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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

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.

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.

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