French Door swing direction in a pool/spa room

[mtCDCcb]

My condo complex has an indoor pool/hot tub room. They are looking to replace a couple windows with a french door that leads to the outside of the complex. The association wants the doors to swing in and I am not sure that they can. In what cases may this door swing in and not out?

[mtCDCcb]

From what I was able to find is that if the occupancy for the pool room is less than 50 than the door may swing in. Is this correct?

[Jerry Peck - Codeman]

Another thing to consider is that the room as it exists right now, with the windows still installed, is required to have an egress door which meets the requirements of the egress width for the occupant load.

That means that the existing door meets, did meet at the time of construction, or should have met at the time of construction, the egress requirements for that room and space.

As such, the new doors would not be required doors and would need need to meet means of egress if the doors are not provided for egress purposes, but would need to meet the requirements for egress doors if the doors are provided for egress purposes.

That last part is the sticky part, not only is it "what" the doors are provided for, but "what" a reasonable person would think the doors are provided for, i.e., if the doors do not go to an exit, then the doors could not be considered to be egress doors as they do not allow egress to an exit, however, if the doors 'were not installed for egress purposes' but did lead to an exit and could be used as a means of egress, then the doors would need to meet the requirements for egress doors.

Which brings us back to the occupant load and the door swing - which way does the existing door swing? In or out? What size is the room the pool and spa is in? What is the posted capacity of the pool and spa? How many chairs are there around the pool? There are many things to consider as to what makes the occupant load, and the greatest occupant load of all potential occupant loads is the occupant load the design, including the door swing, is based on.

Here is an example: Let's say you have a large meeting hall which could accommodate 500 people based on calculation of square feet per occupant, but you only have 30 chairs in there and that is the maximum number of occupants you say the room will ever have - the design would be based on an occupant load of 500 because that is the largest calculated occupant load.