Residential care facility apartment entry door

[Elderly advocate]

Are there codes regulating the space under apartment entry doors? I assume the door is fire rated but because the new construction in the residential care apartment building has an unlevel floor there is a gap under the door that is about one inch from floor level - you can sit in a chair in the apartment and look out into the hallway! Is this a fire code violation?

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

We need more information. Use group/occupancy classification, type of construction, number of stories, number of units, sprinklered or not sprinklered?

If the corridors require a fire-resistance rating, the doors have to be rated fire doors. The size of the perimeter gaps (all four sides, not just the bottom) is regulated. The NFPA standard for fire doors is NFPA 80. The most recent version I have is 2013, but I don't think the edge clearances have changed.



I thought I remembered the maximum clearance at the bottom as being 3/4-inch, but I don't see the bottom clearance as being addressed in my 2013 copy of NFPA 80. I may be remembering standard spec language from AIA MasterSpec.

No, I found it:

 

[MtnArch]

Thank you for finding that, YC - I had a plan check comment that stated it was in NFPA 80 but they didn't provide anything other than "NFPA 80".

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

Thank you for finding that, YC - I had a plan check comment that stated it was in NFPA 80 but they didn't provide anything other than "NFPA 80".

That's not really very helpful. In my plan reviews, I try to provide the relevant code section references. But I [generally] don't regurgitate the actual code text. If they have to look it up in order to respond or correct something, my hope is they'll learn to look it up the next time. (Yeah, I know -- wishful thinking.)

 

[MtnArch]

Not necessarily their fault (though the relevant section WOULD have been appreciated) - I found the 6.3.1.7 section but didn't look back and missed the 4.8.4 section.

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

It can be difficult to strike a balance between doing a proper plan review and overstepping into doing the designer's job for them. In my case, we are under a lot of political pressure to be "user friendly," yet we have to be mindful of the potential liability of telling a designer what they should do (beyond "Comply with the code"). Back when the chief prosecutor for the State's Attorney's office gave us an annual all-day training session on the legalities of being a code enforcement official (pre-COVID-19), she always stressed that "If you don't have a citation, you don't have a violation." She compared it to a traffic cop. If a cop pulls you over, he/she can't just write a ticket for "Failure to comply with motor vehicle code" -- they have to list a section of the motor vehicle code for each charge.

We have to do the same. So I list code sections by number, so the designer can look it up and see what they did wrong (or didn't do right -- or didn't do at all). As follow-up, even from architects (who obviously don't even own a code book), we often get a call asking for an explanation of this or that section of the code. Even over the call, you can hear their eyes glazing over, until they finally ask, "So what do you want me to do?" That's where we have to say, "I am not allowed to tell you how to comply with the code. You are the architect -- it's your job to design to the code, and my job is only to verify that your design meets the code."