Emergency egress lighting

[memyselfandI]

1003.2.11 of the 2000 IBC says that emergency egress lighting shall have illumination of 1 foot candle at the means of egress. Does this mean for the entire facility or just the pathways for the egress? An industrial facility with 25 foot ceilings having large pieces of equipment in place would cause problems. Some advice and or clarification would be appreciated.

 

[Dave_PE]

High ceilings in large rooms are always difficult places for emergency lighting. Usually there would be a defined path to the exit which would be defined as a path of egress. If it's new construction, the architect will have to create a life safety plan indicating egress paths.....this is what I generally follow for the EM lighting and exit sign placement. How big is the building? If big enough, might be an application for a small generator to provide emergency lighting with fluorescent strips.

 

[LarryFine]

1003.2.11 of the 2000 IBC says that emergency egress lighting shall have illumination of 1 foot candle at the means of egress. Does this mean for the entire facility or just the pathways for the egress?

Normally, just the egress path as shown on the building floor plans.

 

[memyselfandI]

The building in question is about 40,000 sq ft industrial facility and it is new construction. We have emergency panels for emergency lighting and power. The lighting we have on ups systems so there is no interruption of lighting until the gen set kicks in. The reason why I am asking is that the E.E. specified 30 2 lamp 4 ft fluorescent fixtures tied onto our emergency system. We don't have a problem with the load but we feel that that is a little overboard on the lighting for emergency. We are trying to figure out as to why he sepc'd so many and the only thing that we can come up with is that he did the calc based on the sq ft of the entire building without any equipment in place and basically he is just covering his ah well you know. Understandable though. But I was thinking, and when i do that it becomes quite dangerous, is that it is senseless to illuminate an area that is not used as an egress path.

 

[cadpoint]

Requirements for exiting a building is set up but the building codes, most exit requirement is approx 75'~and it might even be longer. It seems to me that a critic path would be engineered and incorpate by design including consideration of workstation layouts, etc. The E-lighting will be spaced accordingly.
I want to say just the egress is lite. Teach me something otherwise.

 

[boater bill]

I have a similar situation with a boat barn. The building owner sells dry slips for boats, the slips are 3 high, 100 slips across. The ceiling is 30 feet. If I had to have 1 footcandle over the entire area, it would require too many fixtures, but there will be racks of boats occupying open space. The architect designed paths of egress on the life safety plan. I imported the paths into my Visual software and I have 1 footcandle on the path of egress. Lots of 0 footcandles at the racks, but that wouldn't matter in an emergency.

hope this helps.