Section 378B- Fire Alarms

R-9 UCRC Index of Sections

Section 378B FIRE ALARMS

Code Plain English

378B.1 General.
Group R-9 Occupancies shall conform to the requirements as for an R-1 apartment house pursuant to Section 310.10 and as provided herein. An individual residential space is considered a dwelling unit for purposes of this section.
378B.1 General.

There are two factors which will always trigger the requirement for fire alarms in a live/work building. Any building with over fifteen live/work units (or a combination of live/work and residential units totaling more than fifteen), and any building with live/work units above the second floor would require an automatic fire alarm system. These are essentially the same criteria (3 stories and number of units) that trigger the requirement for sprinklers.

378B.2 Special Provision for Local Alarm.
If a common interior exit path serves more than 4 individual Grou p R-9 Occupancy residential spaces or serves Group R-9 Occupancy residential spaces that combined accommodate more than 10 persons, and the exit path or the spaces it serves are not sprinklered, then an approved local manual or automatic fire alarm system shall be installed in the exit path. The local alarm shall be capable of sounding an audible alarm to the individual JLWQs served by the common interior exit path to meet the recommendations of the Fire Marshal and Building Offcial.

378B.2 Special Provision for Local Alarm.
This is a special provision which addresses live/work in existing buildings which are not required to be sprinklered but whose corridors (or other interior exit paths) serve as egress for four or more individual JLWQ units or ten or more occupants according to occupant load factor calculations.
Rather than requiring the entire building to be on a fire alarm, this provision only requires a "local alarm", one which sounds in the corridor and is audible within the units separated by the corridor. It is the intent of this ruling that the alarm does not need to be connected to the fire department and can be reset by the occupants in the event of an accidental or false alarm.
For example, in an R-7 building, if more than 2000 square feet of aggregate unit area (R-7 Occupant Load Factor = 200 x 10 = 2000) is served by one common corridor, this local alarm provision is triggered.

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Section 378B FIRE ALARMS
Code	Plain English
378B.1 General. Group R-9 Occupancies shall conform to the requirements as for an R-1 apartment house pursuant to Section 310.10 and as provided herein. An individual residential space is considered a dwelling unit for purposes of this section.	378B.1 General. There are two factors which will always trigger the requirement for fire alarms in a live/work building. Any building with over fifteen live/work units (or a combination of live/work and residential units totaling more than fifteen), and any building with live/work units above the second floor would require an automatic fire alarm system. These are essentially the same criteria (3 stories and number of units) that trigger the requirement for sprinklers.
378B.2 Special Provision for Local Alarm. If a common interior exit path serves more than 4 individual Grou p R-9 Occupancy residential spaces or serves Group R-9 Occupancy residential spaces that combined accommodate more than 10 persons, and the exit path or the spaces it serves are not sprinklered, then an approved local manual or automatic fire alarm system shall be installed in the exit path. The local alarm shall be capable of sounding an audible alarm to the individual JLWQs served by the common interior exit path to meet the recommendations of the Fire Marshal and Building Offcial.	378B.2 Special Provision for Local Alarm. This is a special provision which addresses live/work in existing buildings which are not required to be sprinklered but whose corridors (or other interior exit paths) serve as egress for four or more individual JLWQ units or ten or more occupants according to occupant load factor calculations. Rather than requiring the entire building to be on a fire alarm, this provision only requires a "local alarm", one which sounds in the corridor and is audible within the units separated by the corridor. It is the intent of this ruling that the alarm does not need to be connected to the fire department and can be reset by the occupants in the event of an accidental or false alarm. For example, in an R-7 building, if more than 2000 square feet of aggregate unit area (R-7 Occupant Load Factor = 200 x 10 = 2000) is served by one common corridor, this local alarm provision is triggered.