The Office of Manitoba’s Fire Commissioner has indicated it plans to extend provisions of the Buildings and Mobile Homes Act to cover the construction of new or expanded agricultural buildings.
Currently Manitoba’s building code does not apply to farm buildings except residences.
Manitoba Pork Council sustainable development programs manager Mike Teillet says pork producers are in favor of applying the building code to farm buildings as long as the requirements are reasonable.
They’re talking about requiring emergency exits every so many feet for example.
They’re talking about putting exit lights, emergency lights and alarms in systems and they’re also talking about fire breaks at certain intervals within the barn.
The two of the things that we have stated or made our position public with the fire commissioner’s office is that we are opposed to sprinkler systems and we are opposed to retroactive application of the code, in other words the application of the building code to existing buildings.
We’ve been informed by the fire commissioner’s office that they will not require sprinklers and they will not require retroactive application of building codes.
In fact that is always the case anyway.
When the code is amended and it is amended reasonably often it never is or almost never is applied retroactively to existing buildings.
Teillet notes, despite the fact that Manitoba’s building code currently does not apply to farm buildings, almost all modern barns have been professionally designed and constructed, they exceed the national building code requirements and they must meet strict insurance guidelines.
Source; Farmscape.Ca
