Did you know anyone with access to the internet can check out current building codes at the International Code Council (ICC) website? It’s true! I am really excited about this because when I first started in the industry, I only had access to the physical books, and I always thought how much easier things would be if I could use and refer people to a digital version.
Well now we all can – building professionals and property owners and renters – basically everyone. All you have to do is visit the ICC website at https://codes.iccsafe.org/codes and check out any of the 15 codes they offer along with other related publications. They even have different years of the code available. Of course they offer a subscription service with more features which is probably something a building professional would be more interested in than a property owner.
When you get to the site, you can filter the codes in the menu on the left which you can see in the image on this page. You can also go to a specific year by clicking the drop down at the top and choosing the year and version of code. To view a code which shows up in the display, just hover over the graphic of the title and when you see “View as Basic” click on it. The site will take you to the code. You can check out different sections of the code by clicking on the list of sections on the left of the screen.
One important thing to keep in mind is even though the codes are there for free for us to read, they are still under copyright. So in accessing and using them we need to make sure we don’t infringe on the ICC copyright.
