible hurricanes) that was built prior to 2002 (the year the building codes were changed in direct response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992) needs to be razed. I'm not sure that's really politically feasible...
    - notch656c 4y ago
      My logic is the entitled fucks that vote for this policy should be made to eat their own medicine. Either it's OK to have a house without the safety criteria in the code, or it isn't. Forcing them to eat their own medicine would allow the youth to also have the chance to build a house, even if it's not perfectly safe, closer to the cost their parents had to spend. Rather than changing the game and screwing over new entrants while old entrants enjoy immunity to the same rules.
      - rsj_hn 4y ago
        By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised. I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type of correlated risk well, and somehow picking on Florida when California does the same thing is pretty weird. We know there will be a big earthquake that will level a lot of property in California just we know there will be a big flood in Florida. Yet "entitled fucks" keep choosing to live in these states. Life goes on.
        notch656c 4y ago
        My point was that if voters had to eat their own medicine they wouldn't encumber new entrants to rules they themselves are immune to. I didn't seriously think they would vote to raze their own (previously immune) houses.
        toast0 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

toast0 4y ago

The bare minimum is a lot more than it used to be. My parents' house was built with zero attic insulation, and I believe no wall insulation either. Just framed, drywalled insided and stucco outside. I can't imagine there's any fire blocks between studs either.

notch656c 4y ago
Upping the codes to require new construction to have those things, while not razing your parents' house, shows it's all about the pyramid scheme and not about actual safety. If it were about actual safety and such things are considered unsafe then unsafe houses like your parents home should be bulldozed for the good of the people.
- frankus 4y ago
  I think it shows that there's at least a basic cost-benefit analysis taking place, where things that we've learned provide a safety benefit that can be added at minimal cost during construction are required, but bulldozing a house because it will burn down 15 minutes faster doesn't pencil out.
  - notch656c 4y ago
    And yet if I built a new house against code they would still make me go back and fix it, even though I could make the exact argument you made about the old house not penciling out to go back and make them fix it.
    - toast0 4y ago
      In theory, building inspections at each stage of construction should find omissions and other non conformance while it's economic to fix them. I do acknowledge that building inspections have a lot of issues, one of which is different inspector, different rules, and a later stage inspector may have you redo something the earlier stage inspector said was fine (sometimes, even with the same inspector!), but the idea is there. I've heard that locally, a lot of inspections are done by video conference now, and contractors find that goes a lot faster and more direct. Not sure if that'll stay post-covid. It's also difficult to know what's on the inside of built houses (which is why inspection is supposed to happy during construction, not after). Commercial buildings often have both plans and as-built drawings; but residential buildings don't, and when you get on-site and the plan doesn't match the house, you really don't know what's in the walls. Some sort of government driven new code compliance inspection for existing housing stock seems really expensive. Even public use buildings take a long time to get code compliance updates, such as retrofits on unreinforced masonry buildings in many places, and there's both more risk and more enforcement power for public use buildings.
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      No, not even remotely the same. The old house was up-to-code, and considered safe for habitation, when it was built. Your new house was not. Very importantly, if you renovate an old house, regulations may require you to update the house to modern building code standards for plumbing, electricity, etc.
      - notch656c 4y ago
        Yes that's the scam. Magically the houses are not held to the same code. Got mine, fuck everybody else.
- phlipski 4y ago
  By your logic every single house in Florida (and those along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts that are in the path of possible hurricanes) that was built prior to 2002 (the year the building codes were changed in direct response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992) needs to be razed. I'm not sure that's really politically feasible...
  - notch656c 4y ago
    My logic is the entitled fucks that vote for this policy should be made to eat their own medicine. Either it's OK to have a house without the safety criteria in the code, or it isn't. Forcing them to eat their own medicine would allow the youth to also have the chance to build a house, even if it's not perfectly safe, closer to the cost their parents had to spend. Rather than changing the game and screwing over new entrants while old entrants enjoy immunity to the same rules.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised. I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type of correlated risk well, and somehow picking on Florida when California does the same thing is pretty weird. We know there will be a big earthquake that will level a lot of property in California just we know there will be a big flood in Florida. Yet "entitled fucks" keep choosing to live in these states. Life goes on.
      - notch656c 4y ago
        My point was that if voters had to eat their own medicine they wouldn't encumber new entrants to rules they themselves are immune to. I didn't seriously think they would vote to raze their own (previously immune) houses.
      - toast0 4y ago