Canada’s Buildings Will Finally Be Built With Climate Change In Mind

[mark handler]

Canada’s Buildings Will Finally Be Built With Climate Change In Mind
By James Wilt • Tuesday, March 7, 2017
https://www.desmog.ca/2017/03/07/canada-s-buildings-will-finally-be-built-climate-change-mind

There’s just no way around it: building codes are deeply boring documents.

The most recent National Building Code of Canada clocks in at 1,400 jargon-filled pages.

Despite being a snore fest, it’s on its way to becoming an incredibly important tool in preparing new buildings for the worst impacts of escalating climate change and extreme weather events, such as flooding, hail and rain.

That’s thanks to a brand-new $40 million federal government investment in the National Research Council, which is responsible for updating the building code every five years; the last one was released in 2015, meaning the next version will be released in 2020.

Tweet: “It’s the first time the government has talked about building code and #climatechange in one breath.” http://bit.ly/2mkzTWP @ICLRCanada“It’s the first time that the government has talked about building code and climate change in one breath,” says Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. “It’s very important.”

Developers Oppose Big Changes

The last few years have reminded us of the potential power of extreme weather, including the catastrophic flooding in 2013 of Calgary and Toronto, resulting in insured losses of more than$1.7 billion and $850 million respectively.

Such major events are no longer the anomaly. As quoted in a recent report by the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation: Tweet: “Payouts from #extremeweather have more than doubled every five to 10 years since the 1980s.” http://bit.ly/2mkzTWP @ICCA_Canada #cdnpoli“Payouts from extreme weather have more than doubled every five to 10 years since the 1980s. For each of the past six years, they have been near or above $1 billion in Canada.”

And that’s not even counting total economic impacts on cities and towns.
But little has changed in the rules of how buildings are actually constructed in Canada, despite some groups pushing for years to see climate-specific updates.

Jason Thistlethwaite, director of the University of Waterloo’s Climate Change Adaptation Project, says in an interview that many necessary changes are technically possible but often face opposition from interests in favour of the status-quo, especially residential homebuilders and professional engineers.

McGillivray agrees: “The building code process is a pretty conservative one. It’s very well established; they’re pretty rooted groups that are invested in the process and you don’t see really big changes from code to code.”

Small and Inexpensive Changes Can Reduce Impacts of Flooding, Wind

It’s not like such advocates are exactly asking for huge changes to the code.

Let’s start with flooding: it’s the the most common and costly form of natural hazard in Canada, and has a strong relationship to climate change in the likelihood of an increase in frequency.

For years, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has been pushing for mandatory installation of “backwater valves,” which the City of Winnipeg has mandated since 1979 and defines as “a device that prevents sewage in an overloaded main sewer line from backing up into your basement.”

Some provinces interpret the current national code in a way that makes backwater valves mandatory. But some, namely Ontario and B.C., do not.

“Right now, many existing buildings do not employ what we would consider to be internationally recognized best practices for flood protection at the property level,” Thistlethwaite says.

He says that another example of a “best practice” is Kitchener’s separate stormwater charge that people can reduce if they install certain measures that divert stormwater away from the system, such as a rain barrel, permeable pavement or rain garden.

The same goes for preparing for strong winds, including events such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

McGillivray says the solutions are small and inexpensive, including making “hurricane straps” mandatory on new buildings and using certain types of nails and nailing patterns in the roof decking, to ensure the roof doesn’t pop off in the event of extremely high winds.

Lastly, there’s the desire to see certain roofing material used to protect from hail and freezing rain, which Thistlethwaite says will increase in frequency as “shoulder seasons” (the period of time where the temperature hovers around zero) get longer due to climate change and severe convective storms increase in number; such events can result in significant damage to sidings and shingles.

“Let’s face it: if a builder doesn’t have to do something, they’re not going to do it,” McGillivray says. “We do believe that codifying it is the best way to go: it ensures that everybody has to do the same thing and that there’s no favouritism or anything of that nature. It completely removes the idea of voluntarism.”

Much More Work Needed to Prepare Existing Homes for Climate Change

But the building code — which Thistlethwaite describes as already “one of the best building codes in the world” — obviously only applies to new constructions.

That means there are millions of homes, businesses and other structures that will still be vulnerable to extreme weather events. McGillivray says that education for homeowners is key, helping them realize the risk they’re facing and the simple things they can do to protect themselves.

Such responsibilities often falls on the municipalities, which tend to have the least financial capacity and resources to pull a large public information campaign off.

That’s where Thistlethwaite suggests the feds step in more, developing and disseminating risk maps, information and incentives such as subsidies or adjusted risk-based tax rates to help change behaviour.

For instance, Thistlethwaite says the current design of the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements — which is the federal coverage program, triggered if damages surpass a certain financial threshold — means there are no conditions for people receiving assistance to alter the design or structure of the existing building.

