[HN Gopher] Los Angeles is gearing up to ban wood-frame construc...
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Los Angeles is gearing up to ban wood-frame construction
Author : dmitriy_ko
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-11-21 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pacificresearch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pacificresearch.org)
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I found an article from June with more specifics:
| https://urbanize.city/la/post/los-angeles-wildfire-wood-cons...
|
| That article contains this interesting nugget of information:
| "the proposal [...] is backed by an organization called Build
| with Strength. The campaign, led by the National Ready Mixed
| Concrete Association..."
|
| So it seems this may have more to do with $$$ than actual safety.
| clairity wrote:
| this is exactly what regulatory capture looks like, deceptive
| and anti-progressive (expressly without the typical political
| association). as such, every ballot measure should be a default
| 'no' unless you thoroughly understand the second- and third-
| order implications of the measure, not just because it sounds
| good on the surface.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Another HN comment [1] notes this source is biased. Do we have
| an independent source confirming this move would not improve
| fire safety in Los Angeles?
|
| Playing devil's advocate, if I'm in a concrete business's
| government relations office and I see a fire safety proposal
| that would help my company's sales, I'm going to pitch in to
| help. That doesn't _necessarily_ mean the proposal was
| corruptly originated or advanced. (It does merit closer
| inspection.)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29299636
| atomicUpdate wrote:
| It doesn't matter if it improves fire safety, since wood
| frame houses are already safe to live in. There is a point of
| diminishing returns that a change like this clearly goes
| beyond.
| jen20 wrote:
| Safe compared to what? I realised when I moved to the US
| from the UK that the number of people I heard on a ~weekly
| basis who lost possessions or even lives in a house fire
| went from effectively zero to more than zero.
|
| It just seems to be accepted as "ok" that houses are
| constructed from wood and can fairly trivially burn to the
| ground - especially given the standard of electrical wiring
| often found! I for one welcome any ban on wood housing
| construction and hope it spreads far and wide - and
| certainly will never spend money on a house that
| fundamentally represents the second of the Three Little
| Pigs.
|
| (Edit: Perhaps LA also has earthquakes to consider - that's
| fine and a trade-off worth discussing. Where I live
| earthquakes are non-existent, yet it's still basically
| impossible to buy a house constructed properly)
| fortran77 wrote:
| > from the UK that the number of people I heard on a
| ~weekly basis who lost possessions or even lives in a
| house fire went from effectively zero to more than zero.
|
| Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
| cool_hacker2 wrote:
| Cue the american nationalists lol
| jen20 wrote:
| Actually this one is a good point and one I had forgotten
| about since it was after I left the UK.
| 8note wrote:
| I'm pretty sure most Seattle house fires involve tents,
| rather than wood or concrete
| fgonzag wrote:
| I live in Mexico where houses are made out of concrete. A
| house fire is even worse, because you end up with a
| structurally unsound concrete shell that has to be
| demolished (and is quite expensive to do so). On a wooden
| home you simply rebuild on top of the ashes.
| jdhn wrote:
| >I realized when I moved to the US from the UK that the
| number of people I heard on a ~weekly basis who lost
| possessions or even lives in a house fire went from
| effectively zero to more than zero.
|
| Where on earth did you move to where house fires are this
| common? I've never heard anyone talk about the
| possessions that they lost in a house fire because house
| fires are so uncommon.
| notwhereyouare wrote:
| Boston has a fire that displaces residents in a house at
| least once a week. Maybe every other week at most. And
| that's just the city, not counting surrounding cities
| rbobby wrote:
| > heard on a ~weekly
|
| Could be a function of media. US media loves to scare its
| audiences.
| llampx wrote:
| The UK media is likely backed by Big Concrete(tm)
| myself248 wrote:
| I personally know several individuals who've had house
| (or trailer) fires. It seems entirely plausible that the
| comment was referring to personal interactions, not media
| mentions.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > I for one welcome any ban on wood housing construction
| and hope it spreads far and wide - and certainly will
| never spend money on a house that fundamentally
| represents the second of the Three Little Pigs.
|
| Fire safety is great, and if that's what you prioritize
| buying in your life, all the more power to you.
|
| But focusing so heavily on one variable for something
| this complicated on a societal level seems like it would
| lead to a bad outcome because design and engineering
| always contains multiple competing tradeoffs.
