MINUTES BUILDING CONSTRUCTION CODES COMMISSION February 4, 2013
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MINUTES BUILDING CONSTRUCTION CODES COMMISSION February 4, 2013 MEMBERS PRESENT ALTERNATE MEMBERS PRESENT Mr. Fred Malicoat Mr. Rob Jackson Mr. Kas Carlson Mr. Eric Lidholm Mr. Brian Connell Mr. Doug Muzzy Mr. Jay Creasy Mr. Stuart Scroggs Mr. Ben Londeree Mr. John Page Mr. Mike Rose Mr. Richard Shanker Mr. Matt Young 1.) CALL TO ORDER MR. MALICOAT: Call the meeting to order. 2.) APPROVAL OF MINUTES MR. MALICOAT: I’ll entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Do I hear one? Everybody read the minutes from the last time? MR. CONNELL: I did not. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Were they e-mailed? MR. MALICOAT: Yes, sir. MR. CONNELL: When? MR. MALICOAT: Friday. Excuse me. They were e-mailed Wednesday. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: People didn’t get their e-mail. MR. MALICOAT: Well, I read them, so I’ll make a motion to approve the minutes. I wasn’t here, but I read them. MR. CONNELL: Well, I’ll second it then. MR. MALICOAT: Okay. MR. SHANKER: Two uninformed individuals. MR. MALICOAT: All those in favor of the minutes, aye. Opposed? (Unanimous voice vote for approval.) 3.) INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE REVIEW MR. MALICOAT: All right. Let’s move right into the Code Review, the IBC. I believe, Brian, you were the chairman of that committee. MR. CONNELL: Yes, sir. 1 MR. MALICOAT: So we’ll let you have the floor. MR. CONNELL: Thank you. MR. MALICOAT: And when you ask to talk to Brian, raise your hand please, and he will acknowledge you and we’ll go from there. MR. CONNELL: Does everybody or most everybody have one of these handouts (indicating)? Because in an effort to expedite this process, I’m going to suggest that we breeze through the stuff where it’s -- we considered it administrative or there were no changes, and get right to the heart of things that we wanted to bring before the BCCC and keep this thing moving. If anybody has any questions, just stop me. And, Phil, I will be calling on you for -- (Multiple people talking simultaneously.) MR. LONDEREE: Are we going to do the IBC? MR. CONNELL: We’re going to start with the IBC, Ben. MR. LONDEREE: Do you have another one of -- MR. CONNELL: I do not. All right. Basically -- (Multiple people talking simultaneously.) MR. CONNELL: Let’s go ahead and jump in. As usual Chapter One is all administrative and it’s just a matter of amending the ordinance to basically acknowledge the new code. So there’s really nothing worth discussing in Chapter One, unless somebody wants to argue about permit fees or demolition fees. Moving right on through all that -- MR. SHANKER: Mr. Connell, who was on your committee that’s here? MR. CONNELL: No one that’s here. MR. SHANKER: Okay. MR. CONNELL: And good question, Rick. We had -- Stuart Scroggs attended pretty regularly. We had Dave Forward, representing the County, just simply auditing the process. And by the way, I want to acknowledge that he contributed a great deal of information to our process. And I think it’s important, and you guys probably sensed this in your other committees, but County is very interested in cooperating and coordinating with the City’s efforts to adopt a code that’s unified so we can kind of erase those lines between City and County in that regard, because almost everybody works in the city and the county. Of course, Phil attended all the meetings, and from time to time we had Mr. Weber and Mr. Lidholm when we had structural issues come up. But I’m hard pressed to think -- and then we had City Staff. We had John Simon and Nadine were present most of the time. MR. SHANKER: So it was you and occasionally Weber and occasionally Eric? MR. CONNELL: And Stuart. MR. SHANKER: Huh. MR. CONNELL: Who is my alternate. MR. LIDHOLM: Dave and I were there when it was appropriate for our profession. MR. ROSE: I was there at the beginning, but that was -- 2 MR. CONNELL: That’s right. I’m sorry. So we had people come in from time to time. Hearing no other questions about that, I’m going to move right on through Chapter One, and we’re going to jump to Chapter Three, 305.2.3, which talks about -- we’re in the occupancy classifications. And the committee proposed a revision -- yeah, 305 -- well, you don’t have your book. 305.2.3, and I’ll read it out of the code book for everybody. Basically, we’re talking about Educational Group E. And under 305.2 we