The building codes are minimum standards. If your friend built better than code, he should have fought the inspector with appeals, and he would have won. Better than code certainly meets the code minimums, and the inspector would have looked silly in court. Unfortunately most inspectors are not the best educated people around, and cannot make any judgments on anything other than what they have learned in inspection school. They are not taught that a wall must support 100 psf of live load, they are taught that a wall must have a 2x4 stud every 16". They don't have the horsepower to figure out that a 2x6 every 20" exceeds the load bearing minimum of the code, so they will reject it out of hand. Anything different from what is spelled out in the codes requires testing and engineering, so they can't be sued by the survivors.
The codes were written for safety, to prevent your roof from falling in, or your electrical from burning your house down or electrocuting someone. Unfortunately enforcement of the codes is in the hands of politicians who have power without constraints, and in many cases they are controlled by commercial interests. Sounds like Amerika to me. Golden rule - those who have the gold rule.
Around here, they immediately double your fees if you are caught without a permit, and have the authority to make you tear it down. In extreme cases they can press criminal charges. Even a licensed contractor who is caught violating the codes is subject to prison time.
That's why everything I do exceeds the code even though I live in an unregulated area (for now). I would not want to live in a house that is "to code", meaning that it just barely passed the minimum standards for safety. I often tell the apprentices that I teach that the code is the worst job you can do and still pass inspection.
Spaceman
anonymous wrote:
__._,_.___Oh yes. I've a friend who didn't get his permit to remodel his home. He argued that he gutted the home and wasn't required to get a permit until he made $X in improvements, which now ment redoing the value he tore apart first, then anything abopve original value he'd need a permit. Well come inspection time, all that plumbing he did far above code, the inspector made him take it all down and redo it TO code. ~Brian
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