`A rose is a rose is a rose,” writer Gertrude Stein once said. For most house buyers, that could be “a stair is a stair is a stair.”
But that’s not true for most home builders. Even minor differences between one stair measurement and another can make a difference in a home builder’s costs and profits.
How so? If you lower the allowable stair riser height and widen the tread, the total length of the stair run increases. To accommodate this, a builder may have to increase the size of the house, which adds to the cost.
Hence, the continuing acrimony between home builders and building code officials over stair geometry. After debating the issue for nearly 20 years, building officials finally voted to change the stair dimensions in the model codes so that the stair run will be longer and possibly safer. Before the new stair geometry becomes a legal requirement, however, the model codes must be adopted, either on a statewide basis or by individual local jurisdictions, depending on state law. During the adoption process, the model codes can be modified, and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is mounting a national campaign to remove the new stair requirement.
Lined up on one side of the issue are building code officials and some home builders who believe, based on the voluminous amount of information available, that the stair change is a safety issue and that the new stair dimensions will reduce accidents on stairs. Lined up on the other side is much of the home building industry, most notably the NAHB, which does not believe that the evidence for changing the stair is sufficiently conclusive to necessitate a change that will increase the builders’ cost.
Incorporating the new geometry into the stairs–lowering the riser by one-half inch, to 7 3/4 from 8 1/4 inches and widening the tread by one inch, to 10 inches from 9–adds about two feet to the stair run for a floor with an eight-foot ceiling.
How much of an increase in size and cost will this mean? In the Washington, D.C. area, for example, home builders estimated that for the smallest houses in their market–attached three-story row houses with 1,200 to 1,500 square feet of finished, livable area–about 20 to 40 square feet would have to be added. This would increase the cost by about $1,000 to $1,500, and could shut out first-time buyers, who may not be able to qualify for financing even with such a modest price increase for that market.
Will the new stair really be safer? One of the most outspoken naysayers is Cleveland home builder Allan Scott, who served on an ad hoc committee appointed by the Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) to study the stair question. While acknowledging that many accidents occur on stairs, he reviewed “word for word” all the documents submitted to the BOCA committee and found “no study which positively concludes that stair geometry causes the accidents. Part of the reason I voted no is cost. Why increase the costs if you can’t justify it?”
“Evidence for the wider stair tread is indisputable,” said Paul Heilstat, chief executive officer of BOCA and secretary of BOCA’s ad hoc stair committee. “Whether the 7 3/4 riser height is good and appropriate, time will tell. There was sufficient evidence that 7 1/2 inches is better. The 7 3/4 inches was a compromise with the home builders.”
“The home builders only considered the first cost scenario, not the benefits of reducing stairway injuries and the high costs associated with them,” said Tim Ryan, a building code official from Overland Park, Kan., who also served on the BOCA ad hoc committee and voted for the change. “It costs more to build the new stair, but it saves money down the road.”