“Effectively, the federal government doesn’t provide any incentive for people to change their behaviour, even if they are living in a very high-risk area,” he says.

Working to clear up misinformation about the program’s coverage in case of “overland” flooding — with compensation often unavailable if there are private insurers who offer homeowners the service — would likely help, as would providing more funding for cities to improve sewer and stormwater systems in order to prevent backups and flooding.

Work on Building Codes Update Will Start in April, Concluding by 2020

Until then, we’ve got the building code updates.

Philip Rizcallah, director of Building Regulations at the National Research Council of Canada, says that “a lot of the research hasn’t been completed and a lot of the data is not available.”

That’s why his office will working with Environment Canada to obtain historical and prospective weather data — including snow loads, wind loads and rain loads — and then develop the data into “new technical solutions.” In addition, the National Research Council will consult with government, industry and academia to figure out solutions.

Come April, the National Research Council will start focusing its attention on “key priority projects” in order to complete the upgrades by 2020, which is when the next publication of the building code comes out.

In addition, he says the National Research Council will be developing new guides and engineering codes for infrastructure, including bridges, roads, sewer systems and stormwater gathering.

“The way we build homes in Canada is well established and we do build good homes in the country,” McGillivray says. “We just see gaps in the code, little tweaks that need to be fixed here and there.”

Image: High waters in the neigbhourhood of Elbow Park during the Calgary floods of 2013. Photo: Andy van der Raadt via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

[conarb]

Somebody tell the Canadians that it's all a fraud:

Climate Change: We're often told by advocates of climate change that the "science is settled." But in fact, "science" itself is in a deep crisis over making claims it can't back up, especially about climate.

As BBC News Science Correspondent Tom Feilden noted last week, "Science is facing a 'reproducibility crisis' where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, research suggests." This isn't just his journalistic opinion, but the conclusion of the University of Virginia's Center for Open Science, which estimates that roughly 70% of all studies can't be reproduced.

And this includes the field of climate change, by the way. It's a disaster. Being able to reproduce others' experiments or findings from models is at the very heart of science. Yet, radical climate change advocates would have us spend 2% of global GDP, or roughly $1.5 trillion a year, to forestall a minuscule amount of anticipated warming based on dubious modeling and experiments.

Meanwhile, the federal government spends literally billions of dollars a year on climate change, with virtually none of the money funding scientists who doubt the climate change threat. There is no serious debate. This is a problem for all of science.

Worse, our government's own science fraud is a big problem. Dr. John Bates, a former top scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently detailed how a government paper that called into question the 18-year "pause" in global warming was based on "experimental" data and politicized. That "paper" was used to justify President Obama's signing of the Paris climate agreement.

Meanwhile, Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist Judith Curry recently retired, blaming the "CRAZINESS (her emphasis) in the field of climate science."

Even so, mythical claims of a "consensus" among scientists about climate change continue in an effort to shut up critics. Those who dissent, and literally thousands of scientists and engineers do, are shouted down and harassed.

As Princeton University physicist Will Happer told the left-wing British newspaper the Guardian earlier this week: "There's a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult. ... It will potentially harm the image of all science."¹

Just yesterday MIT sent a letter to President Trump stating that it is a fraud:

March 9, 2017

President Donald Trump
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

On 2 March, 2017, members of the MIT Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate (PAOC) sent a public letter to the White House, contesting the Petition I circulated. The Petition, signed by over 330 scientists from around the world so far, called for governments to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Since MIT’s administration has made the climate issue a major focus for the Institute, with PAOC playing a central role, it is not surprising that the department would object to any de-emphasis. But the PAOC letter shows very clearly the wisdom of James Madison’s admonition, in the Federalist, 10:

“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.”

For far too long, one body of men, establishment climate scientists, has been permitted to be judges and parties on what the “risks to the Earth system associated with increasing levels of carbon dioxide” really are.

Let me explain in somewhat greater detail why we call for withdrawal from the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC was established twenty five years ago to find scientific support for dangers from increasing carbon dioxide. While this has led to generous and rapidly increased support for the field, the purported dangers remain hypothetical, model-based projections. By contrast, the benefits of increasing CO2 and modest warming are clearer than ever, and they are supported by dramatic satellite images of a greening Earth.


We note that:

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) no longer claims a greater likelihood of significant as opposed to negligible future warming,
It has long been acknowledged by the IPCC that climate change prior to the 1960’s could not have been due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Yet, pre-1960 instrumentally observed temperatures show many warming episodes, similar to the one since 1960, for example, from 1915 to 1950, and from 1850 to 1890. None of these could have been caused by an increase in atmospheric CO2,
Model projections of warming during recent decades have greatly exceeded what has been observed,
The modelling community has openly acknowledged that the ability of existing models to simulate past climates is due to numerous arbitrary tuning adjustments,
Observations show no statistically valid trends in flooding or drought, and no meaningful acceleration whatsoever of pre-existing long term sea level rise (about 6 inches per century) worldwide,
Current carbon dioxide levels, around 400 parts per million are still very small compared to the averages over geological history, when thousands of parts per million prevailed, and when life flourished on land and in the oceans.

