The Fire Marshall

When building a cabin, you know you've got a lot of work ahead of you when the fire code documents are bigger than your cabin plans.  That's what our builder found out when he went to apply for our building permit last year.

Ever since,  he has had to put a lot of effort into figuring them all out and making sure we are compliant.   The rules are plentiful and yet a bit vague,  so our builder has asked a lot questions to make sure we are doing everything right.   I think he and the Fire Marshall are on a first name basis.  Not only do we have regular building inspections from the county, we also have the Fire Marshall coming up to inspect as well.

Here are 2 examples.  See the beautiful neon green color?  That is exterior sheet rock.  We are required to put sheet rock on the cabin before we put on the cedar siding.  Why?  Because sheet rock is not flammable.  Makes perfect sense right?  Once the cedar is on, we have to apply yet another product to the cedar to make it flame retardant.

Example 2
Here is Scott in the giant forklift trimming trees that are right near our cabin.  The rules say that you can't have any branch closer than 10ft to the cabin.  Scott hopped onto the forklift and I lifted him up about 30 feet, so he could trim.  We haven't even gotten to the shrubbery yet and there are another set of rules for those.  We have learned that all these rules are in place because they don't want your cabin burning down the forest.  Not vice versa.  They could care less if your cabin burns down.

What's next with the fire code rules?  I think the next thing on our list is what we can use to build our decks.  Of course, they need to be made of some product that is fire proof, and if not fireproof, you need fire sprinklers on them.   Metal or Trex maybe?  Here's the crazy part.  They consider redwood to be fireproof.  How bizarre is that?  Hence the many questions that our builder gets to figure out.