Thread: I DO NOT want to get shut down two days before we open this year

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So

I have a home haunt every year, sometimes in the garage, sometimes out back. This year I want to have a professional quality haunt. Of course, paying all that money and spending so much time, I want to get as many people to go through as possible. With a high quality home haunt, it would be pretty easy to get the paper to do a story on the haunt. Of course, with publicity, comes the fire cheif.

I have two main questions-

1. Do the hallways have to be a certain distance wide? Some of our best scares happen in our two foot wide sections.

2. Do we have to fire retard and are there any materials that we can't use? We use wood for walls.

Note- Even if we don't get something in the paper, we still might get a surprise visit. We don't charge anything for admission.

I am in the same situation as you, I am stepping my game up and since I live about 1/4 mile by the crows wing from a VFD. I want to make sure if I spend the extra time and money, I wont have a bunch of crying ToTers because they can't go through the Haunt. So I am already talking with a Fire marshal, showed him my layout, and blue prints for it and the props. Lists of materials and plans for fireproofing for everything. I am actually using 4' hallways since it works out perfect that way, so that was fine. I am fireproofing everything using a solution my grandmom told me about, which she used when i was a kid on my clothes. Then I have it set up for the fire marshal to come through the Friday before so we can run it the whole Halloween weekend.

Anyways here is the mixture for the homemade fireproofing, I tested it on paper and it passed the lighter test that the fire marshal told me about.

6 parts borax
5 parts boric acid (drugstores usually carry this)
100-150 parts warm water

soak or spray (spray is probably better)




Wish you the best of luck

Thanks!!!!!

id worry more about the sunday = no tots rule

I'm open three nights this year.

Im not sure about Home haunt, It would fall to the codes in your state and city.
Egress hallways and regular haunt halls need to be 32" min to meet ADA standards.
(american disablities act).

The Fire retardant is good Idea for your materials because I believe the code requires this in any public occupied area. If it does not now they will eventually pass the law.

Good luck Hope this helps

Since you're thinking of the possibility of an inspection this far in advance, perhaps it might be a good idea to find out from your city what they'll require for safety.

What might also be a good idea is to actually schedule to have the Fire Marshall come out and inspect your haunt, well in advance - demonstrate to them how you've built to code (having researched it, and used code requirements as your minimal guidelines), and let them give it a full appraisal.
If anything's wrong, you can fix it in advance, and this will also eliminate the chance that any disgruntled neighbors (you know...the kind that hate seeing anything Halloween) can call in the city for a last-minute-surprise-to-shut-your-haunt-down inspection on Friday the 29th.

Yeah, get the fire chief involved early, and there shouldn't be a problem.

Absolutely. Write up your complete haunt ideas, draw a floorplan, and go to the fire house and talk to them. Show the fire chief everything, and ask him for his input and opinions, and list of Do Not's. There's no reason he wouldn't want you to have a successful build and a great time.


Plus.... early advertising! Heh heh.

Thanks guys, I'll talk to the fire cheif.