|
| Fire safety is certainly an important consideration when
| it comes to building, but is far from the only tradeoff
| to consider: what about building cost, environmental
| impact, building speed, repairability, and many other
| variables?
|
| These numbers are pure fiction, but what if improving
| fire safety by 25 times increases building costs by 4
| times, hurts the environmental impact by 5 times, makes
| the building twice as hard to repair when something
| breaks, and triples the construction time?
| plorkyeran wrote:
| In 34 years in the US I have never met someone who has
| mentioned that they personally lost possessions in a
| house fire. Are you working in a field that causes you to
| interact with people who had their house burn down or
| something?
| jen20 wrote:
| Not particularly. Today I heard of a musician friend who
| lost a bunch of equipment in a house fire in Texas.
| They're mostly stories similar to that.
| detaro wrote:
| Wood construction doesn't mean bad fire safety.
| orf wrote:
| The UK has ~82 house fires per day, for 27 million
| dwellings. It's not clear if these map 1-1 with buildings
| (I.e building a split into apartments).
|
| The USA has 928 fires per day for 139 million houses.
|
| So if hastily googled statistics are to be believed,
| you're over twice as likely to have a house fire in the
| USA.
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploa
| ds/...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The USA also has a much more diverse set of climates than
| England - nit, your source is studying fires in England
| specifically, not the whole of the United Kingdom. I'm
| also curious where your figure for the USA Comparing
| rates of fires in hotter, more arid climates like Texas
| or California with England seems like a pretty big leap.
|
| I'm also curious where your figure of 928 fires per day
| in the US comes from, maybe I overlooked it but I didn't
| see the USA statistics in your link. FEMA puts the figure
| at 1.3 million per year, or over 3,500 [1] per day. It's
| likely that there's a significant difference between the
| definition of a "fire" between the US and UK sources.
|
| 1. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doesn't matter if it improves fire safety, since wood
| frame houses are already safe to live in_
|
| This is tautological. Whether they're safe to live in is
| the entire debate. (Wood-frame house in a suburb has a
| different risk profile from one in a dense neighbourhood by
| brush.)
|
| Safety standards evolve as the environment changes and our
| tolerance for risk, mediated by technology, decreases.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| That's one debate. There are two debates.
|
| Debate #1: Are wood frame houses unsafe in Los Angeles,
| such that they should either be condemned and razed, or
| be subject to mandatory annual LA county safety
| inspections?
|
| Debate #2: Are concrete houses _so much_ safer than wood
| frame houses, that wood frame houses should be banned?
|
| Right now, the concrete industry is backing a bill that
| endorses the view "#1 No, #2 Yes". Their detractors think
| that their view on #2 is biased, and that it is actually
| "#1 No, #2 No". I think that in reality it's "#1 Yes, #2
| No", and that there's not enough political will to
| evaluate at all whether wood frame houses need more
| frequent fire inspections.
|
| LA county is also in earthquake, flooding, tsunami, and
| wildfire territory, so any decisions that decrees one
| solution for all problems is automatically suspect simply
| for being incompetent versus the spectrum of safety
| scenarios available. For example, wood is more likely to
| survive earthquakes, while concrete is more likely to
| sustain damage; earthquakes happen constantly in this
| region, so much so that USGS has an entire California
| subsite dedicated to it.
|
| Cynically, I expect the concrete industry is trying to
| say that concrete houses won't burn in wildfires, but by
| the time a change in building code reaches actual newly
| built homes in any given area, that area will already
| have had it's superfire and be relatively low wildfire
| risk for the next couple decades (since it'll be a long
| time before that much dry tinder can accumulate again).
|
| The simplest way to counteract this bill would be to
| demand it require county inspection of all concrete homes
| after earthquakes, at which point the county would have
| to consider the real cost of structural collapse of
| concrete homes in salaried inspector terms, and
| reevaluate its stance on earthquake risk prevention
| versus fire risk prevention with respect to building
| materials. But I don't think anyone's thinking in those
| terms, which is unfortunate. If you live in LA, write
| your legislator a handwritten postal letter about it.
| DantesKite wrote:
| You also have to factor in the risk of earthquakes.
|
| Los Angeles doesn't have frequent earthquakes, but because
| it's near a fault-line, that tail risk has to be addressed
| (the same way one wears a seatbelt, even though car accidents
| happen only a couple times in an individual's life).
