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It's interesting, this is the first time I can think of in recent history where my infrastructure for living has been materially affected by rain. (It has in the past at my parents' place, but they have a river running literally under their house, so it's much easier to do)

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Michael Ashcroft

@m_ashcroft

Jul 25, 2021

Today in hyperlocal Twitter, much of London is going to be flooded by the end of today We don't seem to get 'normal' weather anymore. It's either way below average temperature ("lol what summer?"), a suffocating heatwave or now 'monsoon-like rainfall'. twitter.com/ret_ward/statu…

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David R. MacIver

@DRMacIver

Jul 25, 2021

The lifts in my building have been out since the last heavy rain, and my bins become inaccessible if there's heavy rainfall because they're in a basement area that is easily flooded.

David R. MacIver

@DRMacIver

Jul 25, 2021

None of this is a massively big deal, but it highlights the degree to which these buildings (which are I think only about 20 years old) were not designed with this sort of weather scenario in mind.

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This is really interesting, because it's in contrast to how I want building design to work. Part of what I want to buy when I purchase shelter is "someone has thought through and designed around the many possible extreme events", but I don't think that's the case at all.

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Yeah. In general I feel like the entire design of this building is the opposite of that - it just feels like everything is superficially fine but nobody has thought through any of the details of what living in it would actually be like.

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"superficially fine but nobody has thought through any of the details of what living in it" is something that I get unreasonably angry about. I don't want listings to tell me about the fancy bathroom tiles; I want to know the technical details about the HVAC systems!

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And it gets really weird when you start talking about resilience to rare events. I would pay extra to rent in a building that was more resilient to flooding, but I have no idea how to learn that.

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I think fundamentally there's a market for lemons here. The cost to disaster proof a building is nontrivial, and it's almost impossible to know in advance of a disaster whether it's actually been done, so it becomes price ineffective to offer it.

Nicholas Schiefer

@nschiefer

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@DRMacIver

I guess this is sort of the function that building codes are supposed to have? But they don't seem to be doing a good job. My last apartment had a gas oven/stove, but literally no active ventilation except a bathroom fan. Apparently that's up to code in Massachusetts!

7:29 PM · Jul 25, 2021Twitter Web App

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This investigation started because I was always sleepy after cooking. Turns out that 2000 ppm CO2 will do that 😱

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Gosh, yes. I got a CO2 monitor recently and fortunately it turns out my flat is fine if the windows are open and rapidly ramps up to about 800 ppm if not. I haven't seen if it goes higher than that, but probably.

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