Cutting codes to cut costs of construction

[mtlogcabin]

Dow makes less than the utility companies would over time, meaning the building owner has saved money.

Utility company rates are usually heavily regulated but it would only require one rate increase to offset the time the building owner saved money. If a non-government company does not make money they will not survive. That includes private, "nonprofit" and co-op structured companies.

 

[tmurray]

Utility company rates are usually heavily regulated but it would only require one rate increase to offset the time the building owner saved money. If a non-government company does not make money they will not survive. That includes private, "nonprofit" and co-op structured companies.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that when utility rates go up that adding insulation becomes less profitable?

 

[mark handler]

It should not be a "cut Codes" debate it should be an "alter the codes to make sense.

As an example:
The Diminishing Returns of Adding More Insulation
https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/76941/The-Diminishing-Returns-of-Adding-More-Insulation
Adding any insulation to uninsulated homes can save more energy than adding more insulation to already-insulated homes.
Too much is never enough
The debate over how much insulation to use is an important one. There's no clear-cut answer. I can't tell you, "Use this much in climate zone 4 and this much in climate zone 5" because there are multiple variables involved. Here are the main ones:
Climate zone
Type of heating and cooling system
Fuel used for heating
Utility costs
Photovoltaic (solar electric) system costs
Comfort
Your interests and goals - utility bills, carbon footprint...

Whether you're trying to reduce power plant emissions or just save money, at a certain point, it becomes wiser to stop with the insulation and spend your money on the stuff that, dollar for dollar, will yield better results.

 

[mtlogcabin]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that when utility rates go up that adding insulation becomes less profitable?

No I am referring to the cost versus payback period over time. With fluctuating energy prices it is hard to determine if that payback period is 5 years or 50 years.


Look at wind turbines for SFR

Using Windustry.org’s estimate of $3,000 to $5,000 per kilowatt, we’ll assume an average of $4,000 per kilowatt for the cost of a small wind turbine.

A 5 kW small wind turbine would cost about $20,000 (5 kW x $4,000). With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 14.9 years.

A 10 kW turbine would cost about $40,000. With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 29.9 years.

A 15 kW turbine would cost about $60,000. With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 44.8 years.

It’s important to note that small wind turbines have a lifetime of about 20 years, which means that some of these payback periods are longer than the product’s actual lifetime. That means that the wind turbine would have to be replaced before it paid for itself in energy generation.

 

[SCBO1]

coder,

Does your city require only copper water service lines to the house? Some communities only allow copper. There is a savings in allowing PEX type water service lines. Have you thought about TWO water meters in one pit to single family houses? Both are small reductions in cost to a developer or home builde

Man, I'm running out of ideas to cut cost.

 

[Coder]

Copper only so that if they have to throw heat at it to thaw they dont melt. Like someone else on here said, cutting costs of construction doesn't make housing more affordable, it just puts more money in the contractors pocket.

 

[tmurray]

No I am referring to the cost versus payback period over time. With fluctuating energy prices it is hard to determine if that payback period is 5 years or 50 years.


Look at wind turbines for SFR

Using Windustry.org’s estimate of $3,000 to $5,000 per kilowatt, we’ll assume an average of $4,000 per kilowatt for the cost of a small wind turbine.

A 5 kW small wind turbine would cost about $20,000 (5 kW x $4,000). With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 14.9 years.

A 10 kW turbine would cost about $40,000. With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 29.9 years.

A 15 kW turbine would cost about $60,000. With electricity costs of $1,340 per year, it would pay for itself in 44.8 years.

It’s important to note that small wind turbines have a lifetime of about 20 years, which means that some of these payback periods are longer than the product’s actual lifetime. That means that the wind turbine would have to be replaced before it paid for itself in energy generation.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize your code required on-site generation of energy.

 

[mark handler]

The typical solar payback period in the U.S. is between 6 and 8 years. If cost of installing solar is $20,000 and system is going to save $2,500 a year on foregone energy bills, solar panel payback or “break-even point” will be 8 years ($20,000/$2,500 = 8).Oct 26, 2018

 

[conarb]

Copper only so that if they have to throw heat at it to thaw they dont melt. Like someone else on here said, cutting costs of construction doesn't make housing more affordable, it just puts more money in the contractors pocket.

