# Storm-Prone States Are Relaxing Building Codes Instead of Making Them Tougher



## mark handler (Mar 19, 2018)

Storm-Prone States Are Relaxing Building Codes Instead of Making Them Tougher
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ease-off-building-codes-as-climate-risk-grows
The showdown in the Florida statehouse last year had all the drama of a knock-down political brawl: Powerful industries clashing. Warnings of death and destruction. And a surprise last-minute vote, delivering a sweeping reform bill to the governor’s desk.
The battle wasn’t about gun control, immigration or healthcare, but about making it easier to ignore national guidelines on building codes. To the surprise of the insurers, engineers and safety advocates who opposed the change, the home builders won -- in a state that gets hit by more hurricanes than any other.
Three months later, Hurricane Irma smashed into Florida.

A report being released on Monday shows Florida isn’t alone in easing up on building regulations even as the effects of global warming escalate. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety examined building policies in 18 Atlantic and Gulf Coast states and found that despite the increasing severity of natural disasters, many of those states have relaxed their approach to codes -- or have yet to impose any whatsoever.
"There’s no longer the automatic assumption that codes are good," Julie Rochman, the head of the institute, said in an interview. "We just have an incredible capacity for amnesia and denial in this country."
Earlier: California Says Wildfires Are Making Home Insurance Unaffordable
That trend leaves residents more vulnerable to climate change; it also puts states at odds with the Trump administration, which is struggling to cope with record disaster costs -- costs that tougher building codes are meant to reduce.
The shift toward less rigorous codes is driven by several factors, experts say: Rising anti-regulatory sentiment among state officials, and the desire to avoid anything that might hurt home sales and the tax revenue that goes with them.
And fierce lobbying from home builders.
"There is an increase in housing costs every time a new code or rule is put upon the builder," said Gerald Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, the industry’s trade group. He said states shouldn’t impose mandatory building codes at all, but rather let local officials decide how homes should be constructed.
Florida is the clearest example of the trend. Until last year, the state’s building codes were viewed as among the best in the nation -- largely a response to Hurricane Andrew, the 1992 storm that killed 26 people, destroyed 63,000 homes and bankrupted nine insurance companies.
Andrew’s Legacy
After Andrew, Florida began following the recommendations released every three years by the International Code Council, a Washington-based nonprofit that brings together builders, engineers, local code officials and other experts to translate the latest science into updated model building codes.
By most accounts, the system worked: Homes built after Andrew came through Irma far better than older buildings. But it also rankled the state’s home builders, who argued that many of the changes increased the cost of homes for no good reason, other than to bolster sales for whatever company makes the latest gadgets or technology required.
Rusty Payton, head lobbyist for the Florida Home Builders Association, said his members wanted the state to stop "just making changes because some product guy found a way to get them into the ICC."
Related: Florida’s Real Estate Reckoning Could Be Closer Than You Think
So when Florida’s lawmakers met last year, Payton’s group pushed a measure that would turn the state’s policy on its head. Instead of adopting the code council’s updated recommendations every three years, the home builders association wanted Florida to incorporate only the changes that the members of the Florida Building Commission deemed to meet the "specific needs of the state."
Payton said the new system would mean "fewer code changes overall, which hopefully will keep the cost of a home from increasing superfluously."
Groups representing insurers, architects, engineers, firefighters, building inspectors and others fought back. They created a coalition, Floridians for Safe Communities; it was led Craig Fugate, who was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Barack Obama and before that was Florida’s emergency-management director. "Strong, up-to-date building codes are often the difference between life and death," the group warned.
Even the state’s powerful real-estate industry cautioned lawmakers that the reforms sought by the home builders might "degrade the quality and standards" of building codes, according to Marla Martin, spokeswoman for Florida Realtors, the industry’s trade group. "We were not supportive at all."
Earlier: The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners
None of it worked. Despite failing to make it out of committee, the measure was attached to another piece of legislation and passed at the end of the session. Governor Rick Scott signed it into law last June.
The change "reduces burdensome regulations while maintaining Florida’s gold standard of safety and innovation through an efficient and effective building code process," a spokeswoman for Scott, Kerri Wyland, said in a statement. She noted that, by itself, the law does not remove any requirements from Florida’s current building code.
Fugate explained the home builders’ success by pointing to the seductiveness of their main argument: Cheaper homes means more homes. And more homes means more tax revenue.
"I know of no government in Florida that has yet figured out how to build wealth without building houses," Fugate said in an interview. "It’s one of the screwy things about Florida."

