Why were 9-storey buildings built in the USSR? The secret is quite simple - I tell

More than 70 years ago, a program of mass housing construction was adopted in the USSR.

The Union did not have enough money for luxurious apartments, which were built according to the projects of the times of I.V. Stalin. To provide people with housing, the country of the Soviets decided to build up the territories with houses, according to economy class projects. Which in the future the people nicknamed "Khrushchev", for the maximum cheapness of both work and building materials.

9-storey building - the most economical project

Initially, the main type of building was quarters of 4-5 storey buildings. But in the post-war period, in new buildings, they tried to save not only building materials, but also the land plots under them.

On the same area of ​​the territory it was possible to build a house of higher height and, thus, to settle many more people. Therefore, already in the 70s, mass construction of skyscrapers was launched.

But why did 9, and not ten-story buildings become a priority?

It's all about building codes and state standards. For 10-storey buildings, it was supposed to have two elevators (cargo and passenger), and for 9-storey buildings, only one was provided.

Another advantage of the 9-storey building was the savings in gas installations. The fact is that when building houses with a higher number of storeys, it was necessary to build additional gas pumping stations.

The pressure of a conventional distribution station was simply not enough to squeeze the gas to a height of more than 27 meters (just 9 standard floors). And to build auxiliary equipment is definitely to exceed all allowable limits.

Of course, they tried to build taller houses. You can quite often meet 12 and 14 floor candles. And they tried to solve the problem with gas supply by replacing gas stoves with electric ones. But they required special, reinforced wiring, which also made the project unnecessarily expensive.

In addition, houses, if their height is more than 28 meters, turned out to be unnecessarily heavy. They could be built exclusively on solid soils, which were not everywhere. According to the results of the commission, the cost of 1 m2 of area turned out to be the lowest in 9-storey buildings than in previously designed 4 and 5-storey buildings.

And as a result, the construction of 9-storey buildings became the most massive in all major cities of the USSR.

Fire safety

Another important reason for the adoption of the project of a 9-storey building for mass urban development was, oddly enough, the length of fire escapes. At that time, it had a maximum length of exactly 27 m. This fully corresponded to the height of the 9th floor, and allowed residents to freely evacuate even from the upper floors. But from the 10th floor it was no longer possible to do this.

In addition, according to Soviet fire safety standards, any building over 28 meters high had to be equipped with a separate evacuation staircase.

And this immediately made the project of a 10-storey building more expensive, and the relatively small gain in usable area did not compensate for the sharp increase in costs.

Thus, the reason for the mass construction of exactly 9 floors was, on the one hand, the desire to get as much housing for people as possible, and on the other hand, from the maximum to minimize the cost of its construction.