Occupancy with hazardous materials

Really confused about occupancy types storing or selling hazardous materials. For example - car sales dealership with offices and repair garage. Occupancy B lists “Motor sales showrooms”, Occupancy F-1 lists “Automobiles or other motor vehicles”, Occupancy S-1 clearly states "Motor vehicle repair garages complying with Table 307.1… Table 307.1 Minimum allowable quantity per control area of hazardous materials… lists all bunch of substances and numbers! I have no idea what chemicals car repair garage is using beyond “Flammable Gas” and how much of it… So do we just assume that this enterprise is some type of H occupancy ? And what about office spaces if they occupy more than 10% of all s.f., are they separate occupancy B? Also what about construction type and sprinkle system? I believe all F and H occupancy types must be sprinkled according to Section 903…OK…But what to do if exam will not include this section, but you know about it? Also, do we go to Table 506 to see what Construction Type the s.f. of this occupancy will allow?

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Hi @nlrange & welcome to the ARE Community!

Let’s see if one of our expert architects can help with this. @coachlizschneider do you mind jumping in?

Anyone? I have read on other sites that it’s more suited for S-1, so just ignore table “minimum hazardous substances”?

@nlrange Thank you for the question. In your example, the car sales dealership with offices and repair garage, you are likely looking at a mixed use building. The showroom and offices would fall under Occupancy B and the repair garage would fall under Occupancy S-1. The F-1 occupancy would be for a car factory only, so as long as you are not manufacturing the cars here this occupancy would not apply.
Once you’ve established that this is a mixed use building you need to determine if it will be a separated mixed use or a non-separated mixed use.
If separated you will need to meet all code requirements for your B occupancy and S-1 occupancy for the respective spaces. Additionally, you may need to provide fire separation between the two uses. Table 508.4 tells us that we do not need to provide fire separation between these uses.
If you go with non-separated mixed use you will have to make sure that the entire building follows the more restrictive use.

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Thank you very much for your answer! But still, what to do about the table listing minimum hazardous substance for the occupancy, just ignore it?

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@nlrange Thanks for the follow up. In most cases I don’t believe that Table 307.1 will apply, if you are designing a repair garage that would be a good question for your client. They should be able to provide you with the quantities and substances that they plan to store on site so you can determine the proper use and code requirements. On the exam, if they want you to go beyond classifying this as S-1, they would need to provide you with a list of materials and quantities being stored at the garage.

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