Calls to limit carbon dioxide emissions are even less persuasive today than 25 years ago. Future research should focus on dispassionate, high-quality climate science, not on efforts to prop up an increasingly frayed narrative of “carbon pollution.” Until scientific research is unfettered from the constraints of the policy-driven UNFCCC, the research community will fail in its obligation to the public that pays the bills.

I hope these remarks help to explain why the over 300 original signers of the Petion (and additional scientists are joining them every day) have called for withdrawal from the UNFCCC.

Respectfully yours,

Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences²

¹ http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/is-global-warming-science-just-a-fraud/

² http://climate-science.mit.edu/news...y-working-on-climate-write-to-president-trump

 

[conarb]

Here is an excellent analysis to start building a criminal case against the 'scientists' who have perpetrated this massive fraud, it anyone here is interested in the technical details.

In fact the Head of the United Nations IPCC has admitted that it has nothing to do with saving the planet but merely a means to develop a new economic system, or redistribution of wealth through carbon taxes:

A shocking statement was made by a United Nations official Christiana Figueres at a news conference in Brussels. Figueres admitted that the Global Warming conspiracy set by the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which she is the executive secretary, has a goal not of environmental activists to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism. She said very casually:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

She even restated that goal ensuring it was not a mistake: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”¹

The goal is to charge us carbon taxes to support aboriginal peoples all over the world, from spear carriers in loin clothes in Africa, to aboriginals in Australia, to aboriginal Indians in Central and South America, it's egalitarianism run amok, of course we know all about that with ADA don't we, making people in wheelchairs equal to normal people, and putting imbeciles in classrooms with normal children.

¹ https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/global-warming-is-about-destroying-capitalism/

 

[tmurray]

Climate change science is a very new type of science when compared to many others. Kind of like building science. There are a lot of people doing research. And they are all disagreeing on what is reasonable to assume and what is not. 98% of scientists agree that there is climate change of some sort. Remember, gravity and friction are "theories" as well. But there are comparatively few who would state that because it's not proven that gravity and friction don't exist.

I don't know if climate change is a thing. What I know is we've experienced three 1-in-50 rainfall events in the six years I've worked for this town. That's statistically impossible.

We are faced with a crossroad: assume climate change is an issue and try to curb the negative effects or assume it is false and do nothing. In situations like this I like to do a worst case scenario analysis.

Worst case scenario for assuming climate change is real: increase renewable energy sources - this would reduce reliance on oil, a lot of which comes from countries that sponsor terrorists. This would also increase manufacturing jobs in North America as shipping these products is more expensive than producing them here. Finally it would decrease the air pollution and reduce chronic breathing problems.

Improve current construction practices - buildings and infrastructure must be constructed with increased resilience in mind. This process rewards consultants and contractors with better building practices but comes at a greater cost. However, even if climate change is not real, the buildings and structures will still have an increased life span.

Worse Case scenario if we assume climate change is not real: maintain status quo - no major changes to industry in the short term. Rising sea levels cause huge migration crisis. Change in weather patterns create food crisis.


The reality is we can live with gearing up for a change in climate change and being wrong. We can't live with not gearing up and being wrong.

I know it's really easy to look for evidence to prove that what you want to do is the right thing to do. It's much harder to come to grips that the hard thing to do, is the right thing to do. But, when your evidence is only coming from 2% of a community and you're saying we can't trust the other 98% because they're arguing over semantics...you're on thin ice. Remember, we don't know how friction works yet and if we waited for the scientists to figure it out first, we wouldn't have planes, trains or automobiles. Luckily engineers figured out a fudge factor they call a "coefficient", which is a really nice word for guess. If the worst thing that can happen is that we increase jobs and improve air quality, That's a mistake I can live with.

 

[tmurray]

For years, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has been pushing for mandatory installation of “backwater valves,” which the City of Winnipeg has mandated since 1979 and defines as “a device that prevents sewage in an overloaded main sewer line from backing up into your basement.”

The plumbing code says that a line that may be subject to surcharge shall have a backwater valve installed. Basically leaving it up to the AHJ to decide if they want one or not. ANY line may be subject to surcharge. We require it in our sewer bylaw and have been saving our resident's money on insurance ever since. New installs pay for themselves in lower insurance rates in a matter of a couple years.

 

[conarb]

Improve current construction practices - buildings and infrastructure must be constructed with increased resilience in mind. This process rewards consultants and contractors with better building practices but comes at a greater cost. However, even if climate change is not real, the buildings and structures will still have an increased life span.

