Linn County board recommends moving to 2024 building codes, deletes post-frame exemption

The Linn County Building Board of Appeals voted Jan. 3 to recommend several updates to county building codes and related local amendments, forwarding the package to the Linn County Board of Supervisors for final action.

Luke Maloney, Linn County building official, told the board the set of four ordinance amendments largely updates the county’s references from 2021 to 2024 editions of the International Property Maintenance Code, International Residential Code and International Building Code. "Today, we have in front of you 4 lovely ordinance amendments," Maloney said, and described most changes as "minimal" and administrative in nature.

The board approved recommendations on three early items by roll-call: Chapter 105 Article 6 (property maintenance code) and Chapter 105 Article 7 (housing code for non-owner-occupied structures) were both recommended to the Board of Supervisors. The board also recommended Chapter 12, the Linn County Fire Code, which Maloney said the county uses primarily to regulate aspects such as fire apparatus access and not to run a separate fire-permit program.

The most substantive change the board addressed was the county’s proposed approach to post-frame (pole) buildings. Maloney pointed to a local exception that had exempted post-frame buildings under 1,000 square feet, with eave height up to 12 feet and post spacing up to 8 feet, from engineering requirements. He warned staff are not design professionals and said the exemption had left the county unable to verify connections and structural calculations: "We're saying you just if you're gonna do post style framing, you have to get it engineered," he said. The board discussed affordability concerns but accepted Maloney’s argument that the exemption presented a liability and that engineered packages are commonly available for kits and can be required.

Maloney also highlighted structural-design changes driven by updated hazard-data tools. Using the ASCE hazard tool, he said the residential snow-load design value for the county will move from 30 to about 36 (discussed as 36.4 in the tool) and described a larger change in the ground snow-load figure to about 52 pounds per square foot. He said eastern Iowa jurisdictions had reached a regional agreement to align residential snow-load criteria so truss manufacturers and plan reviewers work from the same design basis. Maloney noted that, in practice, many truss manufacturers have already "padded" designs to accommodate solar arrays and that the county will ask for structural analysis when designs fall outside typical truss spacing or when additional loading is shown.

On wind design, Maloney said the county would retain the existing design wind speed (stated as 115 in the meeting) following a recent derecho. He also told the board that keeping code-adoption current helps the county maintain a strong Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule (BCEGS) score, which can affect insurance-rate calculations for the jurisdiction and contract cities.

Other technical changes discussed included adopting Appendix C to address certain agricultural building plan-review issues, adding Appendix BB for tiny homes related to state legislation on accessory dwelling units, reinserting county-level accessibility provisions tied to state administrative-code citations after having previously deleted them, and deleting an unused electrical Appendix K.

After discussion, the board approved a motion to recommend the construction-code package (adopting the 2024 code editions with the described local amendments) and voted by roll call to forward the recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. Maloney introduced Veronica Luhan as the county’s new code compliance officer and reminded the board that appeals of property-maintenance and rental-housing enforcement actions will come before this body.

The meeting adjourned with no public speakers recorded during the agenda discussion.