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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on blackout curtains (and sticking electrical tape on every LED in the house), I'd be happy to buy an apartment where few of the rooms have natural light. I know bedrooms have to have windows so the fire department can pull you out of a burning building while you're asleep or whatever, but personally, I am not a fan of the noise and light most of the time.

I just think there is so much space that you can use in a residential setting without natural light. Your movie room. Your bedroom if you feel like not following The Law as to where they're allowed to be. All your 3D printers and other maker activities. If it's space that nobody wants, I'd personally buy it at a discount if it were offered to me.

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It's less about natural light than ventilation. If whatever ventilation systems the building uses breaks down, interior rooms without opening windows are a liability.

This seems wrong... are people opening windows on the 60th floor? What about those buildings whose design precludes easy retrofitting to openable windows? I'm not being rhetorical, I'd like answers.

I figured looking up tall residential building and seeing what they do would be a good indicator of norms. The tallest Residential building in New York is Central Park Tower at 98 above ground floors:

The residential stories have casement windows, within the curtain wall, that can swing up to 4 inches (100 mm) outward. In addition, some condominium units have motorized windows at least seven feet (2.1 m) above the floor.[1]

The condominiums start on the 32nd floor, according to the same article.

If building can't easily be retrofitted to allow openable windows, then I would assume they either can't be used for residential or they could try to get some sort of exemption if they can prove it's safe. I'm mostly going off what I know about building codes and what I've read previously on the topic when it's posted and it's delved into what the actual problems are in converting to residential.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Tower

Opening windows on high floors is great -- you don't need screens cause most urban insects stay much closer to ground level. (Although admittedly I haven't opened any windows higher than 20)

Office towers do not have windows that open, aside from some very old ones might have windows that open.

Commercial building windows in general do not open at all.

My understanding is you have to fix this when changing to residential. There are building codes requires to be met for residential housing, and normally that includes openable window space for both ventilation and egress in an emergency. Maybe they'll make an exception for egress, but I doubt they will for ventilation.

I don’t understand building codes. It’s not safe for people to sleep there, but it’s safe to work there for eight to twelve hours a day? Something is off.

Presumably because you're awake while working and can notice problems when they happen. Not so much when you're sleeping.

I mean… yes? I don't see what's so confusing. In an office building, if anything goes wrong, an alarm goes off and everyone leaves, and insurance pays for damages. In a residential building, you have people sleeping, sick, possessions they might not be willing to leave behind, babies, pets… It makes sense for the safety requirements to be different.

Are you regularly alone and unconscious when at work?

What good is an egress window 30 stories up?

Exactly why I would expect them to make an exception for it. Unless the local laws have been changed specifically to allow for that situation, I doubt the laws started out that way though. I don't imagine the people designing building codes for residential living put a lot of thought to extremely tall buildings initially.

The secret to flight is throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

Lots of tall condos have windows that can't open.

I'm not sure if you're being lax in your terminology or whether you are misinterpreting my point.

The problem is not that every window needs to open, it's that some windows need to open. In the building codes I've seen in the past for residential homes, that was expressed as a percentage of square feet of the room or entire building.

So, are you saying there are plenty of tall condos where no windows in a specific dwelling open, or that they have some windows that don't open? If they have no windows that don't open, do you mind mentioning where, as I'd be interested in what the solution was to the problem of needing to allow for passive ventilation.

There is no requirement for passive ventilation.

My friend owns a condo in Vancouver. No windows open.

Also Seattle: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/s2s7bx/cant_open_a...

Also https://www.reddit.com/r/askTO/comments/omdxmp/downtown_unit...

Thanks, that's fairly clear and concise, at least for the locations you noted.

It does appear to be that in New York it might be required though[1], so it's possibly still a problem depending on area. I'm not going to act like I'm an expert on reading building codes or that one in general though, so I could be misinterpreting it. SF had what clearly seemed like a mechanical ventilation exception in it when I just looked, but SF and Manhattan are the only things I looked up to compare to see if I could find whether it seemed fairly universally allowed or not.

1: https://up.codes/viewer/new_york_city/nyc-building-code-2022... and https://up.codes/viewer/new_york_city/nyc-building-code-2022...

This very much depends on where you are. I had an apartment in a high-rise building in Austin TX a few years ago that did not have openable windows of any kind (I also did not realise this until after signing the lease, which was unfortunate). I assume the building met code.

Isn't ventilation most of the time built into offices and hence much better than what you can get in most residentual buildings?

