Equipment Access Stairs

Most equipment and access stairs are going to be exempt from most of the building codes. There are however, plenty of exceptions to this rule.

The size of the equipment, the occupancy of the space that you're accessing and the square footage of the equipment room could affect this building code.

Here's something I wrote down from one of the building code books. Stairs or ladders used only to access equipment or those used to climb out of window wells are exempt.

Now this can be misleading, if you had a ladder or a stairway accessing an equipment room that's 3000 square feet and 20 people occupy this room on a regular basis, there's a good chance that your stairway wouldn't be exempt from any building codes.

Again, this is why you check with your local building department to make sure that your equipment access stairs or ladders, meet local building codes.