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Bakery occupancy load and toilet count

Lexilou

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Sep 5, 2024
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Newbie here, trying to muddle my way through the code on my own before I present it to a lead. I have a 99,628 bakery addition which I have assigned an F-1 occupancy to. When I did my occupant load the first time around I used "group h-5 fabrication and manufacturing areas" with 200 sf allowance. Now I'm questioning myself if it meant "group h-5 manufacturing" or just "manufacturing". After a look in here, I think I was wrong and should have used "industrial" with 100 sf allowance. So this now doubles the amount of toilets I was figuring and the owner already questioned why so many were needed. There's some warehouse and shipping spaces that will add 2 fixtures, and an employee support area that will add 2 as well. So that gives me 13. They balked at 9 and the original plan showed 4. There are huge equipment lines in the space and there are just not going to be 996 more people working in the production area. What are my options?

Also, the support area has a second floor that will be unoccupied and finished later. Do I need to add that SF into my occupancy load for the support area?
 
Bakeries are F-1. H-5 is semi-conductor manufacturing -- why are you even looking at H-5?

The water closet fixture ration for factory and industrial occupancies is 1 fixture per 100 occupants. Same for lavatories. The occupant load for commercial kitches (which is what I would consider a bakery to be) is 1 occupant per 200 gross square feet.

So if you have 99,628 s.f., divide that by 200 and you get 498 occupants. Divide that by 100 and you need 5 water closets and 5 lavatories. But you have to assume a 50/50 gender split, so I would go for 3 Wc and 3 lavatories in the female toilet room and 2 WC, 1 urinal, and 3 lavatories in the men's toilet room.
 
I had the bakery area as F-1 occupancy. When I did the load using table 1004.5 I read this line wrong. Since manufacturing isn't listed anywhere else in the table I thought it was included here. An earlier post on this site set me straight. Thus my frantic worry that now I needed twice as many fixtures. Commercial kitchens solves this for me. Thanks! Still no way there will be 500 people in here.
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The processing equipment lines threw me off. My thinking was that they were manufacturing bread. "Commercial kitchens" made me think restaurants, which this is definitely not.
 
Look at the occupancy classifications. Under F-1 the code specifically lists "Bakeries"

Follow the path through the code. First define the occupancy classification, THEN look at what's required. Don't use the occupant load table to figure out what your occupancy classification is.
 
I did that. I have it as an F-1 occupancy, did that first. Bakeries, food processing establishments, F-1. Then I moved on to Occupant Load and Table 1004.5. Nothing in this table says anything about food processing. Commercial kitchens sounds more like a restaurant where they are preparing food, not a food processing plant where they are dumping ingredient into a processing line and getting bread at the end. I know it's not Group H-5 fabrication, but that's the only line that mentions manufacturing, so I thought perhaps that meant ALL manufacturing. Then I realized it didn't.
 
Also, the support area has a second floor that will be unoccupied and finished later. Do I need to add that SF into my occupancy load for the support area?

Is the second floor area a story, or a mezzanine? If it's a story, you DON'T add that occupant load to the occupant load for the first floor for sizing exit doors. If it's a mezzanine, you do.
 
While the bakery may be an F-1 occupancy (chapter 3), that has nothing to do with table determining occupant loads (chapter 10). Table 1004.5.1 relates to function of space, or how each individual room or space in the building will be used. The majority of the building may be a commercial kitchen function of space, but you probable have office areas, conference rooms, break rooms, lockers, etc that all have different occupant load factors due to the different functions of those spaces.
 
I've spoken with a senior employee here versed in code (he's part-time so not always in). I'm going with "fabrication" for my occupant load calcs since it's a food plant. And he suggested we get a meeting with the code official to discuss the toilet issue. 100 persons per SF is insanity in this production space.

I have broken out the "support spaces" and calced them out separately for occupant loads, and also occupancy categories. It's just this production area that's being a thorn with the occupant load and figuring out it's function. Who do I have to plead with to get a "food manufacturing" function listed?

Apologies since my initial post may have been confusing. I don't always remember people are not in my head and don't know what I am talking about, even if it makes perfect sense to me. The occupancy categories were easy to determine and I realize they don't matter for the occupancy load. I'm making detailed notes as I go so when someone questions something I can point to it and say, "here it is".
 
I'd probably use the 200....Anyone know why industrial is at 100 gross? If we can do offices at 150, Shirley a factory generally is less dense....
 
I've spoken with a senior employee here versed in code (he's part-time so not always in). I'm going with "fabrication" for my occupant load calcs since it's a food plant. And he suggested we get a meeting with the code official to discuss the toilet issue. 100 persons per SF is insanity in this production space.

I have broken out the "support spaces" and calced them out separately for occupant loads, and also occupancy categories. It's just this production area that's being a thorn with the occupant load and figuring out it's function. Who do I have to plead with to get a "food manufacturing" function listed?

Apologies since my initial post may have been confusing. I don't always remember people are not in my head and don't know what I am talking about, even if it makes perfect sense to me. The occupancy categories were easy to determine and I realize they don't matter for the occupancy load. I'm making detailed notes as I go so when someone questions something I can point to it and say, "here it is".
I have used commercial kitchen 1 per 200 gross before on projects like this.
 
And he suggested we get a meeting with the code official to discuss the toilet issue. 100 persons per SF is insanity in this production space.
You are right it would be insanity to use that number for the number of plumbing fixtures required. I would use the 100 for egress design. I would use the actual number of employees assigned to each work station need for the bakery operating at maximum capacity.
Example: The bakery will produce 100 loaves of bread per 8 hour shift with 25 employees. However, it is designed to produce 175 loaves per 8 hour shift with 36 employees to allow for future customers and growth of the company.

1004.5 Areas without fixed seating.
The number of occupants shall be computed at the rate of one occupant per unit of area as prescribed in Table 1004.5. For areas without fixed seating, the occupant load shall be not less than that number determined by dividing the floor area under consideration by the occupant load factor assigned to the function of the space as set forth in Table 1004.5. Where an intended function is not listed in Table 1004.5, the building official shall establish a function based on a listed function that most nearly resembles the intended function.

Exception: Where approved by the building official, the actual number of occupants for whom each occupied space, floor or building is designed, although less than those determined by calculation, shall be permitted to be used in the determination of the design occupant load.
 
Bakeries are specifically classified as Use Group F-1. If a bakery isn't a commercial kitchen, I don't know what else t call it. I certainly wouldn't call it a factory ("fabrication"), and I certainly wouldn't look at anything that says H-5.

Go with !:200
 
Our office has always used "Industrial areas" for the occupancy on large food processing facilities. If it involves long oven lines and automated equipment, arguably it isn't a "kitchen" so much as, yes, a factory.

Unless you have like 500 bakers all individually making loaves of bread...

For instance, we had a million square foot food processing facility recently, but only about 50 shift workers at any given time. Trucks unloaded ingredients, forklifted it into the industrial scale 50,000 pound mixer, machines squirted the goo onto a converyor belt, which was a 1,200 ft long computerized oven.
Staff ran the equipment from a control room located in a soundproofed mezzanine and hardly ever entered the floor of the plant.

Then robots put the prepackaged food into little boxes, sealed them up, and robots sent them over to the trucks for loading and shipping.

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edit - agree with the others, group H-5 is for semiconductor manufacturing and doesn't fit this at all. I have seen a few architects erroneously use that occupancy type before where it doesn't apply.

Also, we typically propose the # of toilets based on a max # of shift workers, plus a little margin (gender split 50/50). I've never had an AHJ question it before.
 
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