Covering of Service Door

It is my understanding that it is very difficult to remove an access door -- city plan approval required. My interior designer (wall structure) told me it is a bad plan -- you can block the door with a table but to remove the access permanetly is an issue that you may just want to work around.

NYC fire code requires 2 means of egress. Its likely not a service staircase but rather an internal fire escape, which, together with the building stairway, would make up your two means of egress from fire.

Thanks for the comments. Spinnaker1, I know of a lot of apartments though, that are on very high floors, have no fire escape and only 1 door. Is it because they are in modern buildings?

the question is REMOVING an egress... tougher -- I was on 16 -- no fire escape...

How about putting a refrigerator in front of the door?

I'm guessing that modern buildings get around the requirement by installing a sprinkler system.

The building code has changed over time. Right now one door is OK as long as you can get to two sets of stairs. But, there're rules as to how far that door can be from a stairway, and maybe rules on how far the door can be from the furthest end of the apartment.

At one point only one stairway was OK as long as there was no more than one or two apartments per floor. E.g., the towers at 115 CPW have only one set of stairs.

If we decide to keep the door, what about rules of blocking it off? can we put a piece of furniture in front of it?

yes

people put refrigerators and tables in front of those doors, but you "shouldn't," and, in case of a fire, it might invalidate your insurance.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

We have to get our board approval for the remodeling, so if we had a movable piece of furniture or a refrigerator in front, would the plans be denied?
Also, in regards to the proximity to 2 sets of stairs, our front door is even closer to the fire stairs than the public stairs.

Many old coops insist on having the service entrance clearance.

A friend at a Tudor City coop once told me about his experience. She wanted to block the service entrance (going out to service staircase), but the proposal was denied. Apparently, people kept on ignoring the Board and violating this rule anyhow, so the coop made it impossible to block the service entrance by changing the trash collection policy--that each apt had to place its trash outside the service entrance for collection.

Apparently, there was no other viable means of accessing the service staircase, so everyone had to eventually open up the service entrace to take out trash...

This is not the case with our building. While our trash is put in the service staircase, we can access that area from our front door (almost as easily as through our service door).