Attached garage - fire code

[Deb]

We are in the process of having an attached garage put on our 2000 Redman home. The county inspector says we need to have drywall put on the outside of the house where the garage is connected to meet fire code. We have James Hardie siding which is fiber-cement and is supposedly noncombustible. Do you know anything about this siding??

[Tracy]

Deb.
We are curently working on a home that has Hardie siding. The home is new and they have also added an attached garage. They also had to have sheetrock added to the exterior of the home in order to make code on the firewall.

I have never seen an instance of an attached garage without a sheetrocked firewall and a self closing fire door. I don't believe that any inspectors consider cement board siding as a substitute for sheetrock on a firewall. If you want more information on the siding check out www.jameshardie.com

If your dryer vent is also vented into the garage it will have to be moved too. There can be no openings in your firewall.

Good Luck! Let us know how you like the garage

Tracy

[rmurray]

This is just a case of the local building code not being up to date with new building products..
Hardy Siding is as close to fireproof as any product can get..But it takes most building codes many years to accept new stuff..

[Richard]

By the way. My nextdoor neighbor had a garage built onto his MH and the SAA inspector wrote the builder up because there were HUD Code violations concerning the attached garage.

[Deb]

Thank you folks for the input. I'm going to see if I can get a variance based on the material being non combustible. The garage is finished except for the drywall and the outside paint. It's too cold to paint - we are in Idaho.