Are the International building codes available online somewhere?
I'm in the process of building a 2-story 5-plex in Ocean Shores, WA and the city says I have to place a staircase on the second floor balcony ( I disagree). As I understand, you only need this second egress on buildings 3 floors or taller. There is one internal staircase from the 1st floor to the second floor.
Targus
You can buy the book online for sure but the content won't be online. The content of Specs for the most part never appear online because it is a commercial product of someone
The point is moot though, even if you can refute the requirement in a code book, the local inspector and city always have the last word. Many cities have variances from general code for whatever purpose. A requirement like this might come about because of a particularly tragic fire in the past for example.
Is the balcony common to more than one unit.
Are you sure the requirement is not extended to multi family residences (or other high occupancy situations) where a single staircase may not be sufficient to evacuate that many people safely. For example if one person is injured evacuating early on and blocks the stairs, what about the rest of the tenants, are they supposed to trample the first guy and create a pile of bodies or turn back.
Does not matter what you think or can show in IBC. The local inspector wants a stairs, he will get a stair. The town has more money and lawyers that you can imagine and you can be assured the inspector will be a real PITA during construction. Save yourself a lot of grief and put it in. It will be much cheaper than winning.
International! I think you need the Ocean Shores building code!
Washington State has adopted IBC, what he needs is IBC plus any local amendments.
The simplest solution is to tell the building official you would like to make sure you are in compliance, can he please show the specific code requirement. If it's there, he'll be able to show you. If it's not, he might back down. Or maybe not, in which case you have to decide whether you want to be a known PITA at the building department or not.
In my city as in most, the applicable codes are at city hall and they will let you look at and copy them while you are there (can't borrow). They actually copied about 12 pages for me and explained it just for a question, I wasn't even at the permit stage at that time.
OK. Makes more sense then.
Suspicious though. Is Washington considering seceding and joining Canada? Maybe they don't like it when they say they're from Washington and people think DC, so they're cutting their ties.
If so, there goes Boeing and Microsoft.
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