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IBC 2012 Section 1013 Guards

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dooleybob41

Registered User
Joined
Nov 1, 2013
Messages
8
Location
Bremerton Washington
I'm having difficulty determining whether guards are required for a roof top healing garden. At the Owners request, a cable rail system is to be installed on the open side of the garden. There is a parapet (call it parapet 1) on the open side that separates the roof where the garden will be from another, adjacent roof. The adjacent roof is at the same elevation as the roof where the garden will be and it is 93' to the edge of that roof where another parapet (parapet 2) is located. The Owner wants the cable rail as a deterrent to people climbing over parapet 1 onto the adjacent roof. Since the two roofs are at the same elevation, and it is 93' to parapet 2, I am of the opinion that the cable railing does not need to meet guard requirements in 1606.8.1. Am I interpreting 1013.2 Where Required correctly?
 
This condition is the direct reason the charging statement was added in to the code section: "Where required", thus you need to determine if you classify this as a fence or as a non-required guard, the main difference between a fence and a non-required guard is that a non-required guard is still required to meet the load section of the building code. A fence has no load requirements unless over 6ft.

When the code section was written, only required guards were held to height and opening limitations, in mind when this was done was entrance ramps under 30" allowing infill under the handrail without having to be raised to 42" and adding handrails inside. Also allows 2 strand pipe styles.

But, of main concern was what someone might unknowing do if the load requirement was removed, hence, one can see it is lower, has larger openins and so on, but if they started to get a crowd leaning on it it was determined we wanted to make sure it stayed in place.

Thus I would define it as a non-required guard and hold them to the loads for the top of the guard

JMPO

Tom
 
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