Kill all permit fees, permits have become nothing but taxes, if cities want inspections let them pay for them out of the general fund, for too many years cities have been illegally robbing the permit fees for other purposes anyway/

 

[mtlogcabin]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize your code required on-site generation of energy.

We don't but they are popular in rural areas (no electric) and eastern MT where the wind is more reliable

 

[tmurray]

We don't but they are popular in rural areas (no electric) and eastern MT where the wind is more reliable

I'm wondering if photovoltaic wouldn't be a better option. We have areas that have been running solar panels for about 40 years with little drop in efficiency. In lower latitudes they get a lot more wattage, but it really hurts the lifespan of the units. Montana has a latitude relatively similar to where I am.

 

[conarb]

This on the front page of today's paper:

Stacey Sonnenshein got some bad news when she spoke to Contra Costa County planners about making a minor addition to her 60-year-old hillside home.

The county had no record that a decades-old basement apartment, rented to a friend, was built legally. Sonnenshein was told to either evict the tenant or do a renovation that she and her partner couldn’t afford.

Sonnenshein wishes she had never said a word to the county.

“I would tell people to never apply for a permit. Never let them on your property,” said Sonnenshein, a veterinarian in Berkeley. “Don’t engage with them in any way.”

Welcome to the world of gray-market living, a municipal game of “don’t ask, don’t tell” about old converted garages, basement apartments and lived-in backyard studios like Sonnenshein’s built decades ago without permits and considered “uninhabitable” by officials.

State lawmakers, developers and planners have tried to simplify the permitting process and lower fees to encourage new backyard units, known as accessory dwelling units or granny flats, as a relatively cheap and quick attack on the state’s housing shortage and sky-high rents.

But that red-tape cutting hasn’t extended to existing flats. Owners trying to bring older units up to code encounter costly permits and renovations and decide it’s not worth the expense, say advocates, planners and real estate agents.

Nava said many owners keep unpermitted units in good shape, but fear the cost of upgrading to the current housing code. State regulations imposed in 2013 require high energy efficiency standards, often expensive on smaller units.

They wanted to add a second bathroom, and interviewed several contractors and architects. Although builders offered to do the work without permits, she said, the couple insisted on keeping the work legal.

They submitted plans to the county. A planner checked the property and judged the 60-year-old apartment to be illegal.

“This is really common,” said Debbie Sanderson, an urban planner and co-founder of Berkeley’s ADU task force who is helping Sonnenshein in her battle, “and it’s coming to a head.”

Sonnenshein believes the two-bedroom, in-law apartment was built legally, around 1955, by the original homeowner. But Contra Costa County has no land use permit — which would make the unit legal — from the 1950s.

Circumstantial evidence suggests the county did know about the unit, Sonnenshein said. She discovered a notation of a work permit for the basement addition — but no actual permit — in public records dated three years after the house was built. The county has long considered it a duplex on tax rolls, and Sonnenshein considers that further proof the county approved the addition.¹

¹ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/02/11/illegal-adus-in-bay-area-when-in-law-units-become-outlaws/

 

[conarb]

San Francisco is going to try to do something about the enormous fees:

The ordinance — which could be introduced at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting Tuesday meeting or next week — is Breed’s latest effort to chip away at what she sees as the administrative forces that make it harder to build housing.

“We have to remove the barriers and bureaucracy that get in the way of building more housing,” Breed said. “This means not only streamlining how we build housing, but also cutting fees so our dollars can go toward building more affordable housing and so more people will come forward to build in-laws, allowing us to add new rent-controlled units throughout city.”

Breed’s proposal wouldn’t expedite projects but would make them less expensive to get moving.

The ordinance would prevent the city from moving money from one pocket to another. In San Francisco, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development is the main source of funding for affordable housing projects.

Sam Moss, executive director of the Mission Housing Development Corp., said it was “fairly ludicrous” for another city agency, the Department of Building Inspection, to then take a portion of that money back for permit reviews and inspection services, which is how the process currently works.

The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. and the Mission Economic Development Agency are just a few weeks away from breaking ground on a 143-unit, 100-percent affordable housing complex at 1990 Folsom St. in the Mission District, a project the two organizations developed jointly.

According to the Mayor’s Office of Housing, the building inspection permitting fees alone for that project were about $150,000.

