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I would welcome a honest review from a qualified third party. Picking one example out of thin air, I'd say AFCI breakers are overkill and add a fair amount of
by barelysapient 3y ago
I would welcome a honest review from a qualified third party. Picking one example out of thin air, I'd say AFCI breakers are overkill and add a fair amount of cost.
For HVAC, requiring a fused disconnect within 6ft of the unit is overkill when the panel with an appropriate shutoff is already located in an accessible area.
The code requirements make things safer in probably 90% of the situations. But they also increase the cost substantially. With the affordability crisis in housing, I think we should look for places where a small reduction in safety can yield big savings on cost.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoIMO, the best way to make housing cheaper is to make it smaller. Your examples are fair, but as you note, they bring a LOT of safety with them even so.
- barelysapient 3y agoI think a _LOT_ of safety is overstated. I'd be curious for an assessment of code-preventable fatalities of home occupants from, say, the 1960s until today. I'd be shocked if the cumulative building codes since then to today could be shown to save even a single year of, say, 2022 of automobile fatalities (about 43,000 people).
- barelysapient 3y agoReplying to myself, I know, but then how about we work out how many fatalities are occurred due to housing affordability? Code costs need to consider that too; since increasing costs means less people get houses to live in. And homeless people have a dramatically shorter life expectancy than housed people.
- WkndTriathlete 3y ago> Picking one example out of thin air, I'd say AFCI breakers are overkill You need a better example. An AFCI breaker saved my house from burning down and quite possibly the four lives (mine included) within it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoAFCI or GFCI? The latter are unquestionably valuable. The former is a bit harder to argue for?