Marc M wrote:Do The codes in the CRC apply to appartment buildings?
Marc M wrote:5 Townhouses up to three stories height are regulated in the Residential Code.
You first asked about "apartment" buildings, your reference is about "townhouses" - "apartment" buildings and "condominium" buildings are one and the same (except in "condos" one 'owns' the space which one would 'rent' in an "apartment" building). The same construction applies to 'condos' and 'apartments' as the condo building is one common owned building (owned by the condo association) whereas the apartment building is one common owned building (owned by the owner of the apartment building).
Townhouses, on the other hand, are considered to be each their own structure and building, except that instead of having space between the townhouse units, the townhouse units are attached at one or two sides (such as a row of townhomes is attached at the common wall between units and only the two end units have end walls which are not attached to another units). With townhouses, the property under the townhouse is owned along with the townhouse building itself being owned - you will never find one townhouse over/under another townhouse. Whereas with apartments the the ground under the building and the building itself are owned by the owner of the apartment and the apartment occupant only rents the 'air space' within the confines of the walls of their apartment (while a condo owner owns the 'air space' within the confines of the walls of their condo unit) - apartments and condos may well be one over/under another apartment/condo as the building is one building, not separate buildings like for a townhouse building.
Think of it this way: stack a series of cardboard boxes on the ground next to one another - those cardboard boxes represent townhomes and the owner of each townhome owns the land their box sets on plus their box, up to the wall of the box next to it (think of the two cardboard box walls as being one common wall which is divided in the center and one half of the common wall is owned by one owner while the other half of the common wall is owned by the other owner); now stack cardboard boxes on top of one another - these cardboard boxes represent apartments/condos in that the owner/tenant does not own/rent any of the structure, they just own/rent the space within their box, whether their box is on the first floor or the tenth floor.
When a townhome burns, the fire-resistance wall between two townhomes is intended to allow the one townhome to burn to the ground while the townhome adjacent to it remains structurally intact and standing.
When an apartment/condo burns, there is no real fire-resistance wall between any of the units, there is a fire-partition between the units which tries to keep the fire contained so as to limit the damage to the common structure and to give each of the occupants time to safely escape, yet the single common structure will suffer the fire damage.
Not sure if the above helps clear up the difference between apartments/condos and townhouses/townhomes or muddies it up?
You could have four story townhouses, and if you did then the Building Code, not the Residential Code, would apply to their construction as the Residential Code only applies to townhouses which are three-stories or less.