Wrong, sealed up buildings are proving to be bad, people are getting sick in them because of chemicals in building materials, California responded by banning formaldehyde in plywood/OSB but now we have mold and mildew with the new products. The next problem is with sealed-up buildings a leak is no-longer just a leak but a very expensive mold problem, when you open up older uninsulated buildings there is all kinds of evidence of water leakage, but water ran in and water ran and dried out. One simple example, a woman called from a 1905 Victorian with water leaking around her windows, I asked how long she had lived there? She said: "Thirty Five years and this is the first year it leaked, I don't know why I had it painted and the painter did an excellent job caulking the windows." I told her to make the painter come back and remove all window caulking, she did and the leaking and mold was gone. I've done years of expert witness work and arbitrated hundreds of cases involving failing newer buildings, in fact the service life of new homes has been dropped from the old 50 years to 30 years. I had one woman who had to move out of a new two million dollar 'Green home', she complained to the CBO and he advised her to sell it and buy an older home, but be very judicious with any remodeling she did, which I assume meant to do any remodeling she did in segments that wouldn't trigger building permits, or at least permits that would trigger efficiency requirements.

Didn't you read the quote above from Christiana Figueres the head of the IPCC that this isn't about climate at all but about ending the inequality of capitalism? Look at our carbon taxes, they are slated to go to the United Nations to make everyone in the world equal, from 50 IQs to 150 IQs, but the governor is spending half to give money to the poor and the other half to build the train to comply with Agenda 21 to eliminate the freedom of the private automobile.

 

[steveray]

Conarb,

Canada's approach is building better homes to be resilient when/ if change comes from what I read there, and that makes sense. Why to we keep paying to support these people that refuse to leave disaster prone areas?

 

[tmurray]

Wrong, sealed up buildings are proving to be bad, people are getting sick in them because of chemicals in building materials, California responded by banning formaldehyde in plywood/OSB but now we have mold and mildew with the new products. The next problem is with sealed-up buildings a leak is no-longer just a leak but a very expensive mold problem, when you open up older uninsulated buildings there is all kinds of evidence of water leakage, but water ran in and water ran and dried out. One simple example, a woman called from a 1905 Victorian with water leaking around her windows, I asked how long she had lived there? She said: "Thirty Five years and this is the first year it leaked, I don't know why I had it painted and the painter did an excellent job caulking the windows." I told her to make the painter come back and remove all window caulking, she did and the leaking and mold was gone. I've done years of expert witness work and arbitrated hundreds of cases involving failing newer buildings, in fact the service life of new homes has been dropped from the old 50 years to 30 years. I had one woman who had to move out of a new two million dollar 'Green home', she complained to the CBO and he advised her to sell it and buy an older home, but be very judicious with any remodeling she did, which I assume meant to do any remodeling she did in segments that wouldn't trigger building permits, or at least permits that would trigger efficiency requirements.

Didn't you read the quote above from Christiana Figueres the head of the IPCC that this isn't about climate at all but about ending the inequality of capitalism? Look at our carbon taxes, they are slated to go to the United Nations to make everyone in the world equal, from 50 IQs to 150 IQs, but the governor is spending half to give money to the poor and the other half to build the train to comply with Agenda 21 to eliminate the freedom of the private automobile.

Anything is bad when you do it wrong. Heck, you can die from drinking too much water. Sealing buildings without proper mechanical ventilation is bad, so don't do it. Adding insulation without improving your flashing details is bad, so don't do it. It's called the "whole home" approach. As you well know, everything you do in a building has some unintended consequence that must be considered and problems mitigated before starting the work. We just started requiring additional wall insulation, so now we are checking flashing closer because the drying potential of the wall has decreased.

It might be easy to turn your nose up at energy efficiency when you live in a temperate climate, but here in Canada, and I would suspect major portions of the US, we don't have that luxury. I have people who literally (not figuratively) must decide if they want to be cold or hungry. It may be socialist, but this is Canada and we decided a long time ago that people of this nation were worth taking care of. That is why I am in the position I am. To take care of my residents. To make sure they aren't in sick buildings. To make sure their buildings are not falling down. To make sure they won't burn to death in their buildings. It's irrelevant who is pushing the idea and what their agenda is if it serves the public good.

Again it's very challenging to separate the idea from the individual or organization proposing it and evaluate the idea on it's own merit without being influenced by who is proposing it. I still struggle with this.

Do you have a full transcript of the interview? the Quote appears to be taken out of context.

 

[Mr. Inspector]

Are these 98% the Chinese scientists that are making up this fraud?

 

[conarb]

Do you have a full transcript of the interview? the Quote appears to be taken out of context.

No, but if you go to her website, there is a TED address that immediately plays automatically wherein she says it multiple times in multiple ways, a few minutes in she says they "threw climate change in the trashbin to create a new world economic system".