| necovek wrote:
| I never knew that wood construction was considered safer
| than concrete construction when it comes to earthquakes.
|
| Even the smallest of residential houses here (Serbia) are
| constructed with reinforced concrete as the base and
| reinforced concrete pillars, with brick walls filling in
| between the pillars and floors and ceilings: basically, a
| house is a reinforced concrete box that can move
| independently from the ground, and that's supposed to
| guarantee earthquake stability (it's definitely not done
| for fire reasons, since roof construction is still
| predominantly wooden). Construction standards have been
| heavily modified post-1963 Skopje earthquake
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Skopje_earthquake).
|
| Buildings such as Usce tower, built in this style, have not
| survived a big earthquake, but I imagine surviving a couple
| of tomahawk missiles is a good enough reassurance of
| stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C5%A1%C4%87e_Tow
| ers#NATO_bom... (though I am fully aware that earthquakes
| and missiles are completely different when it comes to
| shocks a building experiences).
|
| So I wonder, how prevalent is reinforced concrete use for
| houses in USA and esp California? Are there many houses and
| buildings built with insufficiently-reinforced concrete?
|
| Interestingly, concrete based construction is one of the
| cheapest around here, possibly because most houses are
| built that way.
| legulere wrote:
| Doesn't building using bricks exist in the US, or why isn't it
| mentioned?
|
| In my region in several places it was banned to build houses
| using wood hundreds of years ago and there a lot of beautiful
| stone houses still stand today. Avoiding wood in dense areas
| really makes sense I guess.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| California is prone to earthquakes so we don't really like
| brick buildings here.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| austincheney wrote:
| Earthquakes aside brick is really heavy and extremely brittle,
| so it is only cost effective if it can be sourced somewhat
| locally. The only real advantage to brick, aside from
| aesthetics, is that its a great insulator.
| jefftk wrote:
| It's not a good insulator, though? A 4" brick wall is has an
| R value of 0.8, so you'd need 5ft thick walls to get R13.
|
| It's great for thermal mass, but you still need insulation.
| austincheney wrote:
| Yes, you still need insulation. But, brick appears to still
| be a much better insulator than other residential building
| materials.
|
| I found a site that explains it with numbers:
| https://gambrick.com/does-a-brick-home-need-insulation/
|
| Additionally, brick is superior at weather resistance over
| time. 50 years from that brick will continue to insulate
| about the same as a new wall. You won't get that with wood
| even with lots of treatment over the years.
| jefftk wrote:
| That site is talking about brick used as siding, not as
| something structural. And they're only getting an R value
| of 0.8 (which is minimal) because it is 4" thick.
|
| 4" brick gives you less insulation than even 1/4" of
| foam.
| austincheney wrote:
| Are there modern residences that use brick for more than
| siding?
| tpm wrote:
| Some bricks do not need additional insulation, such as this
| one with U=0.11: https://www.heluz.sk/sk/vyrobek/heluz-
| family-50-2in1-brusena
| timeon wrote:
| Brick houses in central and eastern Europe are usually
| build with clay block bricks like Porotherm with l = 0,1 -
| 0,133 W/mK. There are also some with 0,082 W/mK but usual
| combination is brick+insulation (i.e.: to have wall with U
| value less then 0,22 W/(m2[?]K) you can use brick with
| thickness of 38cm and 10cm insulation. For 20cm concrete
| wall you would have to use 30cm insulation.)
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > The only real advantage to brick, aside from aesthetics, is
| that its a great insulator.
|
| No it isn't, the R value of wood is much higher. Imho the
| real advantage is longevity (doesn't apply to earthquake
| areas tho) also when there isn't wood available
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But a wall in a wooden house isn't actually wood unless
| it's a log cabin. It a normal wooden house it's a void with
| a wooden frame.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Masonry structures are practically non-existent, especially in
| new construction. It's only used as decorative veneer or wall
| infill for self-supporting steel commercial buildings.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Erase CO2 negative construction and replace with CO2 positive
| construction. Sounds legit.
| car wrote:
| Don't buy this sight unseen. This organisation has a political
| agenda, see comment by kevin_b_er.
| albertopv wrote:
| In Italy and Norway, maybe others, I don't know, wood
| constructions have been pushed quite a lot because they are more
| environment friendly than concrete and steel, can this be so
| different in los angeles?
