Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
...architect here: we design protected areas of refuge where mobilty-impared occupants can shelter in place until emergency services arrive to evacuate them from the facility...
...you'll often see areas of refuge identified near elevator lobbies and equipped with hardened callboxes for emergency communication, or marked on the evacuation plan if they're in a remote location...sometimes areas of refuge are pretty subtle if you don't know to look for them: we design protected firewalls, structure, and building systems integrated into the facility so the biggest tells are usually callboxes, magnetic door hold-opens, or tracks for automatic fire curtains...
...when renovating older facilities, we do the best we can to modernise life safety within the limitations of existing infrastructure, but the general rule of thumb is that as long as you've improved upon what ~~originally~~ previously existed, you've satisfied your obligation even if it's not at parity with new construction...
(it's not uncommon for old facilities to have gone through a dozen or more life-safety modernisations since the advent of modern building codes, just palimpsested one-over-the-other as standards progressed)
Holy word of the day, Batman!
Thanks so much for the info. I'm curious if you know about when these practices became common. The building I'm in for work, for example, has carpet in the hallways that looks like it was installed in the late 90s-2000s. The style of the outside seems to fit this range. Would you expect to see some, most, or all of these techniques in a building from that era? (This is in Cali, so likely early to apply the regulations I would think.)
...that'd take a deep dive into obsolete building codes to identify exactly when the concept was first introduced: BOCA, southern/standard, and uniform building codes all merged into IBC about twenty-five years ago so we're talking about old paper code books from twentieth century...
...areas of refuge are closely tied to modern accessibility standards which arose from the ADA in 1990; i'm guessing they were widely introduced sometime in that decade, possibly earlier for high-rises or hazardous occupancies, but they were definitely part of 1997 UBC (which most of california enforced) and 2000 IBC...
(i started working professionally in 1993 and every project i worked on was fully accessible, but adoption varied across different jurisdictions and when i worked in california a decade later they were waaaay less accessible than texas)