Attached building or detached?

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bobbymari

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los angeles ca
A multifamily building we are looking into upgrading is split by a driveway. At entry of building there is a driveway with an overhead that adjoins the 2 buildings two roofs. Would this make it an attached building? There is only 1 water service as well which gives me the opinion of it being considered an attached building. Just thinking ahead as to whether or not we will need seperate grounding electrode systems
 
IMO if they're physically connected, even if by only a roof then it's one structure.
 
Many will call this a single structure. They may also allow it to be more than one structure for fire/life safety/electrical or other code purposes if there is sufficient fire barrier between sections. This not only effects grounding electrode system as mentioned but can make a difference as to whether or not you can have a service at each section or if it is considered one building and must have a single service.
 
Right, normally around here for service purposes if it's one address they only allow one service/drop. I recently installed 2 services for a horseshoe building and inspector did mention that since it was 2 addresses was the only reason I could do so.
 
bobbymari said:
Right, normally around here for service purposes if it's one address they only allow one service/drop. I recently installed 2 services for a horseshoe building and inspector did mention that since it was 2 addresses was the only reason I could do so.
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It probably goes a little deeper then that, the fact there is more then one address is somewhat coincidental. They probably also have fire barriers between each occupancy as well per other building codes.
 
I'm interpreting OP to say that there are two buildings with a common roof, that common roof being over a driveway. There is no information saying when the building was built or if any codes were even in effect at that time.

The practice of joining two buildings with a 2x6 is a zoning issue and most building codes do not allow zoning to be used to enforce building codes and vice versa.

In the building code you can have a common roof over two buildings if you put a firestop in the roof. But you'll still have two buildings.

I believe what you have is two buildings. More information or even a picture would help.
 
When you describe this as a ?multifamily building,? are you saying that one family lives on one side of the driveway, the other family lives on the other side of the driveway, and there is a connecting roof over the common driveway area? If so, then how are the two family units being served by the utility? Is there an external meter area, with feeders to each unit?s panel? If so, you should be able to call this one building, much like an apartment building. But if each unit is getting a separate service from the utility, I would be inclined to call it separate buildings.
 
charlie b said:
When you describe this as a ?multifamily building,? are you saying that one family lives on one side of the driveway, the other family lives on the other side of the driveway, and there is a connecting roof over the common driveway area? If so, then how are the two family units being served by the utility? Is there an external meter area, with feeders to each unit?s panel? If so, you should be able to call this one building, much like an apartment building. But if each unit is getting a separate service from the utility, I would be inclined to call it separate buildings.
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Though that information is generally going to be true, we have to assume what is existing complies with codes to begin with.

It could have started out as two separate buildings - then they got connected together, and hopefully with proper construction methods to still be considered two buildings or else there is likely going to be electrical code issues as well as fire and life safety code issues.
 
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