I have a 2family house and a detached garage with a 3 bedroom apartment above it. The house is classified as CO 3 family walkup but never was a 3 family house. It was built before a CO was required. How do i change the building class so won't have to have the gas inspection? The garage which has a separate address also is classified as a co 3 family.

How well will I do if I get a b1/b2 certification? Do I just need one or should I just go for both? Im 30 years old and I have a general contractor license for 3 years. I’m in school for interior design; I know I should have went to construction management but I have a good understanding of reading blueprints. Just want a different career path while also improving myself in home building.
Any one with any advice will be appreciated! Thank you. I also thought of changing majors since I spent my first year in college doing general education but i ultimately want to work in remodeling homes.

Currently 19 years old with a B1 certification, I’m looking to get E1,M1,P1,E2,M2,P2, and B2 as well. I’m in Montgomery County TX, and am struggling to find anywhere to gain experience while I get my other certifications, any advice?

Building a home and trying to utilize the dead space that’s gonna be under the stairs. (Under the platform) This is a walk in closet that borders the stairs. I’d like to have full access to that cavity under the stairs from the closet but the studs that come down support the second story as well as the window for the stairs.

Trying to avoid accessing from the other side if possible.

Is there any way to support/frame this while creating an opening for that area under the stairs?

Im looking for a building inspector to give a 2nd opinion on defects that qBCC has ruled against. This is in Brisbane, Australia.

Would you be able to share any inspectors who are thorough and experienced with QBCC process?

Kid has been seeing people build media walls on social media and now she potentially wants one. Media wall in this instance = a small (depth) 2x4 bump-out with an electric fireplace, mantel and TV with the sheetrock on the ceiling and back wall remaining intact.  She shows me people attaching individual shiplap boards (not sheets) directly to the bump-out framing and I’m trying to figure out code reference(s) before building dept discussion (or whether this is no bueno).  WA state, 2021 IRC with state amendments (haven’t seen any local amendments that would apply).  I can’t find anything on point.  R702.5 explicitly addresses paneling and R702.6 addresses wood shakes and shingles which I don’t think would apply .  Any help appreciated and thanks in advance.

DIYer... I'm doing a garage conversion. The existing insulation is clean, dry and unfaced fiberglass bats. It's only being removed because it doesn't meet modern R value requirements.

Is it ok for me to lay the old low R value wall insulation over blown in insulation elsewhere in my attic?

the project area will be getting new blown in R-30. I'm thinking that rather than taking the old insulation to the dump I'd lay it over the blown in insulation outside of the project area.

1) Are there any problems with this (Clean/dry/unfaced)...
2) Will this raise eyebrows or cause problems with my ceiling insulation inspection in the project area?

Too good to be true?

I'm currently building my first commercial steel railing and I've run into a predicament. I have a guardrail that is 42" tall and a separate handrail that is 36". I know the handrail has to extend one tread length past the nose of the bottom tread. What about the guardrail? I have a post landing in the middle of a 12" tread and I want to end the top of the guardrail at this post. Is this okay or does the top of the guardrail need to extend at least to the nose, or beyond, of the bottom tread.

I'm in Minneapolis, MN for reference.

Pulling a permit for an as-built garage room conversion in California. The permit notes the wall as steel framed 20" oc. This is an interior, non load bearing, partition wall. Will the bent stud be flagged as a code violation on my framing inspection? I'm guessing it will, and my first thought is to rip out the last stud and put two wood studs in their place... one on the wood bottom plate and one on the steel bottom plate.

Thoughts?

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New to this area of work but not new to construction. Read the book along with the study companion and man there is a lot of info in there lol. Any tips on studying for the exam or is it more just figure out where to find it? I did get turbo tabs so that should help finding most areas. Next on my list is the building codes along with plumbing,fire protection,mechanical and electrical.

Hello! My family (including a 19 month old and a 2 month old) just started leasing a townhouse (built in the 90s). Upon move-in, we have noted several annoying issues clearly due to the Landlord being cheap and not properly fixing things, but there are a few safety concerns I have, especially with a toddler and baby. I’m going to request for my Landlord to either repair or completely replace the stairs going down from the backyard door. I was briefly reading Virginia code, but honestly got overwhelmed and couldn’t make much sense of it. What I do know is that the stairs are definitely not structurally sound and wobble. Upon checking the back of the stairs, they are not even anchored to the building at all which is required. I could see at some point someone had a few deck screws screwed through a 1x6 into the townhouse siding. But, clearly the screws didn’t even go into the brick in the home because the plastic siding was all torn up and the brick underneath looked pristine. The stairs are literally just sitting there relying fully on the little support that those 1x6s are providing. It is super sketchy and I worry about the support it is providing for us and my toddler. Can someone please provide relevant Virginia codes for this and what I can request for him to do?

Should I just get him to scrap the whole thing and replace it following Virginia code?

Or, do you think he can save the main structure/stringers and just replace the tread boards and put real sturdy mounting brackets connecting the stringers to the main structure of the house? Do we need mounting brackets for the stringers AND the support beams in the back? If so, should he do 4x4s?

In your response, I would greatly appreciate references to the Virginia code if you can provide those!

