lpiburn
Silver Member
When is it (or was it ever) required to have a rated or solid-core door on a water heater / furnace closet in a residence?
I've recently started doing a lot of assessment work on old housing projects. One of the things I've noticed is a solid-core door whenever there is an interior water heater and/or furnace closet. I haven't seen it on every project, but fairly frequently.
Thing is, I can't find anything in the residential code(s) that would require that a water heater or furnace room to be fire-rated within a single-family dwelling. I did some googling and code-forum-delving and I found some references to older local codes requiring "boiler rooms" to be separated but even that is for multi-family residential under the commercial building codes.
Was there ever such a requirement under one of the legacy codes? If not, did developers just generally add in the one solid-core door as a CYA feature? I look forward to any insight you can provide.
-LP
I've recently started doing a lot of assessment work on old housing projects. One of the things I've noticed is a solid-core door whenever there is an interior water heater and/or furnace closet. I haven't seen it on every project, but fairly frequently.
Thing is, I can't find anything in the residential code(s) that would require that a water heater or furnace room to be fire-rated within a single-family dwelling. I did some googling and code-forum-delving and I found some references to older local codes requiring "boiler rooms" to be separated but even that is for multi-family residential under the commercial building codes.
Was there ever such a requirement under one of the legacy codes? If not, did developers just generally add in the one solid-core door as a CYA feature? I look forward to any insight you can provide.
-LP