The Applicant's 150 Occupants
A one-story, 6,800-square-foot building of Type VB construction, unsprinklered, is submitted with four uses: a restaurant totaling 2,500 square feet (1,200 square feet of dining room with loose tables and chairs, a 400-square-foot standing bar and lounge, and a 900-square-foot commercial kitchen), a 2,000-square-foot retail store, a 300-square-foot office, and the balance in restrooms, corridors, storage, and mechanical space. The applicant's code summary states a building occupant load of 150, proposes two 36-inch exit doors at the front and one at the rear, and asserts that no automatic sprinkler system is required because the restaurant is under 5,000 square feet. The plans show no fixed seating and no barriers between the dining room and the lounge. The applicant's representative explains that 150 reflects the number of chairs the tenant actually plans to buy.
1. Calculate the occupant load by area and use, and identify the error in the applicant's 150.
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Compute each area with the factor that matches its use, and round each result up before adding.
- Dining room, loose tables and chairs: 1,200 sf ÷ 15 sf per occupant (unconcentrated assembly) = 80.
- Standing bar and lounge: 400 sf ÷ 5 sf per occupant (standing space) = 80. If the applicant instead designs and labels it as concentrated seating, the 7 sf factor gives 57; that choice must be settled on the drawings.
- Commercial kitchen: 900 sf ÷ 200 sf per occupant = 4.5, rounded to 5.
- Retail: 2,000 sf ÷ 60 sf per occupant = 33.3, rounded to 34.
- Office: 300 sf ÷ 100 sf per occupant = 3.
- Restrooms, corridors, storage, and mechanical rooms are not counted as occupiable floor area for this purpose.
Total is approximately 202 occupants using the standing-space factor, or approximately 179 using the concentrated factor. Either figure exceeds 150, so the summary understates the load for the building as drawn. The review comment should state which factor applies to each area and why, because the dining/lounge classification drives the sprinkler threshold, the exit count, and the width calculations that follow.
2. Does the restaurant trigger a sprinkler requirement, and are the proposed exits adequate?
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The sprinkler trigger is applied to the A-2 fire area itself, not to the building total and not to the applicant's 150. For an A-2 fire area, an automatic sprinkler system is required where the fire area exceeds 5,000 square feet, where the occupant load of that fire area is 100 or more, or where the fire area is not at the level of exit discharge (confirm the exact wording in the adopted edition). Here the A-2 fire area is 2,500 square feet, under the area trigger, but its calculated occupant load is about 165 (80 dining + 80 lounge + 5 kitchen), so the occupant-load trigger is met and sprinklers are required. The applicant's assertion fails on the number, not on the square footage.
On exiting, a total load above 200 requires at least two exits, arranged so that travel distance and common-path limits are met from every point, and with the exits remote from one another. Required egress width outside stairs is 0.15 inch per occupant: 202 × 0.15 = 30.3 inches, so two 36-inch doors are far more than capacity requires. Capacity is not the only test. Check 32-inch minimum clear leaf width, door swing, hardware, and whether the exit access route from the kitchen or storage passes through another room. A plan that satisfies width arithmetic but leaves one exit remote-inadequate still fails.
3. The applicant argues that 150 is defensible because only 150 chairs will be provided. How should the examiner respond?
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The occupant load is a code-derived design value, not a count of the furniture the tenant intends to purchase. Loose tables and chairs can be rearranged, so the area factor governs. Only where seating is genuinely fixed, such as bolted benches or fixed booths shown on the plans, may the load be counted per seat. The applicant has shown loose furniture and no fixed seating, so the area method applies.
If the applicant wants a lower number, the design must actually fix and show the seating on the drawings, and the remainder of the space must still be evaluated; fixing stools at a bar does not remove the standing area around it. Reducing the load below 100 would have to be credible, not merely asserted, because the sprinkler threshold depends on it.
The examiner should also point out the downstream consequences: fixture counts, the number of exits, egress width, and the sprinkler decision all recalculate from the corrected load. Approving 150 would carry that error forward into every one of those calculations, which is why the comment belongs in the first review cycle rather than at the final inspection.