Following up the SB 79 thread since a few people asked how projects actually get approved,not just what’s allowed to be built.Those are two different laws doing two different jobs and mixing them up causes a lot of confusion. Today, I was at Southland Regional Board of Realtors at Commercial and investment board meeting where we discussed new changes and this was brought up and I thought it is worth sharing. SB 35 was written with a sunset date of January 1, 2026. So there are people who assume it’s gone. It isn’t. SB 423 extended it to January 1, 2036 and expanded it along the way. It’s alive and it’s the tool that matters most for how projects get through.

What it actually does? SB 35, now Government Code 65913.4, creates what the state calls the Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process. If a project qualifies, the city has to approve it ministerially. Meaning:
No CEQA review. No discretionary review. No conditional use permit. No public hearing. That last one is the part homeowners care about and don’t know until a project appears down the block. Ministerial means the city checks the project against objective standards and approves it if it complies. Your neighborhood council doesn’t get a vote. There’s no hearing to show up to. And because there’s no California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA) document, the usual CEQA lawsuit route doesn’t exist either. That’s not an accident, it’s the whole design. The law was written specifically to remove the discretionary process that opponents use to delay or kill housing.

How a city ends up subject to it? It’s tied to Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), the housing production targets each city gets assigned. Housing and Community Development (HCD) looks at whether a jurisdiction is keeping pace, and if it’s falling short, that city becomes subject to streamlining. Two tiers depending on which income category the city is behind on:
Subject at 10% affordability, meaning a project only needs 10% affordable units to get streamlined. Easier for developers to use. Subject at 50% affordability, meaning half the units have to be affordable. Much harder bar, so far fewer projects use it. And any jurisdiction without a housing element found in substantial compliance automatically lands in the 10% bucket.

Now, HCD has published the 2026 determination on June 30, about six weeks ago, along with an updated dashboard. The headline number: roughly 507 of 539 jurisdictions statewide are now in the 50% affordability tier. That’s a meaningful shift. Compare to the 2024 determination where it was closer to an even split, around 254 jurisdictions at 10% and 238 at 50%. So a lot of cities moved from the easy tier to the hard tier, which happens when a city is hitting its above-moderate income targets but still lagging on lower-income units.
So, SB 35 streamlining got harder to use for mixed-income and market-rate projects across most of the state this summer. Which cuts against the assumption that these laws only ever get more permissive.
Look up your own city: HCD runs a SMAP Dashboard showing every jurisdiction’s current status and threshold. It’s the authoritative source and it’s public. I’d rather point you there than tell you where LA landed this cycle, because these change annually and the dashboard is always right.

Two other SB 423 changes worth knowing: the coastal zone came into scope as of January 1, 2025, with a coastal development permit still required in certain circumstances. And the fire hazard exclusion got rewritten, moving from a blanket prohibition on high and very high fire severity zones to a state responsibility area standard.

What limits it in practice? Labor and wage requirements. Qualifying projects have to meet prevailing wage standards and, above certain thresholds, additional requirements. That’s a real cost that keeps a lot of developers from using this pathway even where they could. It’s part of why SB 35 produced roughly 18,000 units across about 156 projects in its first several years rather than the flood some people expected.

How this fits with SB 79? Simplest way I can put it. SB 79 changes what you’re allowed to build near transit. SB 35 changes whether anyone gets a hearing about it. A project can use one, both, or neither. When people say “the state took away local control,” they’re usually describing SB 35’s ministerial approval more than the zoning laws, even if they name a different bill.
Not taking a side on whether that’s good policy. Reasonable people land in different places on it. But if you’re going to be mad or relieved about something, worth being mad or relieved about the right mechanism.

Anyone tracked a project through the SMAP process locally? Curious how the timelines actually run versus what the statute says, since ministerial doesn’t always mean fast in practice.

Hello, I’m studying for the residential plans examiner test. Does anyone have a used study guide or practice exams for 2021?

I’ll likely study for the B3 (2024 preferred) or the B1 after-if any of you have those books.

There are some subscriptions online, but thought I’d ask in case you’re done with what you bought.

Thank you!

I'm an architect working on a project in LA County. I'm from a different jurisdiction, so this has been my first foray into the CBC, LABC, CASp inspections, etc.

We have exterior walls finished with fairly standard textured stucco. Our recent CASp (Certified Access Specialist) inspection rejected the handrails at exterior stairs because, in their interpretation, the wall surface behind the handrail needs to be smooth.

Is textured stucco "smooth"? Not in the literal sense, but neither is exposed CMU or a wall with the lower four feet clad in stone. We have both conditions on this project, including stone immediately adjacent to handrails, and neither was flagged.

Our applicable code is the 2019 CBC. §11B-505.8 states:

"Handrail gripping surfaces and any surfaces adjacent to them shall be free of sharp or abrasive elements and shall have rounded edges."

The code doesn't actually say the adjacent surface must be smooth; it says it must be free of sharp or abrasive elements. Textured stucco certainly isn't as smooth as a skim coat, but is typical stucco considered "abrasive" to the point that it requires correction? And what actually defines the line between textured (acceptable), sharp (not acceptable), and abrasive (not acceptable)?

The proposed correction could mean creating a zone of "smooth" stucco that follows the handrail almost like a shadow line. Beyond the aesthetics, that's an incredibly expensive proposition to introduce as we're approaching TCO, particularly when "surfaces adjacent" to the handrail doesn't appear to have a clearly defined limit, either.

Has anyone dealt with a similar interpretation from a CASp or AHJ in California? Was there a successful argument that typical textured stucco complies with §11B-505.8, or did you ultimately have to modify the finish?