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.
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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.
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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!
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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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That's pretty typical for indoor CO2, unfortunately. I'm usually content with ~700 ppm.
If you haven't already, it's fun to try exercising in a ~closed room with a CO2 monitor. Makes it very clear that carbon mostly leaves our bodies in our breath.
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Oh, mine is usually in the 400-500 region if I keep the space ventilated, which I try to do.
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That's really nice! I do the same during the, uh, 6 weeks a year when the weather is pleasant enough to have the window open.😅 I am irritated that a good solution to this problem (heat recovery ventilators) has existed for decades but mostly doesn't get used.
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