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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 th

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.

kymaz 5y ago
If your wood frame house has been on fire on the inside long enough to scorch a wood frame through the drywall or damage the drywall itself, concrete construction isn't gonna be much better for you the owner/resident. If a California wildfire comes through and ravages the area, your fireproof building will still be there, but the walls will heat soak can and then set things on fire inside a fireproof building.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  > If a California wildfire comes through and ravages the area, your fireproof building will still be there, but the walls will heat soak can and then set things on fire inside a fireproof building. Walls would have to be made of iron to soak enough heat to burn anything inside. Typical walls are made of good isolators, you would need several days of constant fire to conduct that kind of heat. Windows on the other hand are typically what lets the fire inside. They just break after less than a minute of high temperature flame.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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.
  - curryst 5y ago
    I think it would be more effective to require sprinkler systems indoors on wooden homes. I'm seeing prices of $1-$2 per sqft, which is absolutely reasonable (although I anticipate prices are higher in LA, square footage is typically lower). It's also probably drastically cheaper for everyone than more frequent inspections. > The simplest way to counteract this bill would be to demand it require county inspection of all concrete homes after earthquakes They would likely need to be inspected after wildfires as well. Concrete won't burn, but I believe prolonged exposure to high heat can weaken or crack it. That might go doubly so for something like a single-family home. There's a lot less concrete to absorb the heat, and the upper layers have nowhere to vent the heat. I wonder if it would crack at the foundation as the roof expands, but the floor doesn't because it can vent heat into the ground.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Both of your points are relevant to #1, which considers only the safety concerns of wood frame homes. Neither are relevant to #2, as neither focuses on the relative safety differences of concrete versus wood frame houses. (Your second point suggests that sprinklers are necessary for all types of frames, whether wood or concrete or other, which removes the first point from consideration as a “wood frame only” cost, at least not without diving further into the comparison.) Casually discussing #1 is easy, while casually discussing #2 is nearly impossible. For example: which is higher precedence in a relative comparison: fire or earthquake safety? Assumption-by-framing that precedence is a frequent source of political manipulation by well-funded buyers, and it’s very effective. Identifying such a framing bias in the proposed legislation would be grounds to kill it in committee, if discovery of such a bias were politically unprofitable for the committee.
jen20 5y ago
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)
- jdhn 5y ago
  >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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  > heard on a ~weekly Could be a function of media. US media loves to scare its audiences.
  - myself248 5y ago
    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.

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.

kymaz 5y ago

If your wood frame house has been on fire on the inside long enough to scorch a wood frame through the drywall or damage the drywall itself, concrete construction isn't gonna be much better for you the owner/resident. If a California wildfire comes through and ravages the area, your fireproof building will still be there, but the walls will heat soak can and then set things on fire inside a fireproof building.

yetihehe 5y ago
> If a California wildfire comes through and ravages the area, your fireproof building will still be there, but the walls will heat soak can and then set things on fire inside a fireproof building. Walls would have to be made of iron to soak enough heat to burn anything inside. Typical walls are made of good isolators, you would need several days of constant fire to conduct that kind of heat. Windows on the other hand are typically what lets the fire inside. They just break after less than a minute of high temperature flame.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
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.
- curryst 5y ago
  I think it would be more effective to require sprinkler systems indoors on wooden homes. I'm seeing prices of $1-$2 per sqft, which is absolutely reasonable (although I anticipate prices are higher in LA, square footage is typically lower). It's also probably drastically cheaper for everyone than more frequent inspections. > The simplest way to counteract this bill would be to demand it require county inspection of all concrete homes after earthquakes They would likely need to be inspected after wildfires as well. Concrete won't burn, but I believe prolonged exposure to high heat can weaken or crack it. That might go doubly so for something like a single-family home. There's a lot less concrete to absorb the heat, and the upper layers have nowhere to vent the heat. I wonder if it would crack at the foundation as the roof expands, but the floor doesn't because it can vent heat into the ground.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Both of your points are relevant to #1, which considers only the safety concerns of wood frame homes. Neither are relevant to #2, as neither focuses on the relative safety differences of concrete versus wood frame houses. (Your second point suggests that sprinklers are necessary for all types of frames, whether wood or concrete or other, which removes the first point from consideration as a “wood frame only” cost, at least not without diving further into the comparison.) Casually discussing #1 is easy, while casually discussing #2 is nearly impossible. For example: which is higher precedence in a relative comparison: fire or earthquake safety? Assumption-by-framing that precedence is a frequent source of political manipulation by well-funded buyers, and it’s very effective. Identifying such a framing bias in the proposed legislation would be grounds to kill it in committee, if discovery of such a bias were politically unprofitable for the committee.

jen20 5y ago

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)

jdhn 5y ago
>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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
> heard on a ~weekly Could be a function of media. US media loves to scare its audiences.
- myself248 5y ago
  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.