When it works, sure. You don't generally sleep for extended periods in an office though, so would probably notice it getting stuffy. Sleeping or bedridden people might not notice or be able to easily do something about it though if oxygen levels drop.

Sleeping produces less co2 than working. Therefore, if you don't feel it getting stuffy (without opening windows) at work time, then sleep time should be no issue. Besides, offices have to deal with more people than residential buildings. And air quality depends on the number of people (and what they do).

The difference when sleeping compared to resting or low activity work is that sleeping is about 60%-65% of resting from what I've found.[1] I'm not sure why we should assume that shouldn't be a problem. We could be close to a low oxygen situation prior to sleep, and then start sleeping and have hours for it to get worse.

We don't generally design safety regulations around "should" and averages, but instead when edge cases happen, as the magnitude of the outcome is very important to take into consideration. I'm not sure what you're trying to express with your comment.

1: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-persons-d_691.html

It's simple: if working for 8 hours with many people is not a problem for the ventilation system, then sleeping with less (residential) people should be no issue at all.

Most high rise office buildings use steam (older bldgs) or heat strip for heating. If there's an electrical problem, all fans blowing the treated air stop. They use chilled water flowing through air handling units for A/C. (in winter, these same units supply the heated air, the flow of chill water is usually halted.)

In a system like this, if the AHU stops for any reason, the whole floor is effected. Since chillers and associated equipment are very expensive, I would imagine the maintenance fees would be uncomfortable. (get it? Sorry.)

I think maybe spread out across all owners it might be palatable. You have to figure, if your heating/AC conks out, you're into that for 20k. So that's a pretty decent number when/if you're talking about multiple flats on one floor, right?

Every big building I ever lived in in Chicago had this system but for residential use. I am sure it is expensive when it breaks, but it is also amortized across hundreds of units. I'd go so far as to say it's "industry standard" so isn't going to be much of an obstacle for converting office buildings to residential spaces.

(In NYC, we all agreed to believe that there is no such thing as residential air conditioning that is not in the form of a window unit, however.)

I would think that the people density that an office space is built for is higher than residential density. Even a studio apt is more individual space than many shared office layouts.

Modern skyscrapers do not have openable windows, so the building ventilation system is totally relied on anyway.

See my cousin comment about Central Park Tower. Modern commercial skyscrapers seem to not have openable windows.

One of the newest and tallest skyscrapers in Seattle, Rainier Square, not only has openable windows throughout but on some high floors has massive sliding windows that open up to a sheer drop (widely recognized as a bit of a potential safety risk).

Closed windows won't necessarily save you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Garry_Hoy

> While giving a tour of the Toronto-Dominion Centre to a group of articling students, he attempted to demonstrate the strength of the structure's window glass by slamming himself into a window. He had apparently performed this stunt many times in the past, having previously bounced harmlessly off the glass. After one attempt which saw the glass hold up, Hoy tried once more. In this instance, the force of Hoy slamming into the window removed the window from its frame, causing the entire intact window and Hoy to fall from the building.

They won’t save you if you’re a complete idiot, yes. Why did this guy think this was in any way a safe thing to do?

I’ve always wondered what he thought on the way down.

I saw a video of a daredevil who decided to film himself hanging on to the roof of a skyscraper with his fingertips. He did a couple of pullups, but exhausted himself and could not pull himself up back onto the roof. Finally, he let go.

Pulling oneself up onto something by one's fingertips takes a lot of strength. Should have tried that beforehand. (It looks easy in the movies, but those stunt people are very fit.)

Those stunt people also use special effects to make it look like they are on a building but really a padded floor is just below their feet. If you only can see their upper body it may be they are standing on a stool or someone is pushing them up (though in this case I would expect they are actually pulling themselves up with brute strength). They also do this stunt a dozen times and then in editing choose the cut that looks best.

whoa, this links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths, and there are some crazy deaths. one that stands out is Kurt Gödel: "The Austrian-American logician and mathematician developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food prepared by anyone but his wife. When she became ill and was hospitalized, he starved to death."

I rented a place specifically because one of the bedrooms has no windows. Easily one of the best quality of life improvements.

Great, until it's not. You have no escape in case of an emergency. The room probably wasn't technically a bedroom.

I think the probability of that is lower than my probability of death on my motorcycle. So they're probably going to be fine. Everything is fine until it's not.

The risk tradeoffs we disallow are ones where you need to be 1σ+ to be making the tradeoff because the crucial functionality there we provide is legibility in the marketplace.

