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Comment by codeddesign | Hacker News Reader

I completely understand your point of government intrusion, but there are actually building codes in place for a reason. An example is the San Francisco fire of 1906. Building codes set safety requirements for construction for the general safety of everyone living in or around a building. Whether it's fire codes, plumbing codes, earthquake codes...etc. If there were no building codes, we would he of housing fatalities daily on the news, and LA would look like favela. You can't just construct a building however you wish, no different than you can travel down an expressway as you wish (i.e. walking in the middle of the lane).

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There is a difference between safety and blind obedience to building codes.

Building codes are about standardizing things so builder and inspectors barely have to communicate - at a glance they can see they followed x, y, z.

But the law should have a place for homeowners who do things safely, just not exactly how a builder would do it. That's why many places require permits for various work (for example electrical work) - unless you do it yourself, in which case you are exempt. And that's the right way to do things.

Just like you don't need the health department in your kitchen, but you do in a restaurant.

But it isn't like the health department in restaurants. Commercial kitchens could harm someone with bad food practices.

The same goes for your house. After all, you simply won't life there forever: Either you'll sell the house or die eventually. Anything you do to that house that doesn't meet codes can seriously affect the folks that live there after you.

This is why the codes are important.

I think this discussion is way too black & white. I for one don't think all building codes are bad, but it's trivial to imagine a case of too many building codes. Now the question is, what are all the codes out there, and how much sense do they make? Is there a process of exceptions? What are the costs involved?

Because, based on the article, it sounds like absolutely no common sense is used for exceptions.

Sometimes there are too many building codes, when they are silly.

But some of those codes one doesn't have to pay attention to as much: Requiring grounded plugs with minimal construction standards. If you just buy your stuff, you won't have to worry about the construction standards of your outlet unit, merely that you buy the grounded sort.

"Absolutely no common sense is used for exceptions"

To me, this looked more like ignorance on both sides. If the inspector has no real training in construction, all he really has is the code - the stickers for the wood (for example). And the man building should have checked codes upfront to see what he needed to do to work around it.

Where did your responsibility to have a home you want to buy inspected and certified become the governments job of forcing people to build the same cookie cutter structures over and over?

Significant portions of England were built well before modern codes. Why can those be legal residences and something built in the same style and method be illegal?

Edit: So if you can downvote you've been here long enough to know you should tell me why. Shame.

A fair point. But many things get hidden behind drywall, making them very expensive for a new home buyer to get certified. Sure seems more efficient to inspect once during construction.

People do interior remodels all the time without getting a permit so you still have the same problem.

Home inspections really depend on the competency of the inspector, and for most people this is hit and miss. This is really where the article gets wacky: If he had had a knowledgeable city inspector, who was versed in construction practices, he might not have had so much trouble. He needed a specialty bureaucrat and he got the run-of-the-mill variety: In addition, he should have double checked the building codes before starting and could have saved himself some trouble.

Sometimes you catch something, and sometimes you don't, and sometimes the previous owner masks normal markers of problems. Most the ones I've seen check for major problems in places you can see them. Codes don't make it so you don't have the responsibility: They, in theory, make sure your electrical system is as safe as possible when you are building and other such things. The inspections help to identify known problems, especially important to older houses built to different standards.

Which is why buying a pre-existing house is slightly more risky than a new house. My parents had to treat a basement boiler for asbestos: One house the owners covered up signs of the roof leaking and the electrical was obviously not professional, even for the time of the upgrade. This house was inspected pre-purchase.

Most codes grandfather in old codes, but if you upgrade the system, you need to meet the new code for safety reasons.

I often think you should be able to rebuild in the same general visual style and size. But method? Lets face it, some of the old places were the cookie-cutter houses of the time - it isn't like every old building is of high quality. They used lead paint and asbestos, for example! But so long as the old methods meet current codes (some of which, like the number of nails, was meant to deter shoddy construction) I don't see where most folks get into trouble.

Part of your statement, the bit about style, gets to be a mix of aesthetic zoning laws and safety, the first I generally disagree with and the second usually helps folks when there is fire.

FYI, in many states you're allowed to do the electrical on your own residence, but it still requires permitting and/or inspection.

Correct. The basic rule of thumb is that if it's not cosmetic (carpet, tiling, kitchen cabinets..), then you probably need a permit.

Even demolition can require a permit.

To ensure proper precautions regarding lead paint and asbestos, which can easily get airborne and impact neighbors.

If your house was built in the '90s you still have to get a demo permit and have neither of those isues to deal with.

So you advocate more detailed/nuanced regulations, to cover these corner cases? Or wholesale removal of regulations, since they lack nuance?

I don't think any one in this thread is saying building codes or regulations shouldn't be a thing, it's more that regulations shouldn't be so complicated that they become barriers to entry, and that common sense should be applied alongside the regulations. Who gives a shit if there isn't a sticker on your lumber if the lumber is of good enough quality?

But that sticker is how you can tell that the lumber is of good enough quality. Who sets the standards? Who certifies that the lumber meets the standards? How do you get rcompense if someone lied about the quality of their lumber? That sticker says "this lumber meets quality specs. And if it doesn't, this company is responsible for the resulting catastrophe."

Perhaps a structural engineer could have been hired (at owners expense) to report on the wood quality.

It's not uncommon to spend a few hundred dollars during a remodel for load calcs. I.e. it's probably not a huge extra expense for a major project.

A funny thing happened when Hurricane Andrew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew) came through South Florida. Homes built in the 1950s (way before "modern building standards") did much better than those build in the 1980s and very early 1990s.

While building standards exist to ensure a base minimum of safety and quality, that's it---it's a base and there's no real reason to exceed it (it just adds expense). The older homes were built more conservatively (the Brooklyn Bridge is something like six times the strength it needs; compare to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)) built "just to spec").

Something else also happened in the intervening period - we got a lot better at calculating that base minimum of safety and quality. They used to overbuild stuff not because they wanted quality and were happy to pay for a bunch of extra material, but because they weren't sure exactly how much was required so they had massive safety margins.

I reject the thesis that removing building codes would RAISE the quality of buildings. I'm sure builders would love to dial down the material used a couple more steps so that it stand up just long enough for the big bad wolf to come along.

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