Loft Questions North Carolina

[StarLost]

Hello,
I'm new here and not a builder/code inspector so I Apologize if I'm posting in the wrong section.

I am my mother's caretaker.
After she passes away- hopefully a long time from now- I will be looking at shed to house conversations for simple off-grid retirement. In the mean time, educating myself and designing my future home has become my obsessive hobby. But I'm having difficulty navigating a lot of this technical speak.

If I'm looking at the correct building codes for this area then Loft space in Henderson County, NC appears to be between 35ft² and 100ft². Here are my questions:

- is this only for Appendix Q tiny houses <400ft²?

- if it is over 100ft² and does not have 6'8" headroom then it doesn't qualify as a loft, so what is it?

I'm trying to keep in mind advantages/disadvantages of designing under Appendix Q <400ft² for cheaper build vs living space. The space will not be used for sleeping, wet room, or cooking. Likely an office/craft space.

Example pic attached

Thanks for any understanding you can share.

 

[Joe.B]

When you submit plans you would first check and see if your AHJ (city/county building department) has adopted that appendix. Appendices are not a usable part of code unless they are properly adopted. They are there to allow jurisdictions an easy path to adopting specific items that are appropriate for them, and not being required to enforce things that are not.

Appendix Q is there to provide specific provisions that allow a tiny home design to be practical. For example, the term "loft" is not defined in the residential code, but needs to be if designing a tiny home. Therefore they provide the following definition in appendix Q:

LOFT. A floor level located more than 30 inches (762 mm) above the main floor, open to the main floor on one or more sides with a ceiling height of less than 6 feet 8 inches (2032 mm) and used as a living or sleeping space.

Since it sounds like you're not submitting plans right now then you you can't predict what will and will not be in the code when you eventually do. It would still be a good idea to find out because if they have adopted it now there's a good chance it will still be there when you do apply.