| Thlom wrote:
| In Norway we have always built our homes with wood, but the
| last decade or so there have been a few buildings that would
| normally be built with concrete instead built with timber.
| Schools, hotels, apartment buildings and so on. Specifically
| they are using glued laminated timber that is said to to
| withstand fire better than f.ex steel.
| hollerith wrote:
| >can this be so different in los angeles?
|
| No. Making the cement requires much energy.
| cdot2 wrote:
| More importantly the chemical reaction that makes cement
| releases a ton of co2
| robocat wrote:
| A friend from Spain visited us in Christchurch New Zealand, and
| they couldn't work out why all the housing was "temporary":
| most of our homes are built of wood which appeared temporary to
| her. Solid structures also make sense in hot countries, where
| thermal mass helps keep your home cool without aircon. Another
| friend bought a large finca in Spain, that is stone (with
| rubble infill I think) and is hundreds of years old - very
| comfortable.
|
| Here, wood makes more sense, because of cost and earthquakes.
| Many brick buildings and brick facades failed during the
| Christchurch earthquake. I own a home with a broken ring
| foundation, but completely lovable (edit: liveable) still,
| because it is a wooden home from the 30's. The main issue with
| wooden homes are that they need a lot of expensive ongoing
| maintenance or they deteriorate. Not so much of an issue in the
| inner city where buildings get demolished, and replaced by new
| apartments or town houses.
| jollybean wrote:
| They are 'temporary' in the sense they are not quite designed
| to last for centuries.
|
| In Europe, you have 'Post and Beam' framing which means the
| underlying structure can last 'a very long time' while the
| non-weight-bearing walls can be replaced. And there's a lot
| of stone work which can last 'a very long time' as well.
|
| But yes, stone is a problem for earthquakes.
|
| I wish there was more research into modern materials for this
| kind of stuff.
|
| I would hope that 'wood' would be something we use for
| decorative things we see, touch or feel, and that something
| more mundane can go into the framing.
| phicoh wrote:
| Indeed, with such a 'post and beam' construction, a wooden
| house can last for 400 years (at least, where I live the
| oldest houses are around the age).
|
| That said, in 1669, Amsterdam no longer allowed outside
| walls made of wood due to the fire spreading risk. Though
| that means that the construction would still be 'post and
| beam', but the outside walls would be make of bricks.
| codingdave wrote:
| > "The motion currently winding its way through City Council"
|
| Original motion is here -->
| https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2019/19-0603_mot_06-05-...
|
| Full history here -->
| https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa...
| Mave83 wrote:
| In Germany, only a small portion of our houses are wood framed.
| But we have high standards, so our wood frames are protected and
| escape routes in special are covered by non burning plates. In
| addition, building stairs with the right wood can make them more
| sustainable to fire than concrete.
|
| Overall, that's a very bad decision they made or want to make and
| there are even more technology available to prevent any form of
| fire in wood framed houses. Example: circuit breakers with
| lightning detection.
| worker767424 wrote:
| This is just goofy. Timber-framed structures do well in
| earthquakes, and while they catch fire often enough during
| construction, once fire sprinklers are installed and people live
| there, serious residential apartment fires in modern construction
| are really rare. The most recent fire that comes to mind is
| Grenfell Tower, but it's larger than you'd normally use wood for.
| ummonk wrote:
| Grenfell tower was a concrete tower, and it was the synthetic
| cladding that spread the fire.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I imagine the concern in LA is the massive fires they're seeing
| on an annual basis, not so much home fires...
| klyrs wrote:
| I could see that if such the rule was "within 100 yards of a
| forest" or something, but that would only cover a tiny
| fraction of the city.
| frogblast wrote:
| In California that is defined as the "Wildland/Urban
| Interface". That zone has been subject to much stricter
| building codes since 2008. Timber frame homes are allowed,
| as other factors (venting, roof material, rain gutters,
| roof material, siding material, landscaping) are
| dramatically more important.