Falling Behind
Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, agrees with the home builders that the new system will mean fewer code changes -- and that’s what worries her. As engineers design better ways of protecting homes from ever-worsening storms, she warned, Florida’s rules won’t keep up.
"The system that has been dismantled in Florida is the system that gave us the successes we had this past year in Irma," Chapman-Henderson said. "It’s an epic communications breakdown."
Florida isn’t the only place where opposition has grown to updated codes despite the growing toll of extreme weather.
In August 2016, heavy rains in Louisiana damaged or destroyed more than 50,000 homes and caused more than $10 billion in damage, the country’s most costly flooding event in a decade.

see next post


----------



## mark handler (Mar 19, 2018)

Record Floods
Yet around the same time as those floods, Louisiana officials declined to adopt the latest model building code that requires homes be built at least one foot above the so-called base-flood elevation -- a measure designed to limit the damage from flooding like what happened in Baton Rouge.
Michael Wich, a building inspector and board member of the Louisiana Home Builders Association, said the decision was a response to pressure from local governments, which wanted to retain the authority to set their own rules about whether homes should be required to be elevated above the flood plain.
If the state hadn’t made that concession to local governments, Wich said, "I think we would have been discussing whether or not we have a statewide building code, period."
A state body approved other parts of the new codes. Then, last June Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed an executive order suspending the adoption of the new codes two weeks before they were supposed to take effect. Edwards argued that residents who were rebuilding from the record floods in 2016 needed "stability" as they repaired their homes, and that imposing stricter codes would hamper the recovery effort.
Even the home builders association objected, pointing out that hundreds of millions of dollars in construction projects had already been planned based on the new codes. In December, Edwards relented and reversed the order; the new codes took effect in February.
“After consultation with local officials in the affected communities and discussion with those involved with residential and commercial construction, Governor Edwards was able to conclude that the adoption of the codes would not slow down the recovery," Matthew Block, executive counsel for the governor’s office, said in a statement Sunday.
In South Carolina, where Hurricane Irma damaged or destroyed more than 16,000 homes, the Legislature is considering a bill that would slow the rate at which the state updates its codes, shifting the cycle from three years to six. North Carolina made a similar change in 2013.
Still other storm-prone states have yet to adopt mandatory building codes of any kind -- including Texas, where Hurricane Harvey damaged or destroyed 200,000 homes last year.
Mississippi and Alabama also have no mandatory statewide codes. Georgia has adopted a six-year-old version of the codes, but lets local officials decide whether to enforce it.

FEMA’s View
States’ reluctance to adopt building codes has worried federal officials, who are stuck paying to rebuild homes that get wiped out by natural disasters.
"Our strongly held belief is that strong and enforced building codes are among the best primary mitigation efforts that can be undertaken," Nick Shufro, FEMA’s assistant administrator for risk management, said in an interview.
As the insurance institute’s report shows, FEMA has had limited success in getting states to come around to that view.
In 2016, FEMA proposed a rule that would reduce the generosity of federal disaster aid for states that fail to prepare for extreme weather -- for example, by imposing mandatory, up-to-date building codes. States lobbied against the idea, and the Obama administration didn’t pursue it.
Fugate, the former FEMA head who led the coalition against Florida’s codes overhaul last year, predicted that even as the effects of climate change worsen, states will continue to favor lowering the cost of construction -- as long as the federal government keeps paying to rebuild those homes.
"The reason states and local governments can get away with crappy homes is because somebody’s always bailing them out," Fugate said. If FEMA really wants to change states’ behavior, he added, it should change the name of the agency’s spending programs.
"I think we should quit calling them disaster funding," Fugate said, "and just call them government bailouts."


