Outsourced

Posted on March 11, 2013 by RL CRABB

Sprinkler216

This entry was posted in General. Bookmark the permalink.

20 Responses to Outsourced

  1. gregoryzaller says:
    March 11, 2013 at 8:47 pm

    We dismiss the Native American myths yet hold to others that ultimately make no better sense.

    Our government is doing a lot lately to make homes safer and one of those many things -also significantly adding to the cost of building- is the fire sprinkler. They are hard to gripe about, even as I right now face having to comply on a recent building permit, because they work really well. Other good ideas government comes up with are about as wise as using a dvd of a rain dancer to put out a fire.

    Reply
    • rl crabb says:
      March 11, 2013 at 10:48 pm

      It’s all part of the government plan to make us live in mud huts, the only affordable housing left to us po’ folks. Will the insurance company give you a break for the new safety feature, or will they charge you for the potential water damage to your interior?

      Reply
      • gregoryzaller says:
        March 12, 2013 at 6:25 am

        Well, a simple Google search shows a 7% industry wide savings. I almost paid for mine by doing it myself and using the fee reduction from Consolidated Fire. Others pay far more by doing it with contractors, though. This is a like an automobile safety belt for your home. Some things government does is right.

        We could agree on what a joke the Title 24 building energy regulations are, though. They don’t care how big the house is, just what your energy budget is per square foot. That’s government controlled by the rich interests. Rich folks can consume ten times more energy and call themselves “green”.

        Still, it’s a waste to complain if you are in the majority and could vote to change it all by spending the same amount of time educating people.

        Reply
    • Greg Goodknight says:
      March 13, 2013 at 6:21 am

      “Our government is doing a lot lately to make homes safer and one of those many things -also significantly adding to the cost of building- is the fire sprinkler.”

      It would probably be a lot cheaper to just ensure all chain smoking alcoholics have fresh batteries in their smoke alarms.

      Reply
  3. rl crabb says:
    March 12, 2013 at 7:24 am

    Yes, people occasionally die in fires. How about designing houses that have multiple escape routes? How about an inflatable slide on a second story window? (Like the ones they have on airplanes.) Not only would it save lives, the kids could have had a ball “practicing” the escape. The real problem is building houses from our friends, the trees. How many trees died for your housing sins? Build houses with cinder blocks and metal roofs. Oh no, that requires dirty mining! Concrete causes global warming! Better to outlaw any kind of fire in the home. Wear a sweater in the winter.
    I’m telling you…mud huts is the way to go.

    Reply
    • gregoryzaller says:
      March 12, 2013 at 8:42 am

      I think those occasional deaths from home fires you speak of would be about 20,000 per year, RL.

      Reply
      • rl crabb says:
        March 12, 2013 at 9:43 am

        Don’t know where you got that stat. The numbers I saw were under 3000, about the same for drownings, and way under vehicle accidents. We could ban cars and swimming, but there will always be some risk in life no matter how you try to protect everyone from everything. I’ll take my chances, thank you.

        And by the way, I’ll bet none of those who died in fires lived in mud huts.

        Reply
        • gregoryzaller says:
          March 12, 2013 at 1:55 pm

          I stand corrected on my stats. I was thinking before I wrote that bogus statistic I should have also mentioned the number of fires that sprinklers would prevent which would be huge (a safer statistic). It’s nice to know it is statistically extremely unlikely that my sprinklered home won’t burn down.

          Do you know about carbon monoxide poisoning? I believe detectors are required now in all homes with attached garages or gas appliances. 150 deaths a year result from improperly vented appliances so everyone needs a detector except the people who don’t bother to fix their appliances. I would sign on for complaining about that.

          I don’t think the open fire in your mud hut would need one, though. Smoke inhalation in such an arrangement is a big problem, though. Not sure what government can do about that.

          Reply
          • gregoryzaller says:
            March 13, 2013 at 8:23 am

            State Farm discounts my insurance for having fire sprinklers $121 a year.

