New Jersey

Statewide summary — confirm with your building department before designing

No value on this row was changed by this audit. The maximum is now sourced, but the minimum is deliberately left NULL because New Jersey does not publish one. New Jersey does not fill in the snow or wind cells of Table R301.2 at all. N.J.A.C. 5:23-3.21 amends that table and, under both "Ground Snow Load" and "Wind Design - Speed," inserts only the words "see Bulletin 19-1." Bulletin 19-1, issued by the Division of Codes and Standards in September 2019 and revised September 2022, does not contain a state map or a county table either. It directs the designer to obtain site-specific hazard values from the Applied Technology Council hazards site or the ASCE 7 hazard tool, applying the ASCE 7 edition referenced by the subcode. There is therefore no New Jersey minimum ground snow load to record, and interpolating one from a hazard tool query or from the neighbouring states would be a fabrication. The bulletin does publish one set of fixed numbers, and that is where the maximum comes from. It provides that where the hazard tool returns "case study (CS)" rather than a value, the designer may use the withdrawn Bulletin 94-8 figures for six northern counties: Sussex 50 psf, Passaic 40 psf, Warren 35 psf, Hunterdon 35 psf, Morris 35 psf, Somerset 30 psf, and it states that all other counties should generate a load number from the tool. 50 psf at Sussex County is accordingly the highest ground snow load New Jersey itself publishes anywhere in the state, and it is recorded as the maximum on that basis. It is not a claim that no site in New Jersey can compute higher; it is the ceiling of the state-published values, and the CS designation is itself the state conceding that the mountainous northwest cannot be mapped at that scale. The 25 psf in ground_snow_load_psf is not traceable to any New Jersey document and should be treated as unverified. Frost line depth is one of the few cells New Jersey does fill in, and it is two-valued: the amendment inserts "2 feet 6 inches SNJ; 3 feet 0 inches NNJ," with a new note b defining SNJ as Monmouth and Burlington counties and everything south, and NNJ as Mercer and Middlesex counties and everything north. The stored 36 inches is the NNJ figure and is correct for the northern two thirds of the state; south of that line the adopted depth is 30 inches. Termite moderate to heavy and weathering severe are both confirmed from the same amendment. Seismic design category B is retained from the USGS ASCE 7-16 design maps at Site Class D and Risk Category II, where it is the highest value among the major population centres and covers Newark, Jersey City and Trenton, while Atlantic City and Cape May compute to A. Record the conflict, though: New Jersey enters "N/A" in the seismic design category cell of Table R301.2 and Bulletin 19-1 states that seismic design load criteria are not applicable to the one- and two-family dwelling subcode, so on the residential side the state declines to assign a category at all. The B here is the building subcode and USGS value and is retained because it is the physically meaningful one. The 115 mph wind speed is an ultimate design wind speed at Risk Category II and is not established by any New Jersey adoption, since the state sends wind to the same hazard tool; the shore counties sit in a stronger wind environment than the interior and parts of the coast fall in a windborne debris region, so a coastal project must not build to this number.