Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
No, to meet the letter of the law, you need to have two direct paths of egress from any residential unit. Many garden units in chicago don't have that and are thus "illegal".
Such would've been the case in our building if it did in fact once have a garden unit in the basement, with the sole path of egress through the back basement door.
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Wow, that's incredibly strict!
In Quebec, two means of egress only start to be required if you have 9 units or more, or 5 stories or more.
I have a four-story building from ~1920 that has only one staircase for the entire building... it has nine very large residential units (4 br flats and 3 br flats, most of them rented to group of university roommates) and to be legal, I had to either add a second staircase (would be unthinkable, except that I own all the adjacent properties so it becomes actually doable - this new independent exit that the building wasn't designed for would be on the neighboring property, with the green light of the neighbor who's me) or else "remove" one unit - and I did the latter for the time being (it's used as storage).
So, you've got about ~20 tenants in a building and only one means of egress is acceptable. Because I have only eight apartments, and less than 5 stories of above ground building height.
(That building, however, is really close to the very upper limit of what's acceptable without two means of egress.)
I'm just using that upper limit example to illustrate the drastic contrast with Chicago - I guess they got burned in the great Chicago fire and decided they'd become extreme...?