This summer, the Lake County Board adopted the 2018 series of International Code Council codes, which took effect for unincorporated areas of the county on July 27. The adoption implements the International Residential Code, which requires the installation of fire sprinklers in all new one- and two-family homes. As part of the code adoptions, the minimum threshold for commercial buildings to be protected with fire sprinklers was also lowered to 5,000 square feet. Prior to this, the threshold for commercial buildings varied throughout the county.
Fire officials throughout Lake County and members of the Northern Illinois Fire Inspectors Association (NIFIA) worked with Lake County Building & Zoning for two years to achieve this adoption. Wauconda Fire District Fire Marshal Mike DaValle, also president of NIFIA, explained that time was the main challenge in adopting the codes. “It took us two election cycles,” he said. “We would present something to Lake County Building & Zoning but then they would have to bring it to each of the various members of the Lake County Board to review and gather their input. That process added further delay.”
Lake County Board Members
The codes will cover 23 unincorporated areas of the county. DaValle explained the driver of the code adoptions was to keep residents and the firefighters safer from fire.
“(These codes) make sure everyone is safe and that we’re all on the same page,” DaValle said. “When it relates to residential fire sprinklers, for the longest time we would struggle because some fire districts had not adopted them in unincorporated areas, and some had challenges with adopting them. Sometimes, something would slip through. We might not have seen a code, a permit list, or that a home was supposed to be built and needed a fire sprinkler system. Now, everything is standardized. It doesn’t matter if it is one house standing on its own or a whole new neighborhood. It’s all going to be the same, and it’s all going to be as safe as possible.”
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