Ohio

Statewide summary — confirm with your building department before designing

AUDIT 2026-08-12 (physical design data pass). Ohio publishes no statewide ground snow load, and the min and max columns are left null as a confirmed absence rather than an unfinished lookup. The adopted rule text was read directly. Ohio Administrative Code rule 4101:8-3-01, the building planning chapter of the Residential Code of Ohio, effective 1 July 2019 and still the current version of that rule, prints its own Table 301.2(1). Three cells in it are deliberately blank: ground snow load, seismic design category and frost line depth. The table footnotes say who fills them in. Footnote o directs that the jurisdiction shall fill in this section of the table using the ground snow loads in Figure 301.2(6). Footnote f directs that the jurisdiction shall fill in the seismic design category determined from section 301.2.2.1. Footnote b directs that the jurisdiction shall fill in the frost line depth column with the minimum depth of footing below finish grade. On the commercial side, rule 4101:1-16-01, the structural design chapter of the 2024 Ohio Building Code effective 1 March 2024, modifies IBC section 1608.2 by deleting its last two sentences and adding that where these values are deemed inadequate because of record snowfall or experience, higher ground snow loads are to be determined and adopted by the local jurisdiction. Neither rule attaches a number to any Ohio county or city, so there is no state minimum or maximum to record. Wind speed corrected from 105 to 115 mph. Ohio does fill the wind cell in: Table 301.2(1) of rule 4101:8-3-01 carries 115 in the wind design speed column, as an ultimate design wind speed, and this is a state-adopted figure rather than a reading off a national contour map. The value was confirmed against a rendered image of the table so that the column alignment could be checked by eye. The same single data row also fixes weathering as severe, termite probability as moderate to heavy, and ice barrier underlayment as required, the last justified in footnote h on the ground that all jurisdictions in Ohio have a history of local damage from the effects of ice damming. Ohio also publishes winter design temperatures by weather station in footnote e: Toledo 1 degree F, Dayton and Youngstown 4, Cleveland, Columbus and Mansfield 5, Akron-Canton, Cincinnati and Sandusky 6, with deviations permitted to reflect local climates where documented by the building official. That makes the winter design temperature on this row a checkable state figure rather than unverified ASHRAE data. Ground snow load 20 psf and frost depth 36 inches are left in place but neither is a state assignment; both cells are empty in the Ohio table. Ohio does reprint the eastern United States ground snow load figure as Figure 301.2(6), with the western portion marked deleted. That figure was rendered at high resolution and inspected, not text-searched, because it is a raster image with no text layer. On it Ohio sits principally inside the 20 psf band