Originally Posted By: wwarner This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Hey all!
Inspected a house the other day with full finished basement. A door lead from the basement to a concrete tunnel which led to the garage! 
I'll walk you through it as best I can without pictures. Open exterior type door from basement, step down six inches into tunnel approximately 4.5 feet wide by 6.5 tall. Walk about twenty feet then turns 90 degrees left to stairway 6 steps up, no door, now you are in the 2 car garage separate from the house!
The tunnel was well lit with florescent light fixtures and was in surprisingly good shape, no evidence of cracking or water infiltration. The tunnel went through the yard and not under the house, the only thing above it was about 2 feet of dirt!
2 Questions:
1. Would this be considered an attached or detached garage?
2. Are there any violations with there being no door at the garage end?
Originally Posted By: gbeaumont This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Hi to all,
That is an interesting question, and I'm not saying that Jeff is wrong.............BUT   my thought when I read this is that there should be a fire door at the garage end of the tunnel, to stop heavy fuel vapors from entering the tunnel as they would tend to settle there.
Originally Posted By: wwarner This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I called it a detached garage and I also recommended in the report that a door be installed to prevent fuel vapors from entering the tunnel even though there was a door to prevent them from entering the living area.
I just wanted to put this up for discussion with other inspectors since this is not something commonly encountered! Was actually kinda cool I thought! 
Originally Posted By: Rusty Rothrock This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I agree with Gerry on this one. I do feel that there should be a door in the garage.
The one question in my mind however, is why would someone go to the expense of building this type of arrangement? I suspect that there possibly might have been some zoning set-back restrictions involved (set-backs are different for detached structures compared to attached).
As inspectors we don't get involved in thing's of this nature (zoning, setbacks, etc.) but we all have developed a keen 6th sense or intuition about certain things that we might see during an inspection. On more than one occasion I have helped my clients by suspecting that attachments were built without proper building permits (which in some cases where also zoning and set-back issues).
Originally Posted By: Susan This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Bill,
Interesting arrangement! That would be a detached garage. If a garage and house are connected by a roof, similar to a breezeway setup, that I would consider attached.
Originally Posted By: jpeck This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
If they are tied together with a common footer or foundation, wall(s) or the roof, they are attached.
I would like to see a solid core, self closing, self latching door at the garage AND the house end of the tunnel.
There already is a door at the basement (so the post stated), but did not specify whether or not there was a door at either end of the tunnel.
There really is no reason to have a fire door at the garage and the tunnel, just preference (I would want some way to secure the garage closed). The house is separated by the open space and its door. Of course, if there is no rated door at the garage, and there is a fire in the garage, that tunnel is a gonner. I can just see the chimney effect going through that tunnel with the garage on fire. Open the house door and - whoosh - you are sucked through the tunnel into the inferno. It'd be worse if the tunnel was already engulfed in flames.