Determine Existing Classroom Occupant Load?

3/8/2019

Can I determine a room capacity for a classroom or lab by just walking in and measuring the room's square footage and using a load factor?

Some of our classrooms have so many desks it looks like a cattle car going to slaughter. I'd like to be able to go room to room and say, "This is the maximum allowable seats...". Appreciate any simple tips for a simple guy. Thanks.

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2 Comments

Chris L.

3/8/2019 10:55:08 am

Posting for the first time.

You can look up when the building was built and then go to the relevant building code and pull out the Occupant Load table. For example, here in California, the max occupant load for a classroom in the current version of building code is 20 net sf/occupant per Table 1004.1.2. Hope this helps.

Ron Pierce

3/8/2019 04:00:44 pm

It certainly doesn't make it any easier reading conflicting posts that suggest university classrooms are considered "office" classification (100 LF!). I suppose the intent of the K-12 designation for "Educational" space is assuming younger, less-agile occupants. But can we equally apply that same logic to the older occupants of a college classroom? I'd think the LF would be less for adults (versus children) in the same environment...

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