The real problem here, acknowledged by all but the religious nuts, is world overpopulation, this has been the main focus of the Rockefeller Foundation to reduce the world's population of an exploding near 8 billion people to a 'sustainable' 700 million, the first world has contributed to these problems by curing diseases that historically controlled population, I've heard that the U.S. has 6 laboratories in Africa isolating and analyzing new viruses to create cures, the U.S. pays proportionately more for all drugs to support this research, an example is statins, I paid $213 a month here, it jumped to $713 a month a couple of years ago with the passing of Obamacare, I started buying them from Canada at $98 a month, it's not the cost of statins, the world's best selling drug, it funds the research for all drugs many of which are sold much more cheaply in other countries and given away for free in Africa. Example is AIDS came out of Africa and spread through the homosexual and intravenous drug communities in the first world, they developed a cocktail of drugs to contain it at a cost of hundreds of thousands a year per patient here but free in Africa. BTW, it's illegal to import drugs from Canada, they come by circuitous routs from India and Turkey where most are manufactured through Germany, England and other countries, each shipment is routed differently, they say if intercepted by Customs the Canadian companies selling here will replace them.

That is why I am in the position I am. To take care of my residents. To make sure they aren't in sick buildings. To make sure their buildings are not falling down. To make sure they won't burn to death in their buildings

That's laudable, codes started with another lie that Mrs O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern starting the great Chicago fire, I too believe in codes or I wouldn't be here, where I dropped back is when they went from our UBC that was intended to protect the health, safety, and increase the tax base, to the ICC codes that are to protect the health, safety, and the common good, that 'common good' opened the door to all kinds of socialistic policies, and not only for our country but for the redistribution of wealth worldwide, including the indigenous peoples or the world that are still in the hunter gatherer phase of civilization.

Look at the average intelligence of areas of the world that the open borders people want to release into the entitlement societies of the first world, note that as they flood through Europe through Syria and Libya that we invaded they run right through poor countries to the entitlement societies like Germany and Sweden.




Then look at the birthrates of these third world countries:

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The United Nations Agenda are to make everyone in the world equal, so we move over so African tribesmen can have 15 Children and we pay for it?

If you want to live in sealed-up buildings to save money go right ahead, but don't make the rest of us do it, there used to be a saying that we don't hear anymore, "Go ahead and do what you want, it's a free country", we are not a free country if we are told how to live, the limitations came from a statement of Mr. Justice Holmes: "You can't yell fire in a crowded theater", Mr. Justice Holmes also made another famous ruling: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" in the 1927 case of Buck vs. Bell¹ authorizing the sterilization of feeble minded people.

¹ https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/200

 

[tmurray]

That's laudable, codes started with another lie that Mrs O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern starting the great Chicago fire, I too believe in codes or I wouldn't be here, where I dropped back is when they went from our UBC that was intended to protect the health, safety, and increase the tax base, to the ICC codes that are to protect the health, safety, and the common good, that 'common good' opened the door to all kinds of socialistic policies, and not only for our country but for the redistribution of wealth worldwide, including the indigenous peoples or the world that are still in the hunter gatherer phase of civilization.

Actually, the Canadian code was started after world war 2, with soldiers returning home, retooling for construction and home building. the code at that time helped give them a guide to construct new homes, since they did not have previous experience in construction.

You keep saying socialist like it's a bad thing. Remember, I'm Canadian. We wear that word like a badge of honour. It means we think about the good of others. We do what's best for Canada even though it's not what is best for me.

I have this argument with contractors a lot. They complain about new code requirements, I ask them if they participated in the public review of the codes, they tell me no and then I tell them too bad. If your answer to something going wrong with the direction the codes are heading is to pick up all your toys and go home, you're not allowed to complain because you don't really care. If you did you would try to do something about it.

The reality is Environment Canada has independent monitoring stations all over Canada. These stations provide data on wind speed, snow and rain accumulation over periods of time to the National Research Council for inclusion in the codes. I have not seen any values decrease. They've all stayed the same or gone up. Whether you want to believe it or not, we are experiencing an increase in frequency of severe weather events.

A couple other things, As someone with a psychology background and a 176 tested IQ, you should be made aware that IQ tests are not really a good way of determining intelligence, simply the logical faculties of the participant. An IQ scores will vary greatly between different tests as different test are adjusted for different cultural groups. I may score that high on a test for North Americans, but would score very differently on one for Africans. The reverse would be equally true.

The other thing I find interesting with your argument is that you have a basis of not wanting others to impose requirements on you because you do not wish to pay for someone else to have something, then you say you want to building buildings however you want. In my experience, this requires other people to pay for the poorly built buildings not meeting code, located in flood zones, etc. And I believe it's your's as well with FEMA. Do you really think someone who does not work in construction has the ability to make a informed decision on construction? They can tell you how they want the building to work, what kind of finishes they want, but they will never tell you they want larger web members in their trusses to help with deflection.

