Significant changes to the 2018 International Residential Code

The 2018 Significant Changes guides are available for the International Building, Residential, Fire, Plumbing, Mechanical and Fuel Gas Codes. This valuable series can help any code user save time by zeroing in on the most critical changes in the 2018 International Codes. The Code Council’s technical experts provide summaries, analysis and graphics for these changes making them clear and easy to understand.

2018 International Residential Code

A clarification to Section R308.4.7 (Glazing Adjacent to the Bottom Stair Landing) replaces Figure R308.4.7 with a new figure and modifies the caption to more accurately reflect the related code provision.

In defining the hazardous location for glazing at the bottom stair landing, the 2015 IRC added a figure and clarified that the area of concern was beyond the plane of the bottom stair nosing. The hazard of falling into glazing occurs in the bottom landing area in front of and to either side of the direction of travel, and that was reflected in the previous change. The revised text in the 2015 edition was accompanied by a new figure that was helpful to code users in visualizing the requirement. However, the caption to the figure was misleading in that it described the area shown in the figure as prohibited glazing locations. The change to the figure caption in the 2018 IRC correctly identifies the illustrated area as a location considered hazardous related to the installation of glazing. Where glazing is installed in a hazardous location, safety glazing is required. The figure has also been updated for the 2018 edition by adding labels to better identify the area under consideration and to duplicate the corresponding requirements of the code text.

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