I have encountered some very strange requirements related to the fire code. This has been most 'alarming' related to a garage wall detail. The garage wall, particularly the one that faces the neighbours garage, in this case about 10 ft separated across the property line, is somehow now considered to be such a fire hazard that extreme measures are required to build it.
The City has requested a completely non combustible design. This means the wall itself cannot be wood, and it has to be wrapped in many layers of fire resistant material below the siding. Each added layer of fire protection is not only costly, it is getting very hard to do. I have shown here a clip of the wall detail we are proposing on this garage.
The implications of this garage wall detail is really dismal for actually building the garage. Around a man door, the jamb is left with such bizarre dimension, something like 8 inches thick. Garage door jambs are not designed to be 8 inch thick compatible, especially not the fire rated doors that are required. Generally a garage door jamb is preferred to be made for 4 or 6 inch wood framing. It remains to be seen what this will actually look like once built. I am hypothesizing it will look like garbage, or may not even be possible to install a 6 inch jamb on an 8 inch wall. No doubt some crazy farmer fix will be needed to make this work.
I also wonder who had this great idea to impose these conditions on a garage. The idea must be that the garage can completely burn to the ground but the metal walls will remain standing after the roof has collapsed. I'd guess that by the time the garage is consumed in flame the fire truck will have arrived to put it out. I wonder if the next code change will require fences to be made of metal so that they can't catch fire and burn down your neighbours noncombustible garage.
This wall features 4 layers of type X style gypsum board inside and outside the wall.