In a few months my family and I are moving to Carlsbad, NM. We plan to buy land and build 3 houses there. Since I don’t live in the state yet I have not been able to talk to the city yet so I am hoping you fine folks can help me out before I get there. The official city home page has the Building Code listed as:
Uniform Housing Code, 1991 Edition, published by the International Conference of Building Officials.
(Code 1974, § 18-1; Ord. No. 995, § 1, 9-12-89)
So does this mean this is the national code? If so where can I find more information about these codes? Are they available online anywhere?
Thanks,
John
Replies
There is no "national code".
But there are national groups that write codes and local cities/states adopt one of them, sometimes with modificiations, or sometimes they write there own.
However, they are moving towards a common code.
But this is the organization that publishes that code.
http://www.iccsafe.org/
And you can order it through them. It might be cheaper from Amazon or one of the builders bookstores. However, as old as it is them might not carry it.
I would call city hall and make sure that is what they are still using and that they have not adopted a later version, but not updated the web-site.
And and am not that familar with the different codes, but based on the name I am not sure that it is a building code, but might be something else such as zoning, developement, or maintance codes.
I was right, you got to the wrong section.
" ARTICLE II. BUILDING CODE
Sec. 8-26. Adoption.
That certain document, three copies of which are on file and are open for inspection of the public in the office of the city clerk, being marked and designated as the Uniform Building Code, 1991 Edition, published by the International Conference of Building Officials, including Appendix Chapters 11, 12, 32, 35, 49, 53, 55 and 57, is hereby adopted as the building code of the city.
(Code 1974, § 6-1; Ord. No. 994, § 1, 9-12-89)"
You want the UBC. Same source, but certainly more commonly available.
Here is one source.
http://opamp.com/ubc.html
Amazon shows some used one. use 1991 Uniformed Building Code for the book title search.
Excellent! Thank you very much! I will try to get a hold of the city hall to verify the UBC they are using. Its a small town so my guess is it has not been updated but I will check before purchasing a code book. Thanks for links! I really appreciate it!John
Ok, so the city and the county are both using the "International Building Code 2003". I assume this is a much more up-to-date code than I previously mentioned. I searched amazon and found several books but many are fairly pricey. Before I spend $100 on a code book can anyone recommmend a good one for this particular code set?Also, for anyone that is already familiar with these codes, do you know if an unlicensed person like myself is going to be allowed to do most of the work themselves? Including electrical? I have heard that the inspectors are pretty liberal in that part of NM.Thanks,John
You migth see if they are using the IRC (international residential code) for single family house.That is a subset of the IBC that is limited to 1 and 2 family houses and also includes the plumbing, heating, and electrical codes.Don't know how different it is from the IBC in terms of specific requirements, but much easier to read as you don't have to skip over the sections on fire protection in 30 storey buildings and requirements for separate ventaltion in hospital rooms.You can download a free copy of the 2000 IRC from here http://support.broderbund.com/download_desc.asp?dlid=384"Also, for anyone that is already familiar with these codes, do you know if an unlicensed person like myself is going to be allowed to do most of the work themselves? Including electrical?"That is completely outside the code requirments.That is up to what the city/state requires.In most area you can do anything that you want to on your own home.But a few area require a basic test on electrical or plumbing to DIY and a few others don't allow any DIY work.
Before buying the book, you might want to make sure that the subject building jurisdiction has not modified the code. For example, where I live, we use the IRC 2000 "with amendments". The blue pages are the ones with the changes, and there are a lot of blue pages...
Also, the IRC is available in 2 formats. Hard cover (loose leaf) and soft cover. The soft cover is cheaper, but here, we use the hard cover loose leaf so we can insert the changed pages. Matt