----------



## Rick18071 (Mar 20, 2018)

If the locals want their own relaxed codes they should not have FEMA but pay for the damages themselfs.


----------



## tmurray (Mar 20, 2018)

They won't be able to afford the home insurance payments...


----------



## conarb (Mar 20, 2018)

The problem is that codes have gone way too far, they've gone into areas that they have no reason to be in, in my own case I had to go into only building for wealthy people because nobody can afford to buy a code-compliant home, I've told here how a plan checker demanded a column to beam connection change that cost $44,000 in a one story single family home, my customer agreed to pay for it, but his wife makes over $1.5 million a year, not many men have wives who make that much.


----------



## Phil (Mar 24, 2018)

Conarb,
If it is like many change orders, the contractor charges $44,000 on a change order for something that costs the contractor $6,000. The amount of problems your engineers have with plan check makes me wonder if you need better engineers (or architects with commons sense).


----------



## conarb (Mar 24, 2018)

Phil said:


> Conarb,
> If it is like many change orders, the contractor charges $44,000 on a change order for something that costs the contractor $6,000. The amount of problems your engineers have with plan check makes me wonder if you need better engineers (or architects with commons sense).



Phil:

Not in this case of column to beam connections, I even had the head, and retiring, plan checker on my side, he was pushing her to approve it, she made me bring my structural engineer in with his engineering program on his laptop computer because she didn't have that program in her computer, I stood over them as she kept making him add forces from differeing directions , it is quite impressive to see these German programs work as they animate the forces, in the end I said to do anything she wants so we can move on.  The head plan checker told me on more than one occasion: "I'm retiring on April 1st, you better get this through before I retire or these people are going to give you Hell."  Part of the problem is the move to German animated design programs by the better engineers while the plan checkers are stuck back in calculating by hand like they learned in college, another is younger people being indoctrinated in Green and trying to shoot down homes for the wealthy.  In this case she was finally ordered to approve it by the new CBO as I stood there, when I came back with the changes I agreed to she came out with her plastic box of stamps and wouldn't even talk, just saying "I'm approving everything" as she stamped and initialed away. In the end when I came back for the permit she walked by and said: "You are really going to build this thing?  At another point I came back for a change and said: "This house should have been all steel", I said: I've got a full steel frame", she said: "I mean all steel, do you know how many trees will die for you to build this house?"  During the construction of the house a Mexican carpenter came up to me, he was a contractor but couldn't get two houses approved so he was working for me, he said he was at seven years trying to permit two houses, he said he thought it was racial prejudice asking if he should hire an attorney?  I said no then he asked: "How come my architect has been trying for seven years and you got a permit in two years?"  I told him that the average in our area is seven years, I beat it by getting classified as a remodel, that's costing a lot more fighting parts of the old house and building around it, but that if anything he would have an easier time than I because of the fear of a civil rights lawsuit, so I offered to go in and see what I could do, what I found was the last hangup was the fire marshal demanding one water meter and the water district wanting two, I made a deal with the building department to approve the plans with the contingency that they would hold the final until the fire marshal and the water district resolved their problems, figuring that the problems would be resolved within the one to 1-½ years it would take to build the house. 

As to the steel contractor's $44,000, I've always found him to be more than honest, my owner asked if the $44,000 would make a stronger house?  I asked the engineer and he said yes but it was overkill, on that basis the owner agreed to pay the extra being an engineer himself, not many would do that.  Again this is political, to encourage bullding in the central core, but discourage building in the Wildlands-Urban Interface.