The ordinance is also meant to encourage the development of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, often called in-law or granny flats. In August, Breed instructed city departments to clear within six months the backlog of some 900 ADUs stuck in the approval pipeline — a deadline that will expire at the end of the month. She also mandated that the city speed up the review of new requests to build ADUs.

On top of making it easier to get an ADU built, Breed’s proposed ordinance would also make them less expensive. City officials said the building inspection permit fees for ADUs range from $7,000 to $10,000, on average.

The Department of Building Inspection collected nearly $1.4 million in permit fees from 100 percent affordable housing projects in the last fiscal year and just over $568,000 from ADUs.¹

¹ https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea...-bill-to-make-affordable-housing-13605351.php

 

[tmurray]

This on the front page of today's paper:




¹ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/02/11/illegal-adus-in-bay-area-when-in-law-units-become-outlaws/

Here, we have 6 months from the date we should have know about a violation for any corrective action. After that date, we can no longer pursue enforcement. In this situation, if she has been taxed for two dwelling units for more than 6 months, we would not be able to force her to do anything. The property would be labeled a legal non-conforming use and can continue with that use.

 

[steveray]

Here, we have 6 months from the date we should have know about a violation for any corrective action. After that date, we can no longer pursue enforcement. In this situation, if she has been taxed for two dwelling units for more than 6 months, we would not be able to force her to do anything. The property would be labeled a legal non-conforming use and can continue with that use.

Interesting approach, I kind of like it but worry about the "next" buyer and their safety....

 

[JCraver]

Circumstantial evidence suggests the county did know about the unit, Sonnenshein said. She discovered a notation of a work permit for the basement addition — but no actual permit — in public records dated three years after the house was built. The county has long considered it a duplex on tax rolls, and Sonnenshein considers that further proof the county approved the addition.¹

Man I hope her lawyer rubs the County's nose in that. A judge around here would smack us down hard if the 2 issues in that paragraph are true.

 

[JCraver]

Cannot prove that, nor can they prove Seat belts save lives. Some that use them live, some die; some that don't use them live, some die. But fatalities appear less....
Cannot prove that drinking and driving will end in an accident. Some do, some don't. But fatalities appear less....

It's all a best guess.
I have never heard of a death in a sprinklered SFD house.

So then you're ok with writing code based on best guesses? That's my issue here. Prove it saves a life, or leave it out of the code.

 

[mtlogcabin]

"The ordinance would prevent the city from moving money from one pocket to another. In San Francisco, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development is the main source of funding for affordable housing projects."

Conarb
You can't have it both ways. You are against using building permit fees to subsidize other agencies yet you think waiving building permit fees for a department that probably receives a majority of its construction funding through federal grants is okay.

If a building department operates as a special revenue fund and all fees stay within that department to cover operating cost then no permit fees are ever waived. Why should those who pay a fee for a specific service subsidize the cost to provide that same service to others.

 

[mark handler]

So then you're ok with writing code based on best guesses? That's my issue here. Prove it saves a life, or leave it out of the code.

Not the way Laws work
Cannot prove that, nor can they prove Seat belts save lives.
Cannot prove that drinking and driving will end in an accident.
Do you want those "vehicular codes" changed?

Cannot prove anything.
It's all a best guess.

Cannot prove that Smoke or CM Detectors, save lives.
Cannot Prove that framing anchors will keep the building intact during an earthquake or wind event.

So it should be a free for all, no society, Build what you want, where you want and sell it to any poor slob, because nothing is provable.

So Joe, you enforce No codes, because you cant prove it? You as a code enforcement officer collect money for not enforcing the state codes?

 

[conarb]

"The ordinance would prevent the city from moving money from one pocket to another. In San Francisco, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development is the main source of funding for affordable housing projects."

Conarb
You can't have it both ways. You are against using building permit fees to subsidize other agencies yet you think waiving building permit fees for a department that probably receives a majority of its construction funding through federal grants is okay.

If a building department operates as a special revenue fund and all fees stay within that department to cover operating cost then no permit fees are ever waived. Why should those who pay a fee for a specific service subsidize the cost to provide that same service to others.

