Item 19

Plain English

As noted above, and as shown on the example, floor area, height, number of stories (remember, a mezzanine is not a story) and occupant load are all important factors in determining exiting, construction type, and other important code requirements.
Table 10-A in the UBC is where occupant load factors are listed: the occupant load factor for live/work is 200. The most important way that occupant load is used is to determine exiting, or egress: how many exits are required, how wide the exits have to be, what kind of hardware the doors must have, whether they have to swing in the direction of travel, etc.
Table 10-A also has a column which lists the number of occupants (arrived at by dividing square footage by occupant load factor) that triggers requirements for two exits. Multi-unit live/work is treated similarly to apartment buildings for exiting purposes. Therefore, the presence of 10 or more occupants either within a unit or above the first floor (except in townhouse-style units) triggers the two exit requirement. Multiply that number (10) by the occupant load factor (200), and you get 2000 square feet. Therefore any individual unit over 2000 square feet requires two exits, and any building unit with more than 2000 square feet of aggregate unit area above the first floor requires two separate exit paths down to the ground floor and out of the building.

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Code

19) Floor area - indicate floor areas including mezzanine areas of proposed occupancies and calculate allowable floor areas for existing and proposed occupancies to meet current code requirements;

20) Height and number of stories - indicate proposed building height and number of stories and the allowable height and number of stories for existing and proposed occupancies to meet current code requirements;

21) Occupant load - indicate occupant load of the proposed and existing occupancies to remain based on current code requirements;