Manitoba’s pork producers are expressing their support for plans to apply provincial building codes to the construction of new or expanded agricultural buildings.
Following extensive consultations with the agricultural community the Office of Manitoba’s Fire Commissioner has recommended extending provisions of Manitoba’s Buildings and Mobile Homes Act to cover the construction of new or expanded agricultural buildings.
Under the planned changes new agricultural buildings over 600 square metres will have to be engineered, will be required to be equipped with fire breaks, alarms and exit signs.
Manitoba Pork Council sustainable development programs manager Mike Teillet says most new barns built over the past ten to 15 years are engineered, because they’re insured they must meet basic standards and they are inspected by Manitoba Hydro before they can get power.
As you are probably are aware there are no building codes applied to farm buildings except residences traditionally and there has been discussion for a number of years about applying building codes to farm buildings.
What we’re talking about basically are barns and sheds over a certain size.
We as a Pork Council have never been opposed to the adoption of a reasonable building code and, in fact, we have been working with the Fire Commissioner’s Office over the years to work on a building code and to try to ensure that it is reasonable.
We believe that this building code is reasonable and, while nobody wants new regulation or more regulation, in this case we believe that this is as good or as reasonable as a building code can get.
Teillet notes the Fire Commissioner’s Office has estimated the changes will add two to three percent to the cost of new construction but other estimates have ranged as high as 10 percent.
He suspects it’ll be somewhere in between, possible around five percent.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
