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wrote:
I've heard plenty of stories of people who leave their country homes
or who move (and leave the house to a realtor) and their pipes froze
and burst.

This begs an interesting (pardon, tangential) question:

They build firewalls for skyscraper stairways.

In some skyscrapers, the bathrooms are with the stairs and the
elevators, away from the offices.

So why not build the bathrooms, kitchens, laundry, furnace and utility
rooms into like their own (structurally) isolated unit, so if the
blow, they can't damage the rest?

How much do you think this would add to construction cost and how many
people would be willing to pay for it? In 45 years, I've had one
minor flood from a leaking pipe. My cost to fix it was $0 and the
damage was close to $0 too, as the water was from a leaking toiledt
supply line and the water just pooled on the basement floor.

To build homes as you suggest isn't simple and would add many thousands
to the construction cost.

I mean, in my house, the water heater is under one of the bedrooms,
the bathrooms are over a basement storage area. The bathrooms &
kitchens could at least have been built on top of the utility rooms.

It would even be less work for the builder.

In most new construction, there already is a lot of overlap. It's
typical to see bathrooms set up back to back, or one above the other on
different floors. That reduces cost, where it's practical and possible
to do. But what you are suggesting goes way beyond that, as now you
have to leakproof the bathroom above from everything else adjacent and
below. That means a lot of sealing to catch the water, then drains,
etc.

It could be done, but if you presented home buyers with a house with
your features, or an identical one at the same price that instead had
features like upgraded appliances, or granite countertops, which house
do you think 99% of folks would choose?

- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
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