All of the building codes for stairs in one video! How to build stairs

check builders brothers YouTube YouTube [Music] welcome to the Perkins builder brothers Channel I'm Eric Perkins on this episode I'm gonna tell you all of the building codes that you need to know to build a set of stairs stairs have a lot of codes in the code book and that's for safety if you build a set of stairs that does not pass code then someone falls down them and gets injured or killed you could get sued so this is important today we're using this be 2018 version of the residential code book for North Carolina International Code Council this is about a two hundred dollar book anybody can buy this by the way you don't have to be a contractor to buy this about two hundred bucks I'm gonna tell you about stairs for free kick it off by talking about the most common mistake ever made when framing stairs and that's forgetting that your stair figuring goes from finished surface to finish surface you have to figure in the material thickness that's going to be added later to the top and the bottom of the stairs so that's your first step and your last step are the same height as the rest of your steps in between now the one weird material when you're talking about this is carpet the building code book says that carpet is zero inches for some reason we all know that in reality carpet is like a quarter inch to a half inch thick that's just what it says alright code number one the width of your stairs the width of your stairs by a code has to be 36 inches wide from finished material to finish material up to the minimum height of six foot eight okay so you have to frame your stairs wider than that so that you have room for your finished material on each side I'd say 37 inches minimum on the framing we like to go about forty if we can now the handrail is allowed to protrude into that space four and a quarter inches maximum and there is one weird exception here is that if your stairs are not needed for egress that means they're not needed as an exit you can go as little as 26 inches now I've never done this and I wouldn't really recommend it but if you just had to get to a basement or something like that that had its own egress down there you could go with that narrower 26 with code number two the height of your stairwell is a minimum of six foot eight and that's measured from the line that connects the nose Eames down your stairs not from the flat part of your step so that's important code number two six foot eight from the line that connects your nose eenz okay we're on to code number three the maximum vertical rise you can have on one flight of stairs from this level to this level 147 inches from finished material to finish material remember that if it's more than that you have to have a landing somewhere to break up the stair run so that if you fall you're not just tumbling and tumbling and tumbling forever that's why they do that all right code number for the maximum rise you can have per step by code is 8 and 1/4 inches and you have to keep that about the same on each step that's a code as well you can't vary that riser height more than 3/8 of an inch in your run of steps there is one exception and that's the top and bottom steps the code allows for three quarters of an inch variants on those two steps but that's just the top and bottom steps and don't do that if it's possible because that's enough where it feels funny where you're going up and down you might trip alright code number five involves the width of the treads the walking surface and that's a minimum of nine inches where you put your foot and this is important that's not measured from the back of the riser to the nosing that is measured from the nosing of the stair above to the know zenith Astaire below which could change it by an inch or so because most stairs have no seams all right in your treads just like your risers have a maximum variance of 3/8 of an inch in your run of steps alright so those two codes give you the maximum rise in the minimum run we usually try to frame our stairs with about a seven to a seven and a half inch rise and almost always a ten inch run for the tread and that number if you add them up ten and seven is 17 inches and that's kind of a magic ratio when it comes to stairs as far as it walking comfortably so if you go for a wider tread you would want to go for less of a rise so that the numbers add up to 17 inches and like I said that's just kind of a magical number 17 inches add the rise and the run together and it will be comfortable when you walk on them over halfway done code number six involves the no Z or the overhang on the treads if you have treads that are less than 11 inches wide or deep let's call it you have to have a nosey that sticks out over your riser code says that your nosing has to be between three quarters to one inch and one quarter anywhere in their passes code but you have to have one if your treads less than 11 inches there's also a code about the roundness of the front of your nosing it can't be more than a 9/16 radius on any of the nosing and again with the nosing the same thing 3/8 variance is the maximum limit on the variance of the depth of your nosing and one run Asterius wow that was a mouthful number seven has to do with how flat your treads are they're supposed to be dead flat ok but the code does allow for up to a two percent slope on your steps now two percent is different than degrees that's about one degree or one point one degrees is all you're allowed for the slope of your step and that's not much all right code number eight and this is getting to be a long video so hang in there landings ok you need to know about landings if you're building stairs outside you have to have a landing at the top in the bottom and the bottom could just be the ground the landing size has to be the width of the stairs ok and it has to be at least 36 inches deep in the direction you're traveling on the stairs now there's exceptions and this is for stairs inside you don't have to have any landing on interior stairs in the case that you don't have a door swinging out over the stairs so like from a garage you can have steps going up to a door as long as the door swings in away from the stairs ok code number nine winder stair gosh you don't want to end up building winder stairs but that's what we're doing right now they're a great way to get out of a Headroom situation if you need to get up quickly so we're doing that so codes for winders there's a lot of these that don't pass code mainly because the point of the winders goes to a point and that doesn't pass code by code the minimum width of your tread anyplace on the tread which on the inside would be the smallest is 4 inches okay so you have to do a wider radius on these winders to make a pass code and the other thing is that in the walk path okay which is like a foot out from the handrail these treads have to be within three eighths of an inch width on all of the whiners that you do okay and they also have to be more than nine inches deep on the tread in the walk path so that's a lot of different codes if you're gonna do winders you might want to spend the 200 bucks and get the code book because they're a little more complicated but they are very handy in certain situations okay stair code number 10 we made it up top all right so number 10 has to do with having solid risers on your stairs we live in the mountains so we get a lot of requests to build stairs with open risers nothing between the treads and like log treads and the code on that is the same as railings you can't fit any more than a four inch ball anywhere through your riser if your stairs are more than 30 inches high okay if your stairs are less than 30 inches high you can have completely open risers but otherwise you have to have solid risers or no more than four inches anywhere in between the treads that you could fit something through and that's so your leg doesn't like go through there if you slip while you're walking up the stairs or a baby's head can't go in there I guess the main thing okay that was a lot of information my mind is one the only other codes that I know that I'm not gonna tell you by a codebook if you need this information is about if you have curved fronts on your risers and things like that if you're gonna build really really fancy steps like that by a code book I don't even know that because we don't do that kind of stuff so that's it you made it through this video thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed it remember to subscribe to our channel Perkins Builder brothers you click the bell you'll even get our future videos thanks for watching and hope you build some awesome steps [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Perkins Builder Brothers

Views: 112,231

Rating: 4.9380045 out of 5

Keywords: how, to, build, stairs, code, book

Id: lBtiS904I4A

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020