|
| The vast majority or LA county homes are not in a WUI zone,
| so wildfire extent can't be used as an argument for this.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Timber-framed structures do well in earthquakes, and while
| they catch fire often enough during construction, once fire
| sprinklers are installed and people live there, serious
| residential apartment fires in modern construction are really
| rare. The most recent fire that comes to mind is Grenfell
| Tower, but it's larger than you'd normally use wood for
|
| Grenfell Tower was constructed using pre-cast concrete blocks,
| and was not timber framed [0]. The devastating fire [1] was due
| to flammable aluminium composite cladding.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
| fileeditview wrote:
| Also funny if you consider we have "Fachwerkhauser" (Timber
| framing houses) here in Germany which are up to about 800 years
| old. I would be curious if this will hold true for concrete
| houses in 500-800 years.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| If you build it right, sure. Some roman concrete structures
| are still standing, and we've had better concrete than them
| for at least 50-100 years.
|
| That doesn't necessarily make building everything out of it
| good, but concrete can definitely last a long time.
| Grakel wrote:
| So they're banning structures made of 100% biodegradable material
| that offsets carbon as it grows and is planted exclusively for
| this purpose, in favor of concrete and steel? Interesting.
| userbinator wrote:
| I still remember when the primary environmentalist movement was
| "save the trees"; doesn't more wood use imply more
| deforestation? The wood that's in buildings won't be capturing
| CO2, it's the live trees that do.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| No, because all or nearly all building lumber in the US and
| Canada is sourced from sustainably-managed timber lots. In
| other words, trees are re-planted, and clear-cutting is no
| longer a common practice.
| rp1 wrote:
| Wood results from captured carbon. Live trees are captured
| carbon, as is lumber. Dead trees decompose and release the
| stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Wood used for lumber,
| unless it's some exotic wood from the Amazon, is usually
| sustainably harvested.
| notjesse wrote:
| The other thing is earthquake safety. Wood frame is often far
| more resilient to sheer stress than concrete/brick. Concrete
| can be reinforced to mitigate that, but I wonder how viable
| that is for buildings on the scale of SFH, not major
| developments.
| roody15 wrote:
| Can confirm lived on tbe Big Island of Hawaii for three
| years. Almost all homes are made of wood with the houses
| literally standing on top of the volcanic rock or cement
| pilings. With frequent earthquakes (largest when I lived
| there was 6.8) the houses literally move, shake and flex.
|
| Concrete just cracks and then crumbles.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| ...and then has to be rebuilt, by a concrete company!!
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It's not just about reinforcement (like rebar or steel
| frames) but the concrete mix used. Even though it might not
| look it, most concrete used in buildings is flexible. The
| most earthquake proof building in SF is probably the
| Salesforce tower, which has a concrete core, not a low height
| timber framed house. Concrete has other great properties as
| well - it is waterproof, doesn't rot, and is fireproof. On
| the emissions side, you can get flexibility and lower
| emissions by using newer air-crete mixes:
| https://www.infrastructurist.com/what-is-flexible-concrete/
| mrfusion wrote:
| That's a shame. From a climate perspective you can't beat
| building with wood.
|
| Stuff like this makes the whole movement hard to take
| seriously.
| jefftk wrote:
| This is funded by the concrete industry and the arguments are
| about fire safety. I'm not seeing any climate arguments?
| Grismar wrote:
| "The movement" isn't exactly driven by Big Concrete to begin
| with though. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that there
| are a lot of people and businesses in the world that don't
| give a damn about climate change. If there weren't, we
| wouldn't be in this mess. "The movement" is trying to counter
| them.
| Avshalom wrote:
| What movement, the concrete industry lobbying movement?
| miohtama wrote:
| > in favor of concrete and steel industries
|
| Fixed that for you.
| jweir wrote:
| Meanwhile many other cities are exploring mass timber more and
| more. This allow building larger snd taller buildings out of
| timber.
|
| I've seen a few lovely mass timber buildings built.
|
| These are radically different than the stick frame construction
| which is of dubious origins.
|
| https://youtu.be/2gWxRVqNI3M
| m0zg wrote:
| Intresting that CA can be for the environment and for concrete
| (which emits a lot of CO2 during its production [1]) _at the same
| time_ somehow. Hypocrisy? Incompetence? Corruption? I'll let you
| decide.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844
| oconnore wrote:
| > the motion would significantly increase the cost of
| constructing housing in Los Angeles
|
| NIMBYs at it again.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Increase for constructing single story housing, right? Do they
| normally construct denser housing with wood? Seems silly to
| mention NIMBYism when it pushes land use to more denser
| options, no?
| advisedwang wrote:
| It's pretty common these days to build "five over one"
| construction. This is typically a 3-6 floors of wood frame
| construction (Type 5 in some codes) over 1 or two floors of
| concrete (Type 1)[1]. It's a cheap way to build mid-rise
| buildings which would be banned by this proposal.
