Can the stair hall be included the top floor apartment?
Hi Brownstoners! We live in a narrow four storey 3-family brownstone, where the long partition that separates the living area from the stair hallway is not load-bearing. On the top floor of the house, the hall provides access to a cat ladder to the roof hatch as well as the 4th floor apartment door. We…
Hi Brownstoners!
We live in a narrow four storey 3-family brownstone, where the long partition that separates the living area from the stair hallway is not load-bearing.
On the top floor of the house, the hall provides access to a cat ladder to the roof hatch as well as the 4th floor apartment door.
We are thinking about making the top flight of stairs, skylight, and hallway part of the 4th floor apartment, by adding a new apartment door for the 4th floor starting on the 3rd floor and closing off the stair balustrade area. The beautiful daylight from the stair skylight (and also the cat ladder to unoccupied roof) would then become part of the apartment’s interior space.
Is there any reason why this configuration might not be permitted? Does roof hatch access from a common hall need to be maintained for some code reason?
If we ever needed to get on the roof without going through the tenant space, there is an alternate exterior fire escape.
Am I missing something?
Thank you in advance.
i’ve often wondered about this myself, i posted here before and was lead to believe it wouldnt work in my instance when….we purchased 4 studios from the top 2 floors and join them all together and the bottom 2 floors have 4 seperate studios.
we’d love to do this so if you are an architect and think you can make this fly then get in touch as would love to hire you.
Cheers,
Dean
jane – A basement does count as a story. A cellar does not. “Garden” levels are usually basements. If there’s a level below the “garden” then that level is definitely a cellar. The rule of thumb is if the space is more than halfway below the sidewalk, then it’s a cellar. If more than half above, then basement. There are a few recent discussions in the forum which can clarify this.
If you have a basement just a few steps down, then it’s likely a basment, not a cellar, and counts as a story. Therefore basment + parlor + 2 floors = 4 stories.
As for your second post, The 1968 code, which is what is usually referred to when working on these (although we’ve been doing some under 1938 recently) states that a building 3 stories and under does not need ot have roof access for egress. If the building is taller, then most likely it will need a continuous stair to the roof, the last part possibly being in the form of a ladder through a roof hatch (scuttle). This stair cannot be enclosed in an apartment, as would be the case in the OP’s suggestion.
and, to expand that a bit, in a 2-family, does there have to be an open hallway from front door to the roof access or can it be divided as the OP described, at the bottom of the stairs leading to the top floor?
so this is a dumb question but does the garden level/basement count towards the story count or does it depend on the specific grading? you step down a couple of steps but its got full sized windows etc.. i dont really understand i guess what ‘basement’ means because it makes no sense to me that the garden level floor is called the basement… i’m talking about a place that has a garden floor/basement floor then parlour floor and two full floors on top of that. for DOB purposes is that 4 stories?
The ladder does not need to be accessible to the main stair if the building is 3 stories or less. A building 3 stories or less doesn’t need roof access for egress.
Does anyone know the requirements for a two-family house? Ours has the roof access closet/ladder inside the top floor apartment. thanks!
We tried to do similar in our old place with numerous architects- it always came out as cost probitive or illegal. I’m not convinced that’s the case, so I hope you have better luck. I always had the feeling that it was just too small a job for them to feel it was worthwhile for the amount of headache it would cost to expidite and approve. (i.e., not profitable)
We ended up moving, and in retrospect, the feeling of having an extra 100 or so square feet would have run out pretty quickly, so I’m glad we ended up just getting a bigger space somewhere else.
3 family is multi family and requires fireman access (not in an apartment) to the roof.
The existing ladder is grandfathered, but would need to be a fire proof stairs in any new plan approved.
No, that is required access to the roof and also will create a dead end corridor. Effectively creating a good place to die if someone gets trapped there. Maybe there is another way but you need to get an architect out to look at it.