 

[conarb]

You keep saying socialist like it's a bad thing. Remember, I'm Canadian. We wear that word like a badge of honour. It means we think about the good of others. We do what's best for Canada even though it's not what is best for me.

In the recent past I've dealt with two Vancouver window fabricators, both reps I dealt with said things like: "You guys keep saying we are socialist, yes we have socialized medicine and it works well if you can wait, but we also work for companies with medical insurance so we can go south for medical treatment if we need it." In fact one stopped by a jobsite to visit when he was taking his wife down here for medical treatment. Socialism is a terrible system, it's failed every place it's been tried, just look at Venezuela now, a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, people are killing dogs and cats in the street to eat, even killing zoo animals to eat. Several European countries had it going, but now they have been invaded by hordes seeking the handouts of their entitlement societies, just yesterday in the EU Marine Le Pen attacked Angela Merkel, two socialist countries fighting over what's happening, To see socialist countries fight, watch this. If you want to be socialists fine, but don't force it on the rest of us.

I have this argument with contractors a lot. They complain about new code requirements, I ask them if they participated in the public review of the codes, they tell me no and then I tell them too bad. If your answer to something going wrong with the direction the codes are heading is to pick up all your toys and go home, you're not allowed to complain because you don't really care. If you did you would try to do something about it.

In the U.S. contractors have no say about codes, we cannot vote, only government apparatchiks can vote. Codes and other government regulations have gone so far that they have driven the cost of construction so high that most cannot afford to live here in the Bay Area, we are under Plan Bay Area (or One Bay Area) our version of UN Agenda 21, wherein unelected apparatchiks determine our fate. The first home I built cost $6 a foot, the last $1,000 a foot, after years of my SE fighting with the county plan checker, also a SE, she said: "The house should have been built with steel." I said: "I have a full red iron frame." She asked: "Do you know how many trees will die so you can build this home?"

The reality is Environment Canada has independent monitoring stations all over Canada. These stations provide data on wind speed, snow and rain accumulation over periods of time to the National Research Council for inclusion in the codes. I have not seen any values decrease. They've all stayed the same or gone up. Whether you want to believe it or not, we are experiencing an increase in frequency of severe weather events.

I don't have a cite at hand but everything I read says severe weather events are declining,

A couple other things, As someone with a psychology background and a 176 tested IQ, you should be made aware that IQ tests are not really a good way of determining intelligence, simply the logical faculties of the participant. An IQ scores will vary greatly between different tests as different test are adjusted for different cultural groups. I may score that high on a test for North Americans, but would score very differently on one for Africans. The reverse would be equally true.

I don't know where you got those ideas, my degrees are in philosophy and law, not psychology, I could only hope to test at 176, I've never got out of the 140s. IQ tests are set up to take into consideration culture, if they are wrong maybe some of those trillions going to universities should be allocated to improving IQ testing so people can be better tracked into fields they are mentally equipped to handle.

Intelligence Levels
As psychologists developed and refined IQ Testing, classification systems were established, and any
child with an IQ of above 70 was considered "normal", while those with scores above 130 were
considered "gifted."
Retardation Levels
To classify scores below 70, psychologists invented a scale of "retardation"
-
Morons, Imbeciles, and Idiots:

Morons
-
Those with IQs between 51 and 70 (adequate learning skills to complete menial tasks and to communicate)

Imbeciles
-
Those
with IQs between 26 and 50 (unable to progress past a mental age of approximately six)

Idiots
-
those with IQs between 0 and 25 (poor motor skills, extremely limited communication, and little response to stimulus)

We have a disaster going on in our schools now, ADA requires that these groups be educated in the same classrooms as normal children if the parents request it, teachers are retiring if they can rather than try to cope with this.

The other thing I find interesting with your argument is that you have a basis of not wanting others to impose requirements on you because you do not wish to pay for someone else to have something, then you say you want to building buildings however you want. In my experience, this requires other people to pay for the poorly built buildings not meeting code, located in flood zones, etc. And I believe it's your's as well with FEMA. Do you really think someone who does not work in construction has the ability to make a informed decision on construction? They can tell you how they want the building to work, what kind of finishes they want, but they will never tell you they want larger web members in their trusses to help with deflection.

As I said before I support minimum codes, the question is where we stop, we have gone so far here that construction is unaffordable to most and we have large groups living in tent cities under freeway overpasses and other areas. Much has been made here about Oakland's Ghost Ship fire, the disputes now are not correcting the code violations, they are too expensive to fix, the disputes are what to do with the people being evicted, on the front page of this morning's paper:

OAKLAND — Evictions from live/work spaces in Oakland continue with alarming frequency in the wake of December’s Ghost Ship fire, despite efforts by city leaders to work with landlords to prevent displacement in a city where affordable housing is a rare commodity.

