IRC 2012 / Virginia Residential Code 2012
I'm designing the renovation of a portion of an existing house that has an usual condition at the exterior sliding glass doors. The room is basically a sunroom and includes a planting trough around the interior perimeter of the exterior walls for growing plants in. The planting trough is about 12" wide. The top of the dirt in the planters is about 8" below the floor level of the room. Two of the exterior walls have sliding glass doors in them, the sill of which is a couple inches above the dirt in the planters. There is another swinging door out of the room that acts as the egress door.
The client wants to infill the dirt trough with stone pavers, more or less flush with the sill of the sliding glass doors, and replace the doors with new sliding glass doors. The potential problem I see is that there is only about 12" from the face of the sliding glass doors to the step up to the main floor level, and IRC 311.3 says you need a minimum of 36" in the direction of travel on each side of each exterior door. (This is part of a larger renovation to the room, including putting a new roof on it, so the project will require a building permit.)
Since this is an existing condition (built in 1981 BTW) and all we're proposing to do is put down some stone pavers and swap out the existing sliding glass doors with new ones, is it acceptable that there is not a 36" deep clearance inside the door?
I'm designing the renovation of a portion of an existing house that has an usual condition at the exterior sliding glass doors. The room is basically a sunroom and includes a planting trough around the interior perimeter of the exterior walls for growing plants in. The planting trough is about 12" wide. The top of the dirt in the planters is about 8" below the floor level of the room. Two of the exterior walls have sliding glass doors in them, the sill of which is a couple inches above the dirt in the planters. There is another swinging door out of the room that acts as the egress door.
The client wants to infill the dirt trough with stone pavers, more or less flush with the sill of the sliding glass doors, and replace the doors with new sliding glass doors. The potential problem I see is that there is only about 12" from the face of the sliding glass doors to the step up to the main floor level, and IRC 311.3 says you need a minimum of 36" in the direction of travel on each side of each exterior door. (This is part of a larger renovation to the room, including putting a new roof on it, so the project will require a building permit.)
Since this is an existing condition (built in 1981 BTW) and all we're proposing to do is put down some stone pavers and swap out the existing sliding glass doors with new ones, is it acceptable that there is not a 36" deep clearance inside the door?