|
| [1] Sometimes this is explained as the "five over one"
| meaning five floors of wood over one floor of concrete,
| rather than a reference to building codes. Either way the
| concept is the same.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They are called "one plus five" or one plus four":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-plus-five
|
| >The one-plus-five style of buildings exploded in
| popularity in the 2010s, following a 2009 revision to the
| United States-based International Building Code, which
| allowed up to five stories of wood-framed construction.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Worse. It's to sell more concrete and steel buildings.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's a combination of both. NIMBYs love anything that makes
| construction more expensive because it limits construction,
| and also ensures that only the wealthiest can have housing,
| further driving up the price of their primary asset: land.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Do you mean _land_ or _real estate_? Because if it 's
| harder and more costly to build on land, that should
| decrease demand for it, and prices should fall. Demand for
| already-improved land should rise, though.
| epistasis wrote:
| When there's a global limitation on what can be done with
| land, it limits how much use can be achieved by any given
| bit of land. The demand is still there, but it's met by
| further and further out parcels of land, causing them to
| go up drastically in value. In addition, this causes all
| sorts of urban sprawl. Which is exactly what happened in
| LA. They had a huge downzoning of the entire metro area
| 50 years ago, driving up the prices of land everywhere,
| to the benefit of suburban NIMBYs in sprawl.
|
| TL;DR, when the use of land is broadly limited, on the
| macro scale, the demand still exists and shifts the price
| of all land up on the supply-demand curve. The dynamics
| of limiting individual parcels or small sections of land
| often have the opposite effect, though.
| capableweb wrote:
| And at the same time, increasing the amount of a particular
| asset many in the US seems to love, at least based on the
| policies in many places: homeless people.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| does this apply to CLT as well? last I heard, CLT construction
| holds up favorably when it comes to fire resistance while having
| all the benefits of stick build construction.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Isn't wood the best material for earthquakes?
| worker767424 wrote:
| Dunno about the "best," but it's a very good material because
| it flexes under load. Unreinforced masonry is probably the
| worst.
| ummonk wrote:
| Metal is better, but it's an expensive building material. Wood
| is the best of the reasonably affordable building materials.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| From my understanding it is significantly easier to have a wood
| frame house meet earthquake based code requirements in
| California than anything else.
| yholio wrote:
| A very detailed write-up of this topic, with extensive research
| and citations:
|
| https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/wood-construction...
|
| Conclusions:
|
| -> Overall, it seems like wood construction does somewhat
| increase the potential risk of fire, mostly by allowing fires
| that do occur to be somewhat deadlier and more destructive.
| However, this effect is mostly swamped by other factors such as
| what state and city you live in, or whether you live in a house
| or an apartment. For a wood apartment in Salt Lake City, the risk
| of fire is vanishingly small; for a wood single family home in a
| tiny town in Arkansas, it's much larger.
|
| -> The most important factor for fire risk in a home is whether
| or not it's sprinklered. Fire sprinklers reduce the risk of fire
| by an enormous amount, and sprinklered wood construction seems to
| perform about as well as sprinklered non-combustible
| construction. And sprinklers are cheap, costing about $1-2 per
| square foot (much less than it would cost to say, change a wood
| house to concrete).
|
| -> For wildfires specifically, we see something similar -
| construction details such as fire protected eaves and class A
| roofs, along with things like community density, matter far more
| than whether your home is wood or steel.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| This is published by an organization known for deceit. Thus,
| everything they write should be taken with a grain of salt with
| the full knowledge they engage in deceitful misinformation
| practices for the purpose of political action.
|
| https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pacific_Research_Insti...
| car wrote:
| Yeah, empty about page is a red flag. And then this: _"It's a
| relief that Americans oppose Congress's drug pricing proposals
| once voters learn the true consequences of these misguided
| reforms," said Sally C. Pipes, the brief's co-author and PRI
| president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care
| Policy."_
| jefftk wrote:
| It looks like they've gotten the facts right in this case;
| https://urbanize.city/la/post/los-angeles-wildfire-wood-cons...
| has similar coverage from several months ago.
|
| That this would make new housing more expensive, isn't
| generally viewed as necessary for fire safety, and is funded by
| the concrete industry, don't seem to be disputed?
