Early History of Building Codes

The earliest known written building code was part of the Code of Hammurabi which dates from about 1754 BC. This Code embodied the laws of ancient Mesopotamia and included 282 laws that specify punishments for a wide variety of infractions including harm caused by a poorly constructed home or building. Among the building related provisions in the Code Of Hammurabi are the following (see Figure 1.3):

228. If a builder builds a house for someone and completes it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each “sar” of service. A shekel was the basic monetary unit and it had a weight of 8.33 grams of silver, worth about $32.50 today. Note: A sar is a unit of area that was about 400 square feet in size.

229. If a builder builds a house for someone and does not construct it properly, and the house which he builds falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.

230. If it kills the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.

231. If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house.

232. If it ruins goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct the house properly and it collapses, he shall re-erect the house from his own means.

233. If a builder builds a house for someone, even though he has not yet completed, if the walls appear to be about to topple, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means.

Mention of code requirements for buildings can be found in the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible in which it is stipulated that parapets must be constructed on all houses to prevent people from falling off. Another mention of building code requirements in the Bible can be found in Leviticus where the methodology on how to treat toxic mold and a system of inspection were established:

On the seventh day the priest shall return to inspect the house. If the mildew has spread on the walls, he is to order that the contaminated stones be torn out and thrown into an unclean place outside the town. He must have all the inside walls of the house scraped and the material that is scraped off dumped into the unclean place outside of town. Then they are to take other stones to replace these and take new clay and plaster the house. If the mildew reappears in the house after the stones have been torn out and the house is scraped and plastered, the priest is to go and examine it and, if the mildew has spread in the house, it is a destructive mildew, the house is unclean. It must be torn down, its stones timbers and all the plaster must be taken out of the town to the unclean place.

In the Middle Ages, the Great Fire of London in 1666 resulted in the first modern era building code, known as the Rebuilding of London Act (see Figure 1.4). The fire destroyed over 13,000 homes plus St Paul’s Cathedral and the result was that over 70,000 residents of London were left homeless. The enormous damage caused by this fire was a result of a combination of a dense built environment, oak timber and tar construction, narrow streets, and primitive fire fighting methods such as the bucket brigades which passed buckets of water from water sources to the fire. The Act required that housing must have some fire resistance and it also regulated the construction of the City of London by, for example, regulating the width of roads.