            As far as I know fire sprinklers are only required on new construction. They have no plans to come after us at this point.

            Not so with carbon Monoxide detectors: “As of July 1, 2011, the Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act (Senate Bill – SB 183) will require all single-family homes with an attached garage or a fossil fuel source to install carbon monoxide alarms within the home by July 1, 2011. Owners of multi-family leased or rental dwellings, such as apartment buildings, have until January 1, 2013 to comply with the law.”

    • Tony Waters says:
      March 14, 2013 at 2:03 am

      The problem with mud huts is that they tend to have grass roofs. And so they burn actually quite easily!

      Reply
  4. Don Baumgart says:
    March 12, 2013 at 8:08 am

    Mud huts…maybe, but Herb Caen once wrote that when Detroit stopped making big gas guzzlers, that was the end of affordable housing.

    Reply
  5. George Rebane says:
    March 12, 2013 at 9:28 am

    gregoryzaller 842am – actually, about 2,500 people die from house fires annually.
    http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=953&itemID=23071&URL=Research/Fire%20statistics/The%20U.S.%20fire%20problem&cookie_test=1

    Unintentional injury deaths in the home are over 120,000 annually (and there are tens of thousands of other types of accidental deaths in the home). So yes, Bob is correct in his 724am use of “occasional”. Given that you will die accidentally at home, you are about 50 more likely to die of something else besides a house fire.
    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm

    Reply
    • gregoryzaller says:
      March 16, 2013 at 7:27 am

      It’s a shame that this conversation didn’t go further and continue longer.

      I just purchased a combined carbon dioxide and smoke detector for $31 at Amazon.com. I didn’t see a unit available like this at Home Depot yesterday. It can go in the place of a smoke detector and be direct wired. I have to put it in a home I am remodeling to pass inspection.

      I wonder how many lives smoke detectors have saved already from home fires and whether fire sprinklers would make much of a difference saving lives or whether a smoke detector would do the job better for less.

      Fire sprinklers definitely protect property from fire and there are hundreds of thousands of cases like this every year where they would be beneficial. It may be an error to evaluate sprinklers in terms of lives saved when their real strength is in property and fire fighting resources saved.

      Reply
      • Judith Lowry says:
        March 17, 2013 at 5:53 am

        Okay Greg,

        I’ll continue the conversation with this observation.
        The first frame of Bob’s cartoon has the sprinkler sales man asking Bob if he has a TV.
        Of course Bob has a TV. Few modern households are without them. TV’s aren’t cheap, either.
        Seems to me this says something about our priorities.

        Reply
        • gregoryzaller says:
          March 17, 2013 at 8:18 am

          Following along the same lines, Judith, it is interesting that the comic perpetuates the assumption of Native American ideas as examples of ignorance. Today we of the “superior” Western culture don’t do rain dances, we just pray to Jesus, someone who clearly taught that we shouldn’t pray to Him nor for things like this.

          Another is that Native Americans have learned enough from their Western exploiters to begin exploiting them back with baseless ideas. Native Americans are now somehow teamed with a liberal government to force fire sprinklers on the unwary, one way or the other.

          BTW, I am reading a most interesting book that explores the features of the hunter-gatherer education system as a model to change our current outdated one. It is called Free to Learn. What interesting times!

          Reply
    • Greg Goodknight says:
      March 13, 2013 at 2:52 pm

      That might just have been the golf course exacting revenge for his past fibbing about strokes on his scorecard. Mother Earth knows.

      Reply
      • rl crabb says:
        March 13, 2013 at 5:05 pm

        I sense a trend. There was this golf course sinkhole, the one that ate the guy in Florida, and another in D.C. I believe these are signs of global flattening. The balloon is losing air.

        Reply
  7. Brad Croul says:
    March 17, 2013 at 7:50 am

    Is that an RCA TV/DVD combo?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *