[Greenbuilding] Legionaires disease and water temperature

[John Salmen]

Funny comment to make. Code officials can make 'discretionary' decisions
about equivalence that could be legally supported but they would be slammed
for interpretive decision making. That is the domain of 3rd party stamps
i.e. architects, engineers, if they choose to be (or not) interpretatively
creative based on current science. Code officials have a unique and somewhat
undervalued role in a community. The ones that I have respected the most are
the ones that do follow the rules and request the 3rd party review. Criteria
for informed science changes much more frequently than codes but is also
prone to lags and errors. It amounts to shifting legal liabilities from a
community gov't org. to a professional liability. 

If you do something different (aka not follow the rules blindly) then in
terms of community and pushing the boundaries you do need to do the homework
and the peer reviews and make the built product subject to that review. It
may still fail as an 'as built' but science will carry the liability and the
knowledge gained and future endeavours will benefit from the documentation.




-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of John
Straube
Sent: December-30-11 6:59 PM
To: Nick Pyner; Green Building; jfstraube at uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Legionaires disease and water temperature

Actually all codes I know of allow for code officials to make
interpretations. As a professional engineer I regularly write letters and
stamp then with my seal using "learned comments from the lofty heights of
academia" to successfully support alternate solutions. 
Alas, code officials report that most requests for interpretation are NOT
supported by science, from on high or otherwise, and so get rejected. 
I am frankly somewhat surprised to hear, on a greenbuilding list of all
places, that we should all just follow the rules blindly and not use science
to support our actions. 

------Original Message------
From: Nick Pyner
To: John Straube
To: Green Building
To: jfstraube at uwaterloo.ca
Subject: RE: [Greenbuilding] Legionaires disease and water temperature
Sent: Dec 30, 2011 17:08

I'm afraid I'm extremely well aware of how codes and standards are made but,
if you have codes, well, that is where you look first. The law is the law,
and handing down learned comments from the lofty heights of academia can
count for remarkably little when it all hits the fan in the real world of
architecture and building.


Nick Pyner

Dee Why   NSW

-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of John
Straube



Codes are rarely more relevant than factual information and often fly in the
face of reality. Not sure if you have seen how codes and standards are made
but it is often not very scientific.

Prof. John Straube, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Dept of Civil Engineering / School of Architecture

Maybe more to the point than studies and Safe Kids Canada media campaigns,
is what the codes say.


Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry device on the Bell network.
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