Building a one or two step staircase in garage of awkward total rise

code-compliancestairs

I am curious what your recommendations are for building a set of garage steps in my situation. I am wanting to replace the step in my garage which is an 8" movable hollow cement block. The distance between the bottom of the door to the ground is between 17" measured to the top of the door metal weather-strip. It is between 16.5" and 16 7/8" if measured from floor to bottom of the weather-strip. I can find a lot of information on the internet about building stringers, but this height is a bit awkward. 8.25" is a bit beyond code requirements of approximately 7.75" maximum riser height. However, doing two steps would require me to have a riser height of 5 2/3" which is way below the ideal 7.5". I believe the unit run would need to be about 13" in this case as well (your thoughts), which puts me at a total run of 26", which is doable, but not optimal in my eyes.

So my question is

  1. if there are any code exceptions for a single step in a garage (live in Maryland).
  2. which do you think would be more comfortable, perhaps in spite of code requirements (single step of 8.25" or two steps of 5 2/3").
  3. Depending on whether you chose option (1) or option (2), what do you think an optimal unit run length would be?

Thanks for all of the input! Just to clarify two questions that have been asked:

  1. The stair is from a doorway in the house stepping down to concrete inside of the garage.

  2. The door cannot be lowered. Without the weather seal, the door would be level with flooring. The flooring is also of small thickness (laminate in that area), so the door is essentially level with the subfloor.

Best Answer

A landing is required if the door swings outward, except for screen doors. The landing is to be the width of the door and 36” in the direction of travel. (See ICC R311.4.3.)

The maximum rise of steps is 8”. The maximum difference between risers is 3/8” from smallest to largest. (See ICC R311.5.3.1)

The minimum tread depth is 9”. The greatest difference from smallest to largest is 3/8”. (See ICC R311.5.3.2)

A handrail is required if there are 4 or more risers. The handrail is to be installed a minimum of 34” and not to exceed 38” (See ICC R311.5.6)

I wouldn’t ignore the code. That’s how people end up in court after a neighbor has an accident without insurance.

Related Topic