[kyrra]

It also locks up things for homeowners that want to DIY a solution fixing a house. Obviously people fix things without looking at the codes (and there are plenty of horror stories out there), but if we opened up house codes for people to actually look at and refer to, homeowners could potentially better find how to do things properly, especially with AI.

[justinclift]

> especially with AI.

While AI models still hallucinate commonly, this might not be the best use of it.

The downsides of the occasional hallucinated answer for building standards seems like it could be pretty bad. Seems much worse than the upsides?

[kyrra]

I think it's not just the answer you get, but using AI as a stochastic search engine over the rules to point you to potential answers.

[0xbadcafebee]

This would potentially lead to a whole lot of injured people. There are already DIY jobs that are safe for homeowners to do. But some really should be done by a professional.

It's one thing to make the POP3 standard free; worst case your mail gets lost. It's another to make the standard for the electrical code free, so that people can incorrectly implement its quite complicated rules, and result in things like fires and electrocution.

[ComputerGuru]

This is a patently ridiculous take. People are still DIYing the very things you are concerned about, just not knowing whether what they did was up to code or not. Just look up DIY on YouTube and see.

[0xbadcafebee]

Having access to the code won't change that. As laypeople it is too complex for them to understand. Often they simply ignore the code if they personally believe the code is unnecessary. It takes years of experience to understand why you should follow instructions you'd rather not. That's part of why the apprentice period is so long.

I have never seen a YouTube video where anyone even mentioned the code unless they were a professional or engineer. Most people are not very smart. Making the code free isn't going to make them smarter. I'm the one guy on subreddits telling people not to modify random beams in their house unless they know how it ties into the rest of the structure to determine the structural impact. 99% of people reply that I'm over-reacting. That's how they act towards the code. Slap it real hard and if it seems solid it's good to go.

[TeMPOraL]

> As laypeople it is too complex for them to understand. Often they simply ignore the code if they personally believe the code is unnecessary. It takes years of experience to understand why you should follow instructions you'd rather not.

Same is true about anything from cooking to crocheting to brushing teeth. Documentation isn't written for those who know, but for those want to know, and those who know better and would rather not follow it tend to not read it in the first place. It's as true of ISO standards as it is of instruction manual to your induction stove, or electric toothbrush.

> That's part of why the apprentice period is so long.

I'm going to bet that technically, post-COVID, it's "$300 + few hours of videos and a quiz" long.

(At least that seems to be the case for basic electrical work over here, in Poland, according to the electrician who did lights in my apartment the other day.)

> I have never seen a YouTube video where anyone even mentioned the code unless they were a professional or engineer.

Perhaps because they have no access to it without spending unreasonable amounts of money on it, unless they were a professional or engineer? YouTube videos are bargain bin education. A random video you referred to costed less to make than getting a bootleg copy of the code would. Probably whole channel did.

> Most people are not very smart. Making the code free isn't going to make them smarter.

Nothing will help "most people". But the rest would benefit.

BTW. most contractors are in the "not very smart" group too, which is a possible reason why you won't get many answers from them - they're either unable to, or plain unwilling to entertain people asking "why".

> I'm the one guy on subreddits telling people not to modify random beams in their house unless they know how it ties into the rest of the structure to determine the structural impact. 99% of people reply that I'm over-reacting. That's how they act towards the code. Slap it real hard and if it seems solid it's good to go.

It's a separate subject, but thing is, they're probably right.

In my experience, the difference between a load-bearing wall and a regular one boils down, for most people, to the question of whether they need a hammer drill or will regular cordless drill suffice. The hole is happening either way. I used to be the guy worrying about it a lot, until I noticed that even contractors don't care. Unless I'm literally asking them to cut a new entryway through the load-bearing part, they don't even parse the question.

Was I right to worry? Are they wrong? Well, I presume no to both, or else apartment building collapse would be daily news. Then again, I can't tell for sure, because of people in power thinking "it's too complex for [laypeople] to understand" and gate-keeping standards and codes.

[0xbadcafebee]

  > > That's part of why the apprentice period is so long.
  > I'm going to bet that technically, post-COVID, it's "$300 + few hours of videos and a quiz" long.

Try 5 years.

  > BTW. most contractors are in the "not very smart" group too

And that's why there's a code, and inspections, and penalties. They know that if they mess it up they could be fined, sued, or have their license pulled. Even with all their training they can still mess up. Which is why just giving a homeowner the electrical code and saying "good luck" is even less likely to work out. Many contractors learn just enough to do one specific kind of job, and then just keep doing that job. But they do learn the right way to do that one job.

  > Was I right to worry? Are they wrong? Well, I presume no to both, or else apartment building collapse would be daily news

Buildings are usually engineered so that if a single structural member fails the whole thing doesn't come crashing down, because sometimes shit happens. That doesn't mean it's a great idea to weaken the structural integrity of your house.

When it comes to putting a hole in a beam or column, it depends on the member, and there are specific sizes the hole can be, locations, etc. Sometimes contractors don't go into the details and say "it'll be fine", because the way they do it is fine, because they learned the right way a long time ago and don't tell you that part. They might even be dumb enough to not realize that you would do it a different/less-safe way. But they'd probably do it the right way themselves, because that's how they learned it.

However, buildings do fail on a daily basis. They just aren't news, or aren't catastrophic / life-threatening. A lot of bad stuff happens on a daily basis and almost none of it makes it into the news.

[pixl97]

And not a single thing you've said explains why the standards should be behind a paywall.

[TeMPOraL]

Not to mention, they also cannot spot when their contractors are blatantly cutting corners.