On Friday, October 25, the San Marino City Council expressed concerns over existing and proposed amendments to the 2019 editions of the California Building Standards Codes and the 2019 Los Angeles Country Appendix J grading. The topics of debate involved single family homes and commercial buildings needing to install automatic fire sprinkler systems under particular conditions. The amendments to the existing state codes are required every three years.
One of the primary topics of discussion at the meeting surrounded an amendment that would require a fire sprinkler system for all new buildings of any type constructed or moved into the city. Although this part of the code existed before this amendment, the ordinance added exceptions, including that existing single family dwellings will be required to install a full automatic fire sprinkler system in the existing and new portions of the structure when more than 720 square feet is added or when additions, alternations, remodels or any combination of these exceeds 40 percent of the existing square footage used for occupancy.
“A certain degree of a mandate like that has been in place for the last two cycles of the building code,” said Aldo Cervantes, director of the Planning and Building Department. “There were various degrees of requiring sprinklers that range from adding a second story to the amount of renovation that you’re planning on doing to your residential property. We have relaxed those standards with this adoption process.”
“Our long term goal is to sprinkler everything—it really is,” Fire Chief Mario Rueda shared. “I think ultimately new codes have already required at the state level that every new single family residence will be required to be sprinklered. That’s already at the state level. We’re just ahead of them but we have to decide on a number and various cities have various numbers.”
For commercial building additions, an automatic fire sprinkler system will be required to be installed in the entire building when the addition, renovation and/or remodeling of any existing building, when the value exceeds more than 50 percent of the market value of the existing building, according to the ordinance. All additions, renovations and remodeling performed less than five years before the effective date will be considered in determining the cumulative value. The value of the proposed construction and of the existing building will be determined by the building official based off the latest edition of the “building valuation data” as published by the International Code Council (ICC).
Rueda noted that the code previously called for a 20 percent limitation, which was moved to 50 percent after research from code consultants.
“When someone chooses to do a tenant improvement or change businesses, do something to their commercial building, what used to happen is we would struggle with the 20 percent number that was in here over a five year period,” said Rueda. “That proved to be difficult in some instances.”
Several council members expressed a sense of concern over residents being put under undue financial hardship if additions or renovations would trigger a need to add sprinklers to their residential homes.
“If you have a 1930 construction and you’re adding a room, and suddenly you’re required to sprinkler the entire house and tear apart your entire house, I believe that’s a bit onerous,” said Council Member Steve Talt. “And while I appreciate our desire to sprinkler everything, the mere fact that the state may require it is meaningless to me because the state requires a lot of things I don’t like. I think we have to come up with a legislated decision as to what’s appropriate, given the type of construction and the cost associated with it in this town, because if we start require sprinklering of all these houses merely because you’re adding a bathroom, that’s onerous and so we have to come up with a formula.”
Vice Mayor Gretchen Shepherd Romey concurred with Talt.
“I also have a real problem with this because it is going to be hard for residents and I did not know it existed before,” said Shepherd Romey. “I understand the need to be most cognizant of public safety, but the installation of a home sprinkler system in a lot of situations is a lot.”
Rueda clarified that single family residences would not have a valuation done if an owner were to perform work that would add more than 50 percent of the market value on the existing building, as that applies to commercial buildings.
“The only thing that triggers something in a house is that if you add square footage or if you do 40 percent remodeling,” said Rueda. “Those are the numbers that we had previously. We clarified the language in here but I understand the concern.”
Council Member Susan Jakubowski suggested that the city look into setting a standard based on square footage and not valuation as it was “causing so much controversy within this city.” She also saw a need to further address the language of the sprinkler requirements.
“I think we really need to do a lot more work about this sprinkler issue,” said Jakubowski. “I concur it will first send the city into a tailspin looking at the cost of any project of any substance that they want to pick up… It’s not to say that in the end we can’t get something that will work out just fine, but I think we need to do quite a bit more work on this.”
The ordinance will now move to the City Council meeting Nov. 13 at City Hall at 6 p.m. for the second reading. The motion included a recommendation from Jakubowski to change all standards for remodeling to square footage instead of valuation.