| wpietri wrote:
| How do we know that this source is better? I can't find
| anything on their site about ownership.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Is there something that you actually believe is deceitful here?
| Is it the analysis of the impact of expanding the Fire
| District? Is it the data about the impact on building costs? Is
| it the claims about whether wood-framed buildings are safe
| enough?
|
| Refusing to read and consider arguments from people you
| disagree with isn't a particularly useful strategy for gaining
| knowledge about a topic.
| wpietri wrote:
| This isn't about disagreement. If somebody sincerely,
| honestly, and without conflict of interest has something to
| say on a topic, I'm interested. Especially if they have done
| some hard work around understanding and acknowledging other
| perspectives.
|
| On the other hand, there are a lot of people out their paid
| to create and push propaganda. As a general rule, one
| shouldn't engage with it. If even the writer may not believe
| something, one isn't obliged to take it seriously. Indeed, I
| think it's a frequently exploited mistake to bring more
| credulity and good faith to something than the source itself
| does.
|
| Much better to spend one's time finding reasonably sincere
| sources and reading those.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it the claims about whether wood-framed buildings are
| safe enough?_
|
| This one, for me. I know nothing about it. Without further
| information, I wouldn't want to conclude anything from a
| biased source (other than noting that the issue exists).
| ladberg wrote:
| There's a similar article by a more trustworthy source, so I'd
| definitely believe it:
|
| http://www.betterinstitutions.com/blog/2021/6/13/dont-expand...
|
| You can also just read the proposal yourself and draw your own
| conclusions:
|
| https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2019/19-0603_mot_06-05-...
| [deleted]
| JoshTko wrote:
| Cali is progressive unless it's about real estate.
| colechristensen wrote:
| "Progressive" but not necessarily based on reason.
| coolso wrote:
| Do the two ever go hand in hand?
| b20000 wrote:
| good, now maybe we'll get decent quality houses instead of garden
| sheds in CA. maybe something can be done too about all the shitty
| little craftsman shacks that are being flipped by entitled
| boomers looking to get a piece of your tech salaries.
| wayfarer1291 wrote:
| For earthquake reasons alone this is completely insane, and
| clearly a blatant attempt at regulatory capture by the concrete
| association. Just asinine.
|
| For most of LA (apart perhaps from certain canyons and hill
| areas) the risk of fire is not significantly different from
| anywhere else. It's a cityscape. Earthquakes however are an
| omnipresent threat and wood frame buildings in general do far
| better. For example - many of the concrete buildings built along
| Wilshire blvd. in the westside may not survive a big quake.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I live in a small eu country... wood-framed housing is
| practically non-existant here. Not sure why, but we always joke
| about american houses, that are made out of "cardboard", where
| you hammer a nail to hang a picture, and break through the wall.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Huh? You can't hammer a nail to hang a picture at all into a
| concrete wall. And it's pretty shitty with masonry too.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yeah, you drill a hole, and put one of those plastic achoors
| inside, and screw a scew in, and hand a photo on the screw.
|
| Our old-school socialist apartment buildings even have
| internal walls built out of reinforced concrete... drilling a
| whole to pull an ethernet cable through, means hoping for
| luck not to hit rebar
| akvadrako wrote:
| That isn't nailing. You can also drill for anchors in
| drywall and it doesn't require a hammer drill.
| scatters wrote:
| You can't use a stud finder?
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| These don't work for stuff deep inside walls.
| MertsA wrote:
| Actually they make variants of stud finders to locate
| rebar in foundations and walls.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Qn3Eu87h4
| advisedwang wrote:
| As someone who has lived in the US and Europe, I have made
| similar jokes. That said I've come to realize there's many
| advantages to the US way and in some respects the house I grew
| up in was massively overbuild:
|
| Advantages of timber frame:
|
| * Safer in earthquake * Easier to do remodeling tasks like
| changing layouts, plumbing, wiring * Easier to DIY * Cheaper
|
| Most of the apparent disadvantages can be offset:
|
| * I've never seen it happen, but you are right drywall is
| easily damaged. It's also easily replaced though. * Noise and
| thermal insulation can be added * Flammability is mitigated
| with firestops, fire resistant drywall and codes that require
| multiple points of egress. Larger wood buildings have
| sprinklers.
|
| At this point I mostly have aesthetic complaints.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Drywall+wood also lets wireless signals through easier.
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