9.2 Last-Week Review Map

The High-Yield Numbers Sheet

Most B1 questions cluster around a small set of life-safety dimensions from IRC Chapter 3 (Building Planning) plus a handful of foundation and framing numbers. Build a single review sheet of the values below and rehearse them until you can recall them without the book — even on an open-book exam, knowing the number lets you confirm in seconds instead of hunting.

Most-Tested IRC Numbers (2021 IRC)

Emergency Escape and Rescue Openings (EERO, R310)

• Minimum net clear opening: 5.7 sq ft (and 5.0 sq ft for openings at grade floor).
• Minimum net clear height 24 in, minimum net clear width 20 in.
• Maximum sill height 44 in above the floor.
• Required in every sleeping room, basement, and habitable attic; each basement sleeping room needs its own opening.

The IRC Chapter Map (Open-Book Navigation)

Memorizing where things live is the single best last-week investment. When a stem asks about a guard, your hand should go to Chapter 3 before you finish reading the question.

Anchor Bolts and Other Repeat Offenders

• Anchor bolts (R403.1.6): minimum 1/2-inch diameter, spaced 6 ft on center maximum, located within 12 in of each end/corner of a plate section, embedded 7 in into concrete, with at least two bolts per plate piece.
• Garage separation (Table R302.6): 1/2-in gypsum on the garage side; 5/8-in Type X where habitable space is above the garage; door to dwelling 20-minute rated or 1-3/8-in solid wood/steel, self-closing.
• Smoke alarms (R314): in each sleeping room, outside each sleeping area, and on every story including basements; interconnected.
• CO alarms (R315): outside each sleeping area where fuel-fired appliances exist or an attached garage is present.

Last-Week Schedule

• Days 7-4: drill the numbers sheet and re-tab any chapter you fumble. Quiz yourself on which chapter answers a topic.
• Days 3-2: run two full timed 60-question sets with the tabbed book; log slow finds.
• Day 1: light review of the numbers sheet and logistics only — no new material, no new tabs.

Why These Numbers Dominate the Form

The B1 exam weights life-safety provisions heavily because they are the inspector's core protective duty, and the writers know these dimensions distinguish a competent residential inspector from a guesser. Stairs, guards, and handrails recur because they are the leading source of injury in dwellings, so expect several questions that combine them — for instance a stem that gives a flight with a thirty-two-inch drop at the side and asks whether a guard is required, whether the thirty-six-inch height applies, and what sphere passes through the balusters.

Egress openings recur because they are the occupant's escape path in a fire, and the four EERO numbers travel together: the five-point-seven-square-foot area, the twenty-four-inch height, the twenty-inch width, and the forty-four-inch sill. Note the easy trap that satisfying both the minimum height and minimum width alone does not satisfy the area requirement, because twenty-four inches times twenty inches is only about three-point-three square feet, well short of five-point-seven.

Anchor bolts, footing tables, and the fastening schedule recur on the structural side because they are what holds the house down and together. When you rehearse the numbers sheet, rehearse the relationships among the numbers, not just the isolated values, because the exam loves to test whether you understand how two requirements interact in one real-world condition.

Treat the numbers sheet as a living document during the final week. Each time a timed set surfaces a value you fumbled — a notch or bore limit, a span, a fastener size, a climate-zone R-value — add it to the sheet and re-tab the section so the next encounter is a confirmation rather than a hunt. Keep the sheet to a single page, because its purpose is rapid recall, not a second textbook; if it grows beyond one page you are memorizing detail the open book is meant to supply.

The goal is a small, high-frequency core you can recite from memory, surrounded by a well-tabbed code you can search in seconds for everything else. By the night before the exam, you should be able to read your own one-page sheet top to bottom in a few minutes and feel that nothing on it is a surprise, which is the clearest signal that you are ready to walk in and let the tabbed IRC carry the rest of the load.