Gaining Roof Access via Fire Escape: Safety and Access Tips
Here in Washington DC, in our densely crowded neighborhoods in the historic areas, we’ll often see examples of permanent built-in roof access that leads from a fire escape stairway, to the roof. The building code doesn’t always require that access to a roof is built in as part of the permanent structure. From a building code perspective, in most cases, they don’t dictate the particular means of access. Instead, they leave it up to the individual or specific contractor to figure out a practical and safe means of roof access. That means, in most cases, for most row home or row type side-by-side buildings, here in Washington DC, a contractor might need to get out of very large ladder to get up to the rooftop. That’s okay, in most cases, and most professional contractors are used to that. Particularly, contractors, such as ourselves, who specialize in Washington DC roofing, we’re used to using our own ladders to get to a roof. Some roofs are particularly hard to access though. When a roof is built, enclosed by other building elements such that access from a vehicle to the backyard is blocked or not possible because of the positioning of other buildings or even fences, it seriously helps to have a permanently built-in type of access.
The picture below shows an example of a fire escape at the back of a historic brick building. From the back door at the top level of the building, there is an access stair lamding on top of which a vertical ladder leads directly to the rooftop.
These fire escapes or emergency escapes are a means of egress, in an emergency, such as a fire, as the name indicates. Fire escapes aren’t always just used just for egress in fires though. They can also be used as a means of egress for other types of emergencies as well. By and large though, the building code requires a secondary means of egress from most types of residential dwelling units and even commercial buildings as well. When of these historic buildings were originally built though, not all of these buildings were intended to be multiple unit rental apartments. Many of the current historic apartment buildings were converted from single-family residences, for example, to multiple apartments. Stairs like this and other means of secondary egress might be added or implemented to modify the building.
The next picture below, you can see a wider view of the same stairway as shown in the picture above. The stairway leads from the top level and down to each of the levels below until the fire escape reaches the ground. These fire escapes are generally historic, when built as shown in the pictures above and below. In most of those cases, the stairwells are not always very well maintained and generally need some types of upkeep and maintenance. The particular ladder that leads to the rooftop happens to be a relatively flimsy type of flat bar which is acceptable, maybe, but not as ridgid as the tube steel or angle iron that might be used today for similar type of installation but in a different configuration.
A similar but different installation is shown in the next picture below. This ladder also goes from the egress stair to the low slope rooftop. In this case, and in the case of the roof shown in the pictures above, the access stair happens to mount directly to the roof decking. The problem with that type of installation is that the bars used in the stairway have to penetrate through the low slope roof membrane. That then means that those penetrations need to be well sealed to prevent leakage.
It’s important, and most types of penetrations require that the roof is well terminated and sealed because a low slope membrane will typically have a degree of inherent movement or shifting from typical and natural building movements. Often building movements are the result of typical and routine thermal shifts and temperature changes.
This type of installation or mounting configuration is relatively common, particularly in historic buildings where the egress stairs and rooftop access ladders were built many decades ago.
Here, in the next week, you can see that the previous modified bitumen roofing installation, which likely was installed many years ago, is built up and wrapped around the ferrous metal flat bars that lead from the ladder and penetrate to mount through the rooftop membrane.
We recommend every building owner in DC who values the longevity of their roof (and their investments) and building use a contractor who values the simple and important principles of proper roof construction like Dupont Roofing DC. Learn more about our company and the proper techniques of working with roofing on historic buildings in Washington DC here on our blog at DupontRoofingDC.com, and you can call us at (202) 840-8698 and email us at dupontroofingdc@gmail.com. We are happy to help and at least talk through options.
