A separation between the dwelling and a garage is a subject full of misconceptions.  “It’s a firewall….it has to have two layers of 5/8 gyp board on the garage side…., the door has to be a fire door with a closer are popular fallacies.   I can only speak for the last 20 years of CABO and BOCA requirements for separations,  but none of these have ever been required.  Here is what is required by the IRC 2006:

1. You can’t have an opening into a garage from a bedroom.
2. If you have duct work penetrating into the garage, it has to be made of a minimum of 26 ga sheet metal and cannot open into the garage.
3. Other penetrations of the separation wall must be fireblocked.
4. The garage shall be separated from the dwelling (including its attic) by ½ inch gyp board on the garage side (you could theoretically have open studs on the dwelling side).
5. If there is a habitable room above the garage, the separation must be 5/8 gyp board (type X).
6. The supporting structure of item 5 shall be protected by ½ gyp board.
7. If there is a door in the separation wall, it must be either 1 3/8 inch solid wood, solid or honeycomb steel minimum 1 3/8 inch thick, or a 20-minute fire-rated door. (Wouldn’t a fire-rated door require a closer and positive latching?)

Frank Myths & Legends, Uncategorized residential

What’s up with Roman Numerals in the International Building Code? Types of Construction (one through five) have been in Roman Numerals since the inception of the International Codes in 2000.  I have to ask…..Why? Is this their attempt to make the Code truly international?  Well if you have ever been to Rome, their building methods differ greatly from ours.  And although they use the metric system of weights and measure, they use regular numbers for those weights and measures.

Try composing a letter on your computer and talk about IB or IIIB construction. See what I mean, there is no top or bottom horizontal line on the I’s.  Is that 3 small “L” construction?

I know the Uniform Building Code used Roman numerals.  Did the International Conference of Building Officials negotiate away 4 hr exterior bearing walls just so they could keep the Roman Numerals?

Typical of the computer age, I Googled Roman Numerals to see what I could find on the subject. On the Math Forum site I found The Dr. Math Archives which stated three reasons why we use Roman Numerals:

• to make writing look fancy (on clocks and official documents),
• to make writing look old, and
• to avoid confusion with ordinary numbers (in outlines and the introductions of books.)

Maybe they want you to think Types of Construction dates back to Hammurabi.  It could be they want it to look fancy. (I know I always get excited when talking about Types of Construction.)

My personal opinion is they should have followed through and made the code sections in Roman.  1008.1.8.6 Delayed Egress locks would be MVIII.I.VII.VI (I think).  This could be a new stimulus plan for the printing industry.

We do see Roman Numerals in some common things in America.  The Super Bowl for instance uses Roman Numerals.  I must say though I’m not a sports follower.  I can’t seem to make sense of paying a bunch of guys 100 times what a schoolteacher makes to run around a field with a ball.  Movies always use Roman Numerals at the beginning to show what year the movie was made, but I’m sure most of us need to check a movie guide to actually figure out what year they were made.

Finally, like the disclaimer I use for my code seminars, I use Arabic numbers when describing types of construction.  And I’m not even an Arab.

Editors Note:  When this article was transfered from Microsoft Word to the Web Page, the horizontal tops and bottoms were added to the I’s automatically.

Frank Uncategorized Building Codes