have Group E, daycare facilities. This group includes buildings and structures or portions thereof occupied by more than five children older than two and a half years of age who receive educational, supervision, or personal care services for fewer than 24 hours a day. In other words, they don’t live there. And 305.2.3, in the code it’s published that five or fewer children in a dwelling unit, a facility such as the above, within a dwelling unit and having five or fewer children and receiving such daycare, shall be classified as a group R-3 occupancy or shall comply with the International Residential Code. We had discussion about this. City Staff recommended that we change five or fewer to ten or fewer, which lines up with our city zoning ordinance. Is that correct, Phil? MR. TEEPLE: That’s correct. MR. CONNELL: So that basically if we were to adopt this as published, a whole bunch of home daycare would become noncompliant and cause tremendous heartburn. So we thought about it, talked about it, decided that it was appropriate to go ahead and amend it to line up with the city’s zoning ordinance, which is already in place. Any question about that or any comment? We’re talking about ten or fewer children in a dwelling unit -- MR. CREASY: Makes sense. MR. CONNELL: -- in a daycare. So the State recognizes that number, the city zoning ordinance recognizes it, so we just thought we would bring the building code into alignment with that. Okay. So that’s -- and a procedural question: I don’t know if we need to act on that. It’s our recommendation as the committee, but I don’t know if we need to -- MR. PAGE: Can’t we vote on all of them at the end? MR. MALICOAT: I would say as a procedure, if there’s no discussion on anything and everybody’s in agreement, we can just vote on them at the end. MR. CONNELL: Okay. MR. MALICOAT: But if there’s something that causes heartburn with somebody, then we need to bring it up and vote on it as an individual item and iron it out amongst ourselves. MR. CONNELL: Okay. So hearing no debate over it, I think we’ll move on and vote on it as part of the package at the end. The next item jumps to Chapter Nine, Section 903.2.1.2, and this, basically -- once again we are proposing an amendment to this section. What we’re talking about here is Chapter Nine talks about fire protection systems, so basically this is describing when a sprinkler system is required in certain uses. In 903.2.1.2, it specifically talks about Group A-2, which is bars, restaurants, nightclubs, et cetera. The code for the last several cycles has a minimum threshold, above which you have to sprinkler the building, and it has always included, A fire area exceeding 5,000 feet or the fire area has an 3 occupant load of 100 or more people. And we discussed this in numerous committee actions and bottom line is it doesn’t take a very big space at all to generate an occupancy load -- a calculated occupancy load by the table of 100 people, and that would require an awful lot of establishments, facilities to be sprinklered that would -- it would just bring hardship on the community, I think. And so we’ve always -- I think the committee’s agreed and the Commission has agreed that 200 is a reasonable revision. Any questions or -- MR. CARLSON: How does that change from what it is now? MR. CONNELL: Well, it’s published -- well, we’ve been carrying that amendment forward, so -- MR. CARLSON: Okay. So it’s -- we’re keeping the amendment the same. MR. CONNELL: -- it’s been 200; we’re keeping it the same. MR. CARLSON: 5,000/200. MR. CONNELL: Yeah. So everybody seems to think that’s pretty fair and reasonable. Any questions about that? MR. SHANKER: There’s no retroactivity in that, is there? MR. CONNELL: I’m sorry. MR. SHANKER: There’s no retroactivity in that, is there? MR. CONNELL: No. MR. SHANKER: Thank you. MR. CONNELL: There is not, and we’ll get to that. Okay. 907 -- I’m sorry. 903.2.7, Group M, 903.2.7, and again we’re talking about where it’s required to sprinkler an area, and Group M is mercantile, and Item 4 -- and this came up the last time -- or last code cycle, where Group M occupancy used for the display and sale of upholstered furniture or mattresses exceeds 5,000 square feet. And basically prior to this, in the last cycle, it simply said any Group M occupancy that was used for the display and sale of upholstered furniture. Didn’t have any minimum square footage or anything. MR. PAGE: That was in the fire code. I remember talking about that last week.