Insolation … These words cause awe in every designer. Talk to any of the architects, and you will hear more than one story about the tricks that they managed to achieve when designing compliance with insolation standards or (to be honest) bypassing them. The requirements of once SNiPs (building codes and regulations), and now SanPiNs (sanitary rules and regulations) are as strict as they are absurd: it is necessary to provide two- or three-hour (depending on the region) insolation of one of the apartment rooms for several summer months. Why should only one of the rooms be light, why only in summer? - the standards do not give an answer to this.
The history of the emergence of this rule goes back to the 20s of the last century, when the mass construction of cheap housing for workers began in the country. The construction of the first houses has already shown that without the establishment of strict sanitary and hygienic standards, they quickly turn into hotbeds of the spread of terrible diseases: typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis. It was then that many rules were introduced aimed at improving the epidemiological situation, for example, the requirement for through ventilation of apartments, as well as the requirement for 2-3 hours of insolation for one of the rooms. The construction of sewage treatment plants, water disinfection stations, the emergence of antibiotics soon made many of these standards irrelevant, and at the end of the 50s most of them were canceled, but the requirement for insolation remained. It is difficult now to assess how realistically it influenced the spread of tuberculosis in the pre-war period (after all, the resettlement was mainly room-by-family and the opportunity to provide the patient with a room on the sunny side was not actually provided). In the Khrushchev era, in the conditions of mass construction of standard housing and its centralized distribution by the state, the insolation rate turned into a guarantee of the minimum level of quality of the apartment provided: everyone had the right to two hours of sun in the window.
What is it now? Why do spears break around a simple rule? How and to whom did it not please?
Of course, developers are unhappy - the insolation norms do not allow them to further increase the building density, "squeezing" additional square meters from the territory. The architects are dissatisfied - they have to manipulate with broken roofs and variable number of storeys of buildings. Naturally, the abolition of the ill-fated norm is actively lobbied. But many people think that if this happens, our cities will turn into stone jungles.
In January 2012, the validity period of the SanPiN expires, which established the minimum rate of insolation in residential premises. It will either be canceled or extended. It seems to me that it will be extended, maybe it has already been extended. But this is still a reason to think whether it is worth it, and if so, then how to regulate the natural light in the apartments of Russian citizens. And the norm is strange (why should only one room be insulated?), And in fact it is not being fulfilled. The specified standard states that for temporary housing - hostels, it is necessary to fulfill it only for 60% of the premises. But for more than 15 years now, rooms in hostels have been privatized and, therefore, become not temporary housing, but permanent. And the norms for such apartments cannot be fulfilled a priori.
Insolation has long ceased to be a sanitary and hygienic requirement, having turned into a quality characteristic of housing. And the quality characteristics should not be regulated by SanPiNs and technical regulations, this is not a safety parameter. In fact, the degree of illumination of an apartment only affects its price - if it is dark in it, this is a reason to ask for a big discount on the sale. And it makes no sense to normalize insolation in houses under construction: if a developer wants to earn money from a higher density, he will inevitably lose real estate in price. So it’s just a matter of agreement between the seller and the buyer, the question of price and quality, and also the question of the seller’s honesty and the buyer’s awareness of what he is buying.
The situation is somewhat different with the houses surrounding the new building. Reducing the insolation of neighbors also reduces the cost of their apartments, and this must be taken into account. In civilized countries where there are no lighting standards, such a situation is resolved through negotiations between the developer and the owners, and if it does not work out, then in court. If a house is being built next to you and with its appearance you will have less sun, or the beautiful view from the window simply disappears, this is a reason to demand compensation. The view from the window is also included in the price of the apartment, as well as full, rather than two-hour, insolation. Much more important than the conventional rules regulating what is not clear is the development of legislative mechanisms for such compensation, mechanisms that regulate relations between neighbors, between those who build up the territory, and those who already live on it.
