Is an Exit Access Stair an Atrium?

[JShaw]

We have a FM telling us that an exit access stair in an open parking garage is an atrium and he is asking us to provide manual fire pulls at the stair landings along with horns and strobes. He is hanging this argument on the fact that the definition for an atrium is "an opening connecting two or more stories other than enclosed stairways...." The code states that stairs in open parking garages are not required to be enclosed, but I can find no argument about how the definition for atrium does not exclude exit access stairs. Everyone tells me this is crazy and makes no sense, but I have poured through the code and found nothing to the contrary. Anyone that has anything that they can offer up to let him know an exit access stair is not intended to meet the definition of an atrium?

 

[Wstubbs]

maybe the engineer can define?

 

[steveray]

an exit access stair in an open parking garage is an atrium

Not the open ramps or anything but the open stair as an atrium? I can't believe that every other parking garage I have ever seen has missed this and this Texas inspector has just caught something we have all been missing...

 

[JShaw]

Not the open ramps or anything but the open stair as an atrium? I can't believe that every other parking garage I have ever seen has missed this and this Texas inspector has just caught something we have all been missing...

Originally he did try to say the garage itself was an atrium but I was able to provide him enough code back-up to get him to drop that argument. That's when he just started to talk about the stairs as an atrium. And this is also the fourth or fifth garage on this campus and the other garages do not have the alarms, but he is not backing down. Hoping I could get code back-up because the argument that he is crazy is not helping me, LOL

 

[princeofpen]

An atrium is an enclosure and if this is open it cannot be an atrium as you'd be required not to just put in pull stations but do smoke control as well. If the lobby/stair is enclosed it meets the exception to not be an atrium as well.
I realize a fire guy wants pull stations located everywhere for some reason but a parking garage isn't one of them.

As well, when I was in Tx I had to be qualified as a Fire Inspector I/II and Plans Examiner. As someone with 30 ICC certs honestly their testing is beyond easy. I always said I didn't know how the whole state hasn't burned to the ground.

 

[steveray]

I think maybe he is asking it the wrong way.....Maybe he is meaning to ask if the exit stairs have to be enclosed?