I agree and also see lots of constitutional issues here, the point is that the city makes lots of money with it's building department, now that it's building policies have put people on the streets something has to be done, so they want to reduce fees for the poor but not the rest of us, more good old communism, take from the rich and give to the poor.

Government has always used building departments to achieve political goals, there was an article in the paper the other day about Urban Renewal in San Francisco:

Urban renewal often refers to the clearing out of blighted areas in inner cities to clear out slums and create opportunities for higher class housing, businesses, and more. Modern attempts at renewal began in the late 19th century in developed nations, and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s under the rubric of reconstruction. The process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in the history and demographics of cities around the world.¹

San Francisco demolished it's entire Western Addition, Oakland it's entire West Oakland, both almost 100% black areas that the cities wanted to clear out.

City officials, however, saw only the negatives. In 1947, a city report said that only a “clean sweep” could make the Western Addition “a genuinely good place to live.” In 1948, the Board of Supervisors declared the neighborhood a “blighted area” and designated it for redevelopment, for which federal funds were made available.

The newly created San Francisco Redevelopment Agency was charged with cleaning up the “blight.” For years, it accomplished little. But when a hard-charging executive named Justin Herman was appointed as head of the agency, “urban renewal” — which the writer James Baldwin famously called “Negro removal” — began in earnest.²

In Oakland a good friend was Oakland's only black building inspector, he was a licensed engineer and drew/engineered my plans and even got my permits in some cities, back when builders and inspectors were friends. Because he was black the city assigned him the chore of condemning West Oakland, after all why go through the courts, get property through eminent domain, pay for it, when you can send a building inspector out and condemn it? He asked that I ride with him one day, he didn't even bother to go in, he had seen so many that he could write up a list of violations at the curb and hang them on the doors, those old Victorians were only worth $5,000 to $10,000 at the time, they all had brick foundations and foundations alone would cost more than that. A demolition contractor got the entire area, he bought a war surplus army tank, started at one end of a block and ran right through all the homes that collapsed on top of his tank. meanwhile he had excavators picking up the debris and dropping it into lines of semi trucks.

Is there any difference between the building departments of the 50s clearing blacks out of town and those of today enforcing green and energy codes? All are political, just look at Alexandria Occasio Cortez's "Green New Deal".

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

² https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/Vertigo-mansion-s-fate-was-a-San-13601725.php

 

[JCraver]

Not the way Laws work
Cannot prove that, nor can they prove Seat belts save lives.
Cannot prove that drinking and driving will end in an accident.
Do you want those "vehicular codes" changed?

Cannot prove anything.
It's all a best guess.

Cannot prove that Smoke or CM Detectors, save lives.
Cannot Prove that framing anchors will keep the building intact during an earthquake or wind event.

So it should be a free for all, no society, Build what you want, where you want and sell it to any poor slob, because nothing is provable.

So Joe, you enforce No codes, because you cant prove it? You as a code enforcement officer collect money for not enforcing the state codes?

No, Mark, I enforce what they pay me to enforce. All of the codes we have adopted or are obliged to enforce by the State, even the ones I don't agree with. The difference is, when we're adopting new codes, updating existing one's, or my crazy State tries to pass any, I opine against those that overreach. Like those we've talked about in this thread - energy, sfd sprinklers, etc.

And seatbelts? That's a whole other topic, but forcing me to wear a device while operating a vehicle I own and where only I may be injured as a result of "disobedience", is protecting me from myself and a giant overreach of law. But the insurance lobby sure is happy..

 

[ADAguy]

Residential wallboard inspection, not sure about you but I have had one handful of inspections fail and it was due to them not being ready. What about replacing this inspection with an affidavit from the responsible party, dated, print and signed. Indicating material placed, method of fastening, material to do so and spacing. A simple one page form you generate could become the affidavit.

The exception to this would be if the wallboard is part of a braced wall assembly and without question core walls.

Bad idea, thats all you need to do, give the "Sharkskins" another treasure chest to open.

 

[Keystone]

Bad idea, thats all you need to do, give the "Sharkskins" another treasure chest to open.

Since the I Codes existence, how many wallboard inspections have you had to fail for incorrect installation? This doesn't include firewalls and core walls.

 

[Coder]

The only residential drywall inspecting I am going to do now is in accordance with the 2015 IRC section R109.1.5.1, braced wall panels and garage lids under living space.