Protruding object- lesson learned

Posted on - Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

I inspected an office space, where the architect intelligetly placed the hi-lo water fountain (EWC) so that the higher unit was adjacent to a fixed counter and therefore not protruding into the circulation path

 

 

ewc next to counter

 

Unfortunately, the contractor mounted the lower accessible unit so that the spout was right at 36″ high.  If you notice the dimension for the spout of an EWC on Fig. 27, the 36″ is a maximum.  

ewc

Even though this meets all the requirements for the EWC clearances and heights, it created the situation where the leading edge of the EWC was not at the cane detectable height of 27″ a.f.f.  In fact it was at 30″ a.f.f which made this the protruding object. 

 A protruding object is one that is higher than 27″ and projects more than 4″ from the wall onto the circulation path.   This type of object will not be detectable by visually impaired persons that use a cane to get around, and they would hit the drinking fountain before they would detect it.

 

 protruding