After four years of heavy lifting, the City Council finally voted yesterday to approve a modernized building code for the city.Once they are signed into law by Mayor Bloomberg, the provisions will kick in starting July 2008. Builders will have the option of using either the existing code or the new one until July 2009, when the new code will become fully mandatory.
Two years?
Building code gets Council OK
Some of the new requirements are:
Fire sprinklers will be mandatory, not just for high-rise apartment buildings but also for any new residential buildings with three or more units. That includes attached two-family homes, as well as one-family and two-family homes that have more than three stories.
Hardwired and interconnected smoke alarms will be required in each bedroom and other locations in multilevel dwelling units.
New high-rise buildings will need separate on-site water supplies for emergencies, including earthquakes, that might cut off city water.
Spurred by 9/11, new safety features will be required in high-rise residential buildings, including an internal communication system, wider stairs, elevator lobbies with smoke partitions and impact-resistant walls around stair and elevator enclosures.
Photo from Daily News
3 comments:
Wow, this flew under the radar!
Now the big question is whether this will be tossed in the heap of ignored real estate laws and regluations like the others.
"Builders will have the option of using either the existing code or the new one until July 2009, when the new code will become fully mandatory."
Huh??????????????????
One thing's for certain.....if new York City passed this new building code.....it must be great for the real estate/building industry and it's sure to be crappy for us residents!
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