The Board of Building Inspection met 08/02/2021 and took up the request for a variance by a homeowner for a non-conforming staircase landing.
Inspections Supervisor Kurt Craanen explained that this was for an existing staircase. The landing needs to be 36″ wide so that people don’t have to step down into a small area, but there is no space for the homeowner to expand the landing.
Martin, the homeowner, was also there. He was adding an addition to his existing home and was adding stairs from the landing to the new addition. A set of existing stairs went up from the first floor to the landing and then a second set of proposed stairs would start at the landing and go 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the first set of stair and lead to the second floor/addition. If I understood correctly, the stairs themselves were wide enough to conform to code, but the landing itself, although it was 7-8 feet long, was only 32” wide which was 4” narrower than the 36” minimum required of a landing.
The house itself was 100 years old and Martin said he had opted to make the tread and riser measurements for the new second floor staircase conform to the measurements of the old first floor staircase so as to reduce the risk of tripping.
He had some pictures that he shared with the board but which were not included with the agenda packet. I understand the basic appearance of staircases that go part way up to a landing then shoot 180 degrees backward off that landing to go up to the next floor, and I’ve included a Creative Commons picture to illustrate. but I don’t fully understand everything that was going on with this specific staircase beyond the fact that it was in some way butting up against a wall and had very limited space.
He went into quite a bit of detail about the stair riser, tread, and stringer dimensions and stressed that he was trying to maintain uniformity with the bottom section of the staircase. My impression was that, possibly, if he had changed the dimensions for the top half of the staircase he would have somehow been able to have a 36” wide landing and he was trying to illustrate to the board that having different tread and riser dimensions would be less desirable than having a non-conforming landing.
Martin explained to the board that the stairwell juts into the garage and the architect had to design some kind of trusses and cutouts to accommodate that. He had a photo that illustrated just how little space there was.
[And that was the overview of his project. As someone not able to view any of the photos, I really struggled to visualize the project. It sounds like he has a staircase that’s original to the house that runs up to a landing that’s against the wall of an attached garage, then he’s shooting a new staircase off the opposite direction to lead up to an addition, but where did the staircase that’s original to this 100 year-old house initially lead to? Did it just dump out onto the top of the garage or something? What was the purpose of this staircase? Was there a door at the top and you just point your batty mother-in-law in that direction and hope for the best? These are questions I expect I will never have an answer to.]
The board opened things up for discussion.
Mayor Woodford asked to clarify the board’s latitude in terms of what they could or couldn’t do in this situation regarding granting or denying the variance. Where there any considerations that they should be making as they thought about the request?
Supervisor Craanen said that there was no criteria and no hardship that needed to be outlined [such as is the case with a Board of Zoning Appeals request]. Usually, the board would discuss equivalencies. The cases that come in front of the Board of Building Inspection usually involve safety concerns such as someone tripping so they would typically ask the applicant if they were going to do something to create an equivalency like adding a handrail or a guardrail. The issue before the board at the last meeting was a good example; they had someone put a head bump pad on a low corner of a staircase.
Deputy Director of Public Works Ross Buetow confirmed that the staircase would require a handrail, then asked some clarifying questions about the dimensions of the landing.
Martin explained that the landing was 7-8 feet one way and 32” wide the other way.
Mayor Woodford said that part of the challenge was that this project wasn’t just a renovation working within the constraints of a 100-year-old house, but instead there was a new addition which was a complicating factor.
Fire Protection Engineer Steve Patterson was a member of the board and Mayor Woodford asked him to share his thoughts on prioritizing consistency with the other stair treads vs the width of the landing.
Mr. Patterson said that in past meetings their practice had been to regard the width of the stairway as more of priority than the rise of the steps with headroom being third on the list. As long as the width was at least 36” they didn’t have much concern with other variables. [I took him to mean they cared that the stairs themselves were 36” wide but didn’t care so much about other things.]
The Board members had no further questions and they voted unanimously to approve the variance. Martin was good to go.
[It typically does the heart good when a person has their variance approved, but I have to say this episode of “Appletonians Seeking Variances” was not as entertaining as some previous episodes. I don’t foresee it winning any Emmy’s. I will, however, forever be wondering about exactly what Martin’s stair setup was.]
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=880663&GUID=885EDBA1-9D51-4B60-B841-683B9AB138AB&Options=info|&Search=
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