That's easily remedied - axes and specialized entry tools can be used for exiting.

Yeah, if it doesn't meet the legal definition of a bedroom, it can't be listed as one. That's partially why there are so few interior rooms - lower property value vs if it was a bedroom (but mainly consumer demand for windows).

> That's easily remedied - axes and specialized entry tools can be used for exiting.

You keep an axe in your bedroom?

My bedroom has a window, so no. If your bedroom doesn't have a window and you're concerned about another exit, then sure.

Yes. Seattle is earthquake country, and I want to be able to get out if the doors are blocked or jammed from earthquake or fire. It's a fireman's axe, as that job is what they're designed for. I also keep a fire extinguisher in the bedroom.

I mean you’re also an axe murder, but that’s besides the point. ;)

If you've ever handled a fire axe, you'd realize it makes a lousy weapon. It has a long handle, with a heavy head. The idea is it can build up a lot of momentum to crash through things like doors and walls.

But the long handle makes it difficult to swing in a melee, and slow to swing, and once the swing starts it will be very hard to change its arc. Hence, your target can easily sidestep it. I suppose it would be good against plate armor, but not many villains wear plate armor these days. You also have to be careful with a fire axe to not chop your foot if you miss. I don't think I've ever seen a war axe/hatchet/tomahawk anywhere near that size.

For self-defense in close quarters, a baseball bat is ideal.

P.S. I am no martial arts expert.

"For self-defense in close quarters, a baseball bat is ideal."

Eh, not really. That's still a lot of unbalanced mass and potentially excessive length. There's a reason batons and other strike weapons aren't made like bats.

The best close quarter weapon, of course, is a (potentially illegally) sawed-off shotgun.

The second best is something that you've extensively practiced with, and designed for the purpose.

A gun is a terrible close quarters weapon. A gun is so good at long range that you can typically ensure you never get into a close quarters fight, but once it becomes close quarters you want something else. (with a gun you do have to keep the muzzle pointed away from you - but one hit with the bat will damage the barrel enough that it isn't safe to fire)

Aren't batons made to not produce serious injury? I.e. they're meant to coerce.

>For self-defense in close quarters, a baseball bat is ideal.

Wielding a baseball bat, you have to constantly worry about the opponent's getting his hands on the bat and wrestling it away from you: a screwdriver is better.

Yeah, you can put beds in whatever room you want. You just can't sell a room with no window as a bedroom.

In some cases you can - most of the time codes don't allow it, but there are exceptions. Check the local laws..

Even simpler, many interior walls are built with studs covered by drywall.

Most able bodied adults can break drwall between the studs. It’s not a particularly strong material.

It really depends on the drywall. If it's 3/4 inch soundproof drywall over sound insulation with services like water, electrical, and sewage you can break it but now you have to navigate the services. And many people aren't going to shove themselves through studs on 16" centers.

If they're worried about not fitting through 16" studs (let alone this entire scenario), then they should select a room with two doors. If you can't fit through studs, I find it hard to believe they're fitting through most windows (generally a more awkward position with limited dimensions too).

Those services are in very limited places in interior walls. You may have an electrical line running to the outlets, but you be extremely unlikely to hit sewer or water. If you do, the gap ti the left or right is extremely unlikely to also have the same services.

> You have no escape in case of an emergency

Nobody is exiting the 60th floor of a skyscraper through the window. We don’t even have ladders that go that high on firetrucks in New York [1].

[1] https://www.fdnysmart.org/fire-trucks/ 95 ft, or about 10 stories

What, you don't keep a parachute under your bed?

Which is why buildings higher than fire trucks can reach have different fire codes. Stairways are often a separate building within the building with a firewall between them - if the building starts on fire you can get down one of the stairs.

High up in an NYC building, there is no escape regardless of windows. Also, my quality of life with good sleep is so high, its easily worth it

> I know bedrooms have to have windows so the fire department can pull you out of a burning building while you're asleep or whatever

When we were looking for a new house we toured one that had a bit of remodeling done. What was done was the back patio was enclosed to turn it into a room. The detail was that there was an existing bedroom that had a window onto the patio.

The solution, which I have to assume passed code, was simply to retain the bedroom window, even though it did not lead to the outdoors. So this house had an interior window.

I think in most places that bedrooms just need two means of egress plus possibly a specific ventilation requirement, which is most commonly met via a door plus a window, but could be met by two doors to two different legal means of egress (and an HRV/ERV if ventilation is required under locally adopted code).

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