----------



## Phil (Mar 25, 2018)

It's probably been 5 years since I saw a cost estimate with beam column connections as a separate line item for a small building. It was for Reduced Beam Section (RBS aka dog bone) connections and they were around $600 extra per connection. This didn't include testing and inspection fess paid by the owner.

Perhaps residential construction is priced differently because of the scale of construction. One time I asked a steel fabricator what he thought about different moment connections. It didn't make much difference to him because his beam line did the work. They just needed to program the equipment. I don't do any residential work. But, I have seen construction pictures of complex houses with a mixture of wood with steel frames. When I see those, I wonder why they don't make the entire structure with steel for simplicity and ease of constructions. Just use studs (wood or steel) for the exterior skin and interior partitions.

The plan check hasn't been listening to timber industry advertising the green benefits of wood construction. There is a strong push for  "mass timber" in midrise construction because it is 'green'.

I am curious what German software was used. Most structural analysis software used in California is developed in the USA. They are SAP2000 and ETABS by Computers and Structures Inc (CSi); STAAD and RAM by Bentley; and RISA (last  year RISA was purchase by a German company). CSi has the most advanced analysis tools of these three. They are in Walnut Creek. There is more advanced software that is rarely used in building design.


----------



## conarb (Mar 25, 2018)

Phil:

I've been meaning to go see that engineer on another matter, I'll go this week and ask which program he used.  At first the plan checker (a SE) told me she had the program, later she said she didn't have it but had used it in the past asking for nodal points to convert to her program.  As these programs take over, and more steel is used, something should be standardized here.

The house before this one had three steel moment frames along with $33,000 worth of Simpson metal, I normally double the cost of Simpson products for installation, so that house had $30,000 worth of momnent frames and $99,000 worth of installed metal totalling $130,000.  I swore that the next house I'd go all steel, the only thing lacking then was joists, studs, and rafters. Driving through Oakland I see they are now building apartments all out of lightweight steel because of all the arson blamed on Antifa, several buildings here were torched after being framed, BTW, my original steel cost was about $120,000, add the $44,000 plus another extra and I was still close to the cost of wood plus moment frames and lightweight steel, in fact I saved all the costs of wall sheathing, labor and materials, because nothing creates dry rot more than sealing up buildings with sheathing.


----------



## tmurray (Mar 27, 2018)

conarb said:


> "This house should have been all steel", I said: I've got a full steel frame", she said: "I mean all steel, do you know how many trees will die for you to build this house?"



A couple things on this,

1. Steel manufacturing is horrifically worse for the environment than the forestry/lumber industry.
2. Young trees in their early development sequester tons of carbon. Once trees reach maturity, they slow down significantly. Think of CO2 as food and the trees development like regular humans. Teenagers eat way more than adults. Same with trees.
3. From a thermodynamics standpoint, steel is so thermally conductive, insulating in the stud cavity is a waste of insulation. The only way to insulate a steel building is outboard. 

You can't build green, or at least energy efficient, without using wood.


----------



## mark handler (Mar 27, 2018)

tmurray said:


> A couple things on this,
> 
> 1. Steel manufacturing is horrifically worse for the environment than the forestry/lumber industry.
> 2. Young trees in their early development sequester tons of carbon. Once trees reach maturity, they slow down significantly. Think of CO2 as food and the trees development like regular humans. Teenagers eat way more than adults. Same with trees.
> ...


Coming from a huge lumber producing country...   Think green...


----------



## conarb (Mar 27, 2018)

tmurray said:


> A couple things on this,
> 
> 1. Steel manufacturing is horrifically worse for the environment than the forestry/lumber industry.
> 2. Young trees in their early development sequester tons of carbon. Once trees reach maturity, they slow down significantly. Think of CO2 as food and the trees development like regular humans. Teenagers eat way more than adults. Same with trees.
> ...



T. Murray:

In our area seismic trumps everything, every building I see has at least some steel moment frames, then there is fire, both wildlands and arson, many in the central core see new buildings as gentrification displacing the poor providing housing for "the rich", steel is more fireproof than wood.


----------

