National Building Code

UBC 1991. Uniform Building Code, National Building Code and Southern Building Code. International Conference of Building Officials, Whittier, California. 

Many of the building codes used initially in North America were imported from Europe by the early settlers. In 1630, the City of Boston building code stated No man shall build his chimney with wood nor cover his roof with thatch. In 1865, the City of New Orleans adopted an ordinance requiring the inspection of buildings for public use. In 1905 the National Board of Fire Undeiwriters published the first national building code in the United States, the Recommended National Building Code. 

Canada has a system that is intermediate between the EU regulatory system (which is intended to be, at least ultimately, based on directives and/or regulations from the EC) and the U.S. system (where codes and standards are both developed by private companies and can be adopted, or not, by the various state and local governments). The National Building Code (NBC) of Canada can be different from provincial building codes, and standards are issued by private companies. 

Building Officials Code Administrators International, Inc., The BOCA National Building Code, Country Club Hills, IL, 1993. 

Specific criteria and requirements for means of egress design can be found in local and national building codes as well as in the NFPA 101, Life Safety Code. The Life Safety Code is one of the most widely used standards for means of egress design in the U.S. Means of egress requirements typically entail the following elements ... 

If one is to choose common requirements for flooring, a deflection shall not exceed 1/360 of the span (The BOCA National Building Code/1999, Section 1604.5.4). 

Code Section 1606.1 of the BOCA National Building Code/1999 reqnires the minimum uniformly distributed live load to be 100 Ib/fC for main floors, exterior balconies, and other structural systems. In order to evalnate the related properties of composite decking components, the following are calculations of stress imposed on said components at their flexural failure under superimposed uniformly distributed load. 

Wind design pressure, as specified in Code Section 1609.7 of the BOCA National Building Code/1999, should be calculated as a combination of the windward and leeward wall design pressures. The wind design pressure values in Table 7.51 were calculated for soundwalls of height between 10 and 16 ft, and for 20 ft, for exposure category B (urban and suburban areas). 

There are also several other pile driving formulas such as the Canadian National Building Code formula, the Danish formula, the Gates formula, the Janbu formula, the AASHTO formula, the Navy-McKay formula, and the Pacific Coast Uniform Building Code formula. 

Building Officials and Code Administrators International (BOCA), publishers of the BOCA National Building Code... 

National Building Code of Canada. Part 4 Structural Design. Issued by the Canadian Commission on building and fire codes. Federal Publications Inc. Toronto, 1995. 

While modem semiconductor facilities are clean and innocent to the eye, they use hazardous chemicals in substantial quantities. These facilities found themselves being regulated as hazardous or H occupancies. This led to some very difficult interpretations and enforcement. The very special needs of the semiconductor industry and its desire to police itself resulted in modifications to the code. This modification was the H-6 Occupancy developed for the Uniform Building Code. In 1990, the National Building Code and the Standard Building Code were amended to include this specific occupancy. 

Canadian Codes Centre http //codes.nrc.ca (accessed Jnne 22, 2010). The center provides technical and administrative support to the Canadian Commission on Bnilding and Fire Codes, which is responsible for the development of the national model constrnction codes of Canada. Some of these codes are the National Building Code, National Fire Code, and National Plumbing Code. 

The site-specific investigation confirms the hazards defined in the national building codes at the regional level. The investigation is carried out within a 20 km radius of the site. This radius may be smaller if the area is not populated and possible causes of events do not exist. Data record length and extrapolation methods are the same as for hazard category 1. The facility s lifetime is compatible with the projected population growth around the site. 

The survey s extent will be based on expert judgement to be used as confirmation of the hazard proposed in the national building codes. The following sections deal with general considerations on site evaluation for hazard category 1 and 2 facilities. For hazard category 3 facilities, site evaluation may correspond to the national practice for a conventional risk facility. 

The extreme, normal (rather frequent) and frequent values for wind speed can be determined either from site monitoring data or the wind speed standards of the national building code. Data from monitoring typically cover at least 10 continuous years of annual extreme wind speed records. The type of wind speed recorded over time has to be specified (e.g. average, 10 min peak, 3 s gust, etc.) so that a proper gust factor can be defined in converting wind... 

If flooding of the site is not precluded, then the design water load suggested in applicable national building codes may be used for design purposes. In the absence of such codes, analytical models which include both hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loads on safety related structures, systems and components may be used. 

European Standards EN 1997 and EN 1998 ( Eurocodes EC7 and EC8) are widely used, both within their jurisdiction and in other parts of the world where a formal code may not have been adopted. In North America, the comparable documents are the International Building Code (which is actually a US code despite its name) and the National Building Code of Canada. 

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