Putting up a shop in CA - fire department being a pain

ESP47 said
I'm on an acre and having a metal shop put up in the back of my lot. So far the fire department has been 10x more of a headache than the county. They are requiring a compaction report because to get to my shop you drive on my asphalt driveway, then a 100ft gravel driveway (which is really just gravel on top of the soil, non compacted) and then there's about a 50ft run of dirt after the gravel driveway. Fire department says they want a compaction report on the gravel driveway and dirt to see if it'll hold their 70,000lb trucks.

I'm calling around to get quotes and every geological survey company is saying that they cannot sign off mere dirt alone being good enough to support a 70k truck and that I will need to pave the entire 150ft run...which basically adds another 60-70% of added cost on top of the shop and slab. Definitely not what I budgeted for.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I mean surely not everyone has a paved path all the way back to any and every permitted building in their backyards. It just seems excessive and basically puts an end to my dream of having a shop and the deposit I already put down on the building.

After Paradise burned to the ground the state building code was changed to improve fire department access to properties and buildings. That part of the fire code actually draws a distinction at 1 acre and above, so a bunch of the access requirements for properties over 1.0 acres are different than for properties under 1 acre. Why that was chosen for the split I don’t know, but that’s what it is.

There’s an entire section on road/driveway widths, as well as turn around locations specified depending on the length of the run. This is all so fire engines can not only access your property, but also leave in a hurry in case of extreme wildland fire behavior.

I don't know specifically about where you’re at, but you can get permit variances depending on the situation. The size of the building, property, and access distances will all play a role. My suggestion would be to talk to the fire inspector directly and see why they want that report specifically.

A 70k lb truck would be a ladder truck, so, the distance has nothing to do with hose and everything to do with the length of the ladder to put up an aerial master stream. If you don’t have a giant building, that’s not something that would happen anyway.