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Surely adding art to the walls and some nice flooring wouldn't negatively affect the fire rating.
by _carl_jung 7y ago
Surely adding art to the walls and some nice flooring wouldn't negatively affect the fire rating.
- imgabe 7y agoNo, but would spending the money to do that enable the building owner to rent space at a higher rate than they would otherwise? In other words, would there be any return on that investment? Probably not. If it's someplace like Google or Apple, where the company owns the building they're occupying, they might consider doing it because it would be nice. If it's an owner who's renting out the building to tenants, they aren't going to spend any money they don't have to.
- brudgers 7y agoAny flooring with low flame spread and low smoke developed and high slip resistance as measured by standard tests by a qualified testing agency is typically allowed by life safety codes. Other flooring isn't. Hanging art on the walls of egress stairs is typically prohibited by life safety codes. Egress stairs are required to be maintained as egress stairs. The requirement isn't based on theory. It is empirically derived from experience among fire fighting agencies encountering corpses and/or impeded fire-fighting operations when egress stairs are adapted for non-egress uses such as habitability and/or storage. The blanket prohibitions exist because ordinary people ordinarily don't have experience with emergency events and modifications to life safety systems may effect the well-being of other building occupants, fire-fighters, and the general public.
- _carl_jung 7y agoInteresting, thanks.
- catalogia 7y agoThe building I currently live in has carpeted stairways with painted walls. It's far from an art gallery, but I think it still demonstrates that you're right; stairways in commercially viable buildings do not need to be nearly so ugly.