10-13-04 Special Called Meeting of the La Porte Fire Review Board Minutes

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Christiansen also advised SLI at that time that she was going to require the Church's Family Life Center to be fire sprinklered and the Church could file for an appeal if they wished. NFPA 101. Life Safety Code 1997: 8-3.5 Extinguishing Requirements 8-3.5.1 "Buildings containing assembly occupancies with occupant loads greater than 300 shall be protected by an approved, supervised automatic sprinkler system installed in accordance with Section 7-7 as follows: Exception No.2: Assembly occupancies consisting of a single multipurpose room of less If; than 12,000 sq. ft. and not used for exhibition or display and are not part of a mixed occupancy." 't) \.'" Appendix A: "It is the intent to permit a single multipurpose room of less than 12,000 sq. ~J,-t ~ ft. to have certain small rooms as part of the single room. These rooms could be a \t-l- j kitchen, office, equipment room, and the like. It is also the intent that an addition could q/l be made to an existing building without requiring that the existing building be sprinklered, where both the new and existing buildings have independent means of egress and a fire-rated separation is provided to isolate one building from the other." "A school gymnasium with egress independent of and separate from the school would be included in this exception as would a function hall attached to a church with a similar t" egress arrangemen . As dictated by the 1994 Standard Building Code, and with the approval of the City of La Porte Building Officials, a four hour-rated fire wall will be built between the existing and new buildings, so that the new and existing buildings are isolated from each other. As the Church feels strongly that their new Family Life Center is not required to be fire sprinkled by code and such would be an unnecessary expenditure of the Church's limited funds, the Church has elected to appeal the decision requiring such expenditure. In connection with this I appeal the Church is also asking that the Fire Review Board please take into consideration the ) I J ~ I'~ fact that the Church is installing a monitored active and passive fire alarm system in the new t-~~ building. In summary of the foregoing information and arguments, on behalf of the Church SLI maintains that there is no requirement for a fire sprinkler system being installed in the Church's proposed new Family Life Center under anyone of the three different Code provisions suggested over the last eight months as being potentially applicable to the project, as follows: 1. The 1994 Standard Fire Code provides that a Type VI One Hour building up to 11,250 s.f. in size is not required to have a fire sprinkler system. The Church's proposed Family Life Center will have a total of 11,010 s.f. and thereby falls below the threshold requirement mandating the installation of a fire sprinkler system. 2. The City of La Porte Amendments to the 1994 Standard Fire Code provide that a fire sprinkler system will be required if certain occupancy projections exist for a building. Presuming that the three recited occupancy categories, Class A, Class B