“We are facing evictions weekly. The number of spaces out there that are untouched are decreasing,” said Tom Dolan, an architect and author of Oakland’s regulations governing warehouse conversions into legal live/work spaces.

Dolan has been working with the DIY Safety Group, which coalesced in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire to make immediate safety improvements to warehouse spaces. But many landlords seem unwilling to bother with the time and expense needed to upgrade and permit their buildings, choosing to sell them instead.

“It’s kind of a race against time to come up with some resolution with landlords,” he said.¹

The problems are rooted in codes forcing the costs of construction so high that people can't afford to live in code-legal buildings.

T Murray, if you have been following Wikileaks you would have read that Hilary gave a speech to a Brazilian bank in which she stated that her dream was to have no borders in the Western Hemisphere so people could migrate freely north, after 9/11 you Canadians passed a law barring anyone from entering your country that had any felonies or misdemeanors on their criminal records, I know a guy who wanted to travel to Canada and had a misdemeanor DUI years ago, he had to go to the Canadinan embassy and get a certificate of rehabilitation to gain entrance to Canada, as migrants from the Mideast and Africa move as far north as Sweden and Norway seeking welfare indigenous peoples will also move to your welfare state, your cold weather is not going to protect you from this.

As a final comment, this is not about saving the planet from global warming at all, it is about taxing the air we breathe to redistribute wealth from the first world to the third world, and the preferred way to do this, to paraphrase Bugsy Siegel, 'to allow people to migrate to where the money is'.


¹ http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/...land-warehouse-owners-still-evicting-tenants/

 

[JCraver]

In the U.S. contractors have no say about codes, we cannot vote, only government apparatchiks can vote. Codes and other government regulations have gone so far that they have driven the cost of construction so high that most cannot afford to live ... <snip>

This doesn't really belong in this thread, but does anybody know why this ^^^ is? Obviously contractors/trade groups/etc are able to speak at the code hearings and that is supposedly good enough to ensure their voices are heard, but why/when/how was the decision made that only "units of local government" would get the vote? Was it like that in all the legacy organizations? Are their any legit arguments for allowing others to vote?


As far as the original post - I didn't read anything other than the article MH posted, but it doesn't sound like they're proposing anything that isn't life safety related to me (well, ok... you could make a case that backwater valves aren't a critical life safety device in most homes and I'd probably buy it). Hurricane clips in high wind areas and heavier shingles in hail-prone areas aren't very over-reaching imo. I think they could've added those changes and left the whole climate change argument out of the discussion and came to the same conclusions as to the need for those changes.

 

[Mark K]

Conarb

The reason that only units of local government get to vote is obvious. ICC which publishes the IBC is an organization of individuals from local government so they limit voting to there members. They can do this because they are a private organization and the IBC is a model code that has no legal standing.

The IBC becomes the official code when adopted by the State or local government and this is when it should be subject to due process. The reality is that the model building code is typically adopted with little to no modifications.

All due process requires is that you be able to know what they are proposing to adopt and that you be given an opportunity to comment. The government does not have to really consider your comments unless they decide to.

 

[conarb]

As far as the original post - I didn't read anything other than the article MH posted, but it doesn't sound like they're proposing anything that isn't life safety related to me (well, ok... you could make a case that backwater valves aren't a critical life safety device in most homes and I'd probably buy it). Hurricane clips in high wind areas and heavier shingles in hail-prone areas aren't very over-reaching imo. I think they could've added those changes and left the whole climate change argument out of the discussion and came to the same conclusions as to the need for those changes.

They are using the now discredited climate change to drive code upgrades, the problem with incremental code upgrades is that over time you end up where we are with time to permit and costs so high that codes are pushing poor people off into tent cities leaving non-compliant buildings vacant.

Anything and everything we buy we make value judgments, cost vs. value, if we go to buy a new car we may like the Rolls Royce, but most of us compromise due to budget constraints, some choose the Mercedes, others can only afford the Chevrolet, we all make these decisions on a daily basis, since code officials have no skin in the game they often choose the most expensive options, something they would never do it it was there own money on the line. I'm going to lunch now, do I go to the steak house or do I go to the hotdog parlor? Think I'll settle for the hotdog, I just checked my brokerage accounts and my investments are down $1,386.32 today so I better not splurge on steak.

 

[conarb]

Conarb

The reason that only units of local government get to vote is obvious. ICC which publishes the IBC is an organization of individuals from local government so they limit voting to there members. They can do this because they are a private organization and the IBC is a model code that has no legal standing.

Not true Mark, I'm a member of the ICC and I'm not allowed to vote, as I was a member of the ICBO and was not allowed to vote.

