Would be nice to see a comparison with other international codes—which countries use IBC and which use others. I’ve read a bit about single stair buildings, and Americans seem to use a lot more sprinklers (and have a higher fire death rate) than Europe.
The commonality of fire sprinklers is relatively new ~20 years ago with the creation of the modern IBCC. Prior to that they were insurance driven.
They are not always proscribed, but if you use them, you don't have to do a whole bunch of other really expensive stuff. The simple explanation is that FP sprinkler in a building drops the hour-fire withstand requirement by 1-hour for each type. So if a 1-hour wall becomes a normal wall, a 2-hour wall a 1-hour wall, etc. Fire dampers and fire doors are really expensive.
Its a shame that restrictive code modifications don't have to go through a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of compliance to the cost of QALYs potentially lost per year if the change is not introduced. We would probably see much leaner and reasonable versions of these codes if that was the case.
Model code changes are analyzed for potential cost impact, actually, though (as far as I can tell) it doesn't go so far as to do a QALY analysis. Every proposed change to an ICC code, for instance, is accompanied by an expected cost impact.
It's good that they at least analyze costs but without an equivalent analysis for benefits it's unclear how they justify including or not including a certain restrictive change. I.e. a lot of the elevator regulations clearly look like they'd save at most one or two lives per year while costing tens of millions of dollars each to the economy.
One of the conclusions of a previous post [1] was that inflation adjusted cost per square foot had gone up 50% since 1947. Is this part of it? The ratcheting up of code? I would kinda hope that since 1947 we're buying _better_ houses now, better insulated, less likely to catch fire and explode, etc.
FM Global is another big "listing" agency. Since the Building Codes originally derived from insurance companies setting standards for what they will approve (back in the late 19th century), FM Global has a lot of influence.
NFPA is the big dog. The Internationally Code (which was a merger of a number of US Regional Codes) cribbed a lot of its requirements from the NFPA Life Safety Code. NFPA has a lot of specialized situational codes (hospitals, fire pumps, etc.) and also does a lot of standards for fire fighters.
To add to your note about copyrighting. There is also case law which has found that the rules making entities are subject to antitrust law. There have been cases where building code councils have been stacked by an industry to try and push through their products. They were sued and lost. So there is a careful subtext to what they do. When the NFPA 70 (National Electrical Code) accidentally (1996 maybe?) banned a type of premade in-ground pool through their grounding rules, they quickly back tracked on the requirements through their addenda process.
Are there ever/often an "exceptions" category(ies) for experimental building methods and/or owner/occupier buildings?
Aerospace uses this approach to facilitate new types of innovative aircraft and "home built" aircraft (often from kits).
In very rural areas, I've seen this In Practice because of very flexible / thin / weak codes in general and/or little inspection done. It can result in some very interesting buildings that would seem unlikely to be approved in cities, e.g., for homes built of field stone and logs built deep into hill sides and fir permanent residence "tree houses". I suppose these could be approved in cites but the amount of architectural and engineering documents would drive their costs way out of the price range of typical rural do-it-yourselfers...
Of course, such "alternative construction" projects can't usually be bank financed but they can often be built from cash flow even for those with low incomes if they are willing to put in sweat equity...
Would be nice to see a comparison with other international codes—which countries use IBC and which use others. I’ve read a bit about single stair buildings, and Americans seem to use a lot more sprinklers (and have a higher fire death rate) than Europe.
The commonality of fire sprinklers is relatively new ~20 years ago with the creation of the modern IBCC. Prior to that they were insurance driven.
They are not always proscribed, but if you use them, you don't have to do a whole bunch of other really expensive stuff. The simple explanation is that FP sprinkler in a building drops the hour-fire withstand requirement by 1-hour for each type. So if a 1-hour wall becomes a normal wall, a 2-hour wall a 1-hour wall, etc. Fire dampers and fire doors are really expensive.
Its a shame that restrictive code modifications don't have to go through a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of compliance to the cost of QALYs potentially lost per year if the change is not introduced. We would probably see much leaner and reasonable versions of these codes if that was the case.
Model code changes are analyzed for potential cost impact, actually, though (as far as I can tell) it doesn't go so far as to do a QALY analysis. Every proposed change to an ICC code, for instance, is accompanied by an expected cost impact.
It's good that they at least analyze costs but without an equivalent analysis for benefits it's unclear how they justify including or not including a certain restrictive change. I.e. a lot of the elevator regulations clearly look like they'd save at most one or two lives per year while costing tens of millions of dollars each to the economy.
One of the conclusions of a previous post [1] was that inflation adjusted cost per square foot had gone up 50% since 1947. Is this part of it? The ratcheting up of code? I would kinda hope that since 1947 we're buying _better_ houses now, better insulated, less likely to catch fire and explode, etc.
[1] https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost-breakdown-and-partial
FM Global is another big "listing" agency. Since the Building Codes originally derived from insurance companies setting standards for what they will approve (back in the late 19th century), FM Global has a lot of influence.
NFPA is the big dog. The Internationally Code (which was a merger of a number of US Regional Codes) cribbed a lot of its requirements from the NFPA Life Safety Code. NFPA has a lot of specialized situational codes (hospitals, fire pumps, etc.) and also does a lot of standards for fire fighters.
To add to your note about copyrighting. There is also case law which has found that the rules making entities are subject to antitrust law. There have been cases where building code councils have been stacked by an industry to try and push through their products. They were sued and lost. So there is a careful subtext to what they do. When the NFPA 70 (National Electrical Code) accidentally (1996 maybe?) banned a type of premade in-ground pool through their grounding rules, they quickly back tracked on the requirements through their addenda process.
Are there ever/often an "exceptions" category(ies) for experimental building methods and/or owner/occupier buildings?
Aerospace uses this approach to facilitate new types of innovative aircraft and "home built" aircraft (often from kits).
In very rural areas, I've seen this In Practice because of very flexible / thin / weak codes in general and/or little inspection done. It can result in some very interesting buildings that would seem unlikely to be approved in cities, e.g., for homes built of field stone and logs built deep into hill sides and fir permanent residence "tree houses". I suppose these could be approved in cites but the amount of architectural and engineering documents would drive their costs way out of the price range of typical rural do-it-yourselfers...
Of course, such "alternative construction" projects can't usually be bank financed but they can often be built from cash flow even for those with low incomes if they are willing to put in sweat equity...