They left out current building codes. I have a general contractor's licence. To build anything involves so many rules/codes it's rediculious.
Every year the building department in your town/city usually includes the latest codes, and prohibits so many things. It all sounds great until you are paying someone to build something. The various building code manuals take up at least two feet of space on my shelf.
Where I live, I couldn't build a cabin with wood stove. It would need a electric plug every 6'. I couldn't even use logs to build it without approved man made insulation. And forget the wood stove. They are illegial.
I tried to build a nice, cheap small house and ran into these exact same regulations. Almost all of the regulations we hit were from the 'International Building Code' which covers a large part of the US. I'd say building a to code house here costs at least $50k - $60k. This is just bare minimum meet the code. To add to your list:
- composting toilets are allowed, but you still need a sewer hookup available, just in case
- heating had to be automatic (thermostat + gas/electric), wood stove/insert only is illegal
- outlets every 6' and even more in the kitchen
- stairs cant be steep, even to lofted areas and so take up more space, more $
- minimum square foot requirements
We had a nice building department that helped us work around some of the codes, but even that took a lot of time (money).
Where we were and what we were trying to do would have cost significantly less if we were allowed to use composting toilets [1] and grey water and avoid sewer. Many states are coming around to grey water laws, but as of now I don't think any allow no sewer/septic, even if you don't have anything draining into them. You have to have them for 'backup'
Except you can't legally park and live in them in many cities. Sure you can relocate if you get caught, but how many times before they catch on and you get in big trouble? Its a more practical way to break the rules, but in most places you are still breaking the rules.
You really have to wonder how necessary some of these codes are.
Houses already last 60 or 70 years, which is plenty, by the time they're at a point where they need rebuilding they're hopelessly outdated.
I was helping my father with building a house over Christmas, some of the regulations are ridiculous, we had to build a massive retaining wall with 200 mm posts going 1.5 m down, just because the earth it was retaining could theoretically have a car drive down it at some point.
You have to seal the concrete ledge that bricks sit on with bitumen. It used to be that you had to seal it 50% of the width, but they've just changed it so that it has to be the full width of the ledge. How much difference does it really make?
You can no longer use nails for fastening down corrugated iron roofs, you have to use special screws. People have been nailing corrugated iron roofs down for literally hundreds of years without issue.
Codes are largely reactionary. Sometime, somewhere, doing a certain thing caused a problem and somebody got injured or killed. Maybe the corrugated roof that got nailed down blew off under certain conditions and the investigation revealed that it wouldn't have happened if they used certain screws instead of nails. Hence, the code gets updated to require those screws.
It's mostly driven by the insurance industry. They don't want to pay out claims, so they write the codes to make the buildings as robust as possible.
It's also hard for me to see a serious problem with this. I mean, it can be annoying, but it seems I often wish decisions could be made by professionals (doctors, engineers, etc.) instead of politics and caprice and the IBC (and it's siblings for plumbing and electrical) is an example of laws that are actually thought out by someone who knows, rather than someone who thinks they know better. I imagine they are not perfect, but it still seems like an achievement.
Similarly, my home is from the early 1800s and my parents house was first built in the 1600s, but most of the current part was built in the early 1700s.
Both of these houses are perfectly functional and warm, and barely use that much more energy than most modern houses (we've insulated them well and use efficient lighting etc). And yes they do have inside toilets ;)
I guess housing stock in the UK is just much older.
Some of that is survivorship bias however. Crappy homes from the 1600s aren't around anymore. The longer an area has been built up the larger percentage of the houses are well built due to the poorly built houses constantly dying out by the well built houses sticking around.
True, I won't disagree with that, but in the small town I live in most of the houses in the middle of town are 100 to 150 years old - and there aren't many 'missing houses' that have been replaced with new ones since they weren't good enough to last (as far as I can see).
Even in London, the terraced house we own is about 150 years old, as are all the houses in the street and pretty much the area - very few of these needed replacing unless they were bombed in the second world war, or some other catastrophic event.
Every year the building department in your town/city usually includes the latest codes, and prohibits so many things. It all sounds great until you are paying someone to build something. The various building code manuals take up at least two feet of space on my shelf.
Where I live, I couldn't build a cabin with wood stove. It would need a electric plug every 6'. I couldn't even use logs to build it without approved man made insulation. And forget the wood stove. They are illegial.