 

[conarb]

At the same time, Cappio admits that landlords are in difficult positions. Although the city is taking a cooperative approach in working with landlords, it must address any safety hazards inspectors find.

A task force consisting of city staff and representatives from the community is working to amend zoning codes to make it easier for property owners to convert commercial buildings into legal living spaces without shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades. Until that happens, though, Cappio said the city is stuck with the codes on the books.

David Keenan, a founding member of the Omni Commons, who has been active in the DIY Safety Group, said now that many life-safety issues have mostly been addressed, the focus has shifted to working with landlords.

“It’s really weird to shift our energy from improving life safety and doing code-compliance work to trying to get through to landlords who just have their own impressions of what is going on,” Keenan said. “We’ve been seeing landlords totally lawyer up, and all these spaces with supportive landlords, it’s sort of flipped.”

“We are working, and we want to work, positively and productively with these owners,” Cappio said. “We want to make sure the buildings can rise to a level where the occupants will be safe and (the buildings) continue to be used.”

But the process can be complicated and costly depending on the kinds of modifications needed, making a sale more palatable.

That’s the case with Terry Andrews, who owns a warehouse in West Oakland. The building has seven tenants, but he’s asked them to leave so he can sell the building. He estimates the converted auto shop is worth about $1 million right now without being permitted as a live/work space, or double that for someone who does go through the city’s process.

“I’m 76 years old, and I really don’t feel like doing it,” he said. “There’s a lot of money there though for someone who does want to do it.”

That put some of his tenants in a tenuous position. Darren Rowe moved into an unpermitted loft inside Andrews’ warehouse so he could work on Harley Davidson motorcycles from his living room. He and some other tenants built out other rooms inside the space, including a kitchen and tiled shower in the bathroom. Now, he says he doesn’t know where he will go.¹

This guy says he can sell the illegal building for a million dollars, or he 'thinks' he can bring it up to code for another million but at 76 he's too old. Just looking at the video I'd say to hire a professional contractor to remodel that building to code will be over 2 million more, the Omni Commons people trying to heap are anti-capitalists from the Occupy movement and not professional contractors, on their building they have been trying to get the city to waive requirements like sprinklers, structural, and ADA so I assume they are trying the same approach here. Looking at the video I see no handicap parking at all, would the city compromise ADA requirements to allow life safety upgrades? Some here certainly wouldn't, like those who argue over the height of signs. In the end some investor will probably pay a million for it and let it sit vacant for several years until the neighborhood comes back, and the occupants will go to the tent cities.


¹ http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/...land-warehouse-owners-still-evicting-tenants/

 

[jar546]

Excellent news for Canada, preparing for the future. Hats off. Denyers beware.

 

[tmurray]

In Canada the government is in control of the codes through the National Research Council. An oversight committee deals with the code overall and sends tasks to sub-committees. Both are made up of Building and Fire AHJs, industry experts, engineers, architects, contractors developers and citizen representatives. It helps make sure you evaluate the change from multiple perspectives. In fact, we've recently had a lot of relaxations in the codes; climbable guards, 6 storey combustible, mixed rectangular and tapered stair treads and spiral stairs in the last code cycle alone. Most of those come with asterisks on how they may be used, but still a big win for common sense codes.

As far as the ICC process, I would assume the reason is that only government representatives can vote is because they would be significantly outnumbered by contractors.

 

[steveray]

I believe anyone can propose a change to the Icodes...I know final actions are just gov Members...Not sure about the rest of the voting. Just getting involved in the past couple of years, to some extent because I see some of this stuff going too far...

 

[conarb]

I believe anyone can propose a change to the Icodes...I know final actions are just gov Members...Not sure about the rest of the voting. Just getting involved in the past couple of years, to some extent because I see some of this stuff going too far...

Steve:

That's why I asked about RJJ, he went to Minneapolis for the sprinkler hearings and reported back on the fraud, hospitality suites, booze, and hookers, we need people to attend hearings and report back. We had hopes that when Jim Brown was elected to the Board that we could somehow influence the process, but apparently a horse wreck put him out of commission. With the ICC being a NGO it's pretty hard to effect any changes unless you can get someone inside the system.

 

[tmurray]

Yeah, I'm not one for hospitality suites and drinking when my tax payers are footing the bill for me to go somewhere. I should be at the top of my game to get the most of the experience as possible.

 

[steveray]

We don't know that ICC was the one or even involved in the RFS debacle...Or if it were those other guys or the manufacturers...If ICC had a flawed process and someone exploited it, well that happens when you have a process and lets hope it doesn't happen again....

 

[mtlogcabin]

What happened at Minneapolis
http://www.hbact.org/Resources/Docu... ICC Hijacked by Fire Sprinkler Coalition.pdf

ICC response
http://www.ircfiresprinkler.org/docs/IRCFSC response to NAHB appeal.pdf


You decide if it was a bought vote