Safety defect: risk of falling from a window

Article written by:

Engineer Ron Arad,

Arad Bedek Bayit

When buying a new apartment, you don't expect safety defects. But unfortunately, reality is often different.
New apartments and houses can carry a wide range of safety defects. This is the first in a series covering flaws we have actually found in new apartments during our home inspections (bedek bayit).

Let's start with one of the serious ones: the possibility of a child climbing up and, heaven forbid, falling from the window.
Apartment owners are usually more aware that the railing height needs to be high enough (1.05 meters, according to Israeli Standard 1142 for railings) to prevent a fall.
The same applies to window height: it too needs to be 1.05 m above the floor.

But what if a fixed object near the window or railing lets someone climb up and cuts that distance down to just 30 cm, such as a toilet positioned directly under a window that opens wide to the outside air?

To be clear: this was not an old apartment, but a new one, not yet handed over to residents, in a new, upscale project in Hod Hasharon.
That setup makes it easy to climb onto the toilet, then the cistern, leaving just 30 cm to the windowsill from there!

The apartment sits on a high floor of a multi-story residential building. There is no question this is a danger to life.
Does the standard permit this?
Of course not. Israeli Standard 1142 requires that there be no elements allowing climbing from a height of 10 cm up to a height of 90 cm.

But even without a standard, what judge would approve a situation creating a danger like this?
What's the most effective way to fix it?
Moving the toilet isn't practical, so the real solution is switching to a tilt-and-turn (kip) window, standard in bathrooms anyway, which prevents the window from opening wide enough for anyone to climb through.
The cost of the repair comes to about ₪1,000 and can save lives.