Building code - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A building code, or building control, is a set of rules that specify the minimum acceptable level of safety for constructed objects such as building

Building

In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...

s and nonbuilding structure

Nonbuilding structure

Nonbuilding structures, also referred to simply as structures, are those not designed for continuous human occupancy. The term is used by architects and structural engineers to distinctly identify structures that are not buildings....

s. The main purpose of building codes are to protect public health, safety and general welfare as they relate to the construction and occupancy of buildings and structures. The building code becomes law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

of a particular jurisdiction when formally enacted by the appropriate authority.

Building codes are generally intended to be applied by architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

s and engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

s although this is not the case in the UK where Building Control Surveyors act as verifiers both in the public and private sector (Approved Inspectors), but are also used for various purposes by safety inspectors, environmental scientists, real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

developers, contractors and subcontractors, manufacturers of building products and materials, insurance

Insurance

In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...

companies, facility managers, tenant

Leasehold estate

A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....

s, and others.

There are often additional codes or sections of the same building code that have more specific requirements that apply to dwelling

Dwelling

Dwelling, as well as being a term for a house, or for living somewhere, or for lingering somewhere, is a philosophical concept which was developed by Martin Heidegger. Dwelling is about making yourself at home where the home itself is a building that is a house...

s and special construction objects such as canopies, signs, pedestrian

Pedestrian

A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using roller skates or skateboards are also considered to be pedestrians. In modern times, the term mostly refers to someone walking on a road or footpath, but this was not the case...

walkways, parking lot

Parking lot

A parking lot , also known as car lot, is a cleared area that is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface....

s, and radio and television antenna

Television antenna

A television antenna, or TV aerial, is an antenna specifically designed for the reception of over the air broadcast television signals, which are transmitted at frequencies from about 41 to 250 MHz in the VHF band, and 470 to 960 MHz in the UHF band in different countries...

Types of building codes

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The practice of developing, approving, and enforcing building codes varies considerably among nations. In some countries building codes are developed by the government agencies or quasi-governmental standards organizations and then enforced across the country by the central government

Central government

A central government also known as a national government, union government and in federal states, the federal government, is the government at the level of the nation-state. The structure of central governments varies from institution to institution...

. Such codes are known as the national building codes (in a sense they enjoy a mandatory nation-wide application).

In other countries, where the power of regulating construction and fire safety

Safety

Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be...

is vested in local authorities, a system of model building code

Model building code

A model building code is a building code that is developed and maintained by a standards organization independent of the jurisdiction responsible for enacting the building code. A local government can choose to adopt a model building code as their own. This saves local governments the expense and...

s is used. Model building codes have no legal status unless adopted or adapted by an authority having jurisdiction. The developers of model codes urge public authorities to reference model codes in their laws, ordinances, regulations, and administrative orders. When referenced in any of these legal instruments, a particular model code becomes law. This practice is known as adoption by reference. When an adopting authority decides to delete, add, or revise any portions of the model code

Model building code

adopted, it is usually required by the model code

Model building code

developer to follow a formal adoption procedure in which those modifications can be documented for legal purposes.

There are instances when some local jurisdictions choose to develop their own building codes. At some point in time all major cities in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

had their own building codes. However due to ever increasing complexity and cost of developing building regulations, virtually all municipalities in the country have chosen to adopt model codes

Model building code

instead. For example, in 2008 New York City abandoned its proprietary 1968 New York City Building Code in favor of a customized version of the International Building Code

International Building Code

The International Building Code is a model building code developed by the International Code Council . It has been adopted throughout most of the United States.-History:...

. The City of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

remains the only municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

in America that continues to use a building code the city developed on its own as part of the Municipal Code of Chicago.

In Europe, the Eurocode

Eurocode

Eurocodes are a set of harmonized technical rules developed by the European Committee for Standardisation for the structural design of construction works in the European Union.The purposes of the Eurocodes are:...

is a pan-European building code that has superseded the older national building codes. Each country now has "country annexes" to localize the contents of the Eurocode.

Similarly, in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, each municipality and urban development authority has its own building code, which is mandatory for all construction within their jurisdiction. All these local building codes are variants of a National Building Code, which serves as model code proving guidelines for regulating building construction activity.

Scope

Building codes generally include:

Rules regarding parking
Parking
Parking is the act of stopping a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied for more than a brief time. Parking on one or both sides of a road is commonly permitted, though often with restrictions...

and traffic
Traffic
Traffic on roads may consist of pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using the public way for purposes of travel...

impact
Fire code rules to ensure safe evacuation in the event of a fire
Requirements for earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...

, hurricane, tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...

, flood
Flood
A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water...

, and tsunami
Tsunami
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake...

resistance, especially in disaster prone areas or for very large buildings where a failure would be catastrophic
Requirements for specific building uses (for example, storage of flammable substances, or housing a large number of people)
Energy provisions and consumption
Grandfathering provisions: Unless the building is being renovated, the building code usually does not apply to existing buildings.
Specifications on components
Allowable installation methodologies
Minimum and maximum room and exit sizes and location
Qualification of individuals or corporations doing the work
For high structures, anti-collision markers for the benefit of aircraft

Building codes are generally separate from zoning

Zoning

Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...

ordinances, but exterior restrictions (such as setbacks) may fall into either category.

Prescriptive vs. performance

These requirements are usually a combination of prescriptive requirements that spell out exactly how something is to be done, and performance requirements which just outline what the required level of performance is and leave it up to the design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

er how this is achieved. Historically they are very reactive in that when a problem occurs the building codes change to ensure that the problem never happens again. In recent years there has been a move amongst most of the building codes to move to more performance requirements and less prescriptive requirements.

Traditionally building codes were generally short non complex interrelated sets of rules. They generally included reference to hundreds of other codes, standard

Standardization

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

s and guidelines that specify the details of the component or system design, specify testing requirements for components, or outline good engineering practice. These detailed codes required a great deal of specialization to interpret, and also greatly constrained change and innovation in building design. In recent years several countries, beginning with Australia, have moved to much shorter objective based buildings codes. Rather than prescribing specific details, objective codes lists a series of objectives all buildings must meet while leaving open how these objectives will be met. When applying for a building permit the designers must demonstrate how they meet each objective.

Antiquity

Building codes have a long history. What is generally accepted as the first building code was in the Code of Hammurabi

Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...

which specified:

229. If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
230. If it kills the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.
231. If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay, slave for slave, to the owner of the house.
232. If it ruins goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means.
233. If a builder builds a house for someone, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means.

The Law of Moses stipulated a specific construction requirement which is also an early form of a building code. The Bible book of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy

The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...

, chapter 22 verse 8, states:

"In case you build a new house, you must also make a parapet
Parapet
A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...

for your roof, that you may not place bloodguilt upon your house because someone falling might fall from it."

Nineteenth-century building laws

The great changes in societies in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

, the end of slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and immigration

Immigration

Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

to the United States brought about the enactment of a number of building laws during the nineteenth century.

Baltimore passed its first building code in 1859. The Great Baltimore Fire

Great Baltimore Fire

The Great Baltimore Fire raged in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, on Sunday, February 7, and Monday, February 8, 1904. 1,231 firefighters were required to bring the blaze under control...

occurred in February, 1904. Subsequent changes were made that matched other cities. In 1904, a Handbook of the Baltimore City Building Laws was published. It served as the building code for four years. Very soon, a formal building code was drafted and eventually adopted in 1908.

France

In Paris, great blocks of apartments were erected under the Second Empire (1852–70)

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

. The height of buildings was limited by law, so they were usually five or six stories at most.

United Kingdom

The most important statutes of this kind in the United Kingdom were the London Building Act of 1844 and the Public Health Act of 1875. The Metropolitan Buildings Office

Metropolitan Buildings Office

The Metropolitan Buildings Office was formed in 1845 to regulate the construction and use of buildings in the metropolitan area of London. Surveyors were empowered to enforce building regulations which sought to improve the standard of houses and business premises, and to regulate activities that...

was established in 1845.

United States

The major model building codes used in the United States are developed by the International Code Council

International code council

The International Code Council , a membership association dedicated to building safety, fire prevention and energy efficiency, develops the codes used to construct residential and commercial buildings, including homes and schools. Most U.S. cities, counties and states that adopt codes choose the...

(ICC), which have 14 sets of International codes, or i-codes, including the International Building Code

International Building Code

The International Building Code is a model building code developed by the International Code Council . It has been adopted throughout most of the United States.-History:...

(IBC), the International Residential Code, the International Fire Code, the International Energy Conservation Code, the International Plumbing Code, the International Mechanical Code and others.

Types of building codes

Scope

Prescriptive vs. performance

Antiquity

Nineteenth-century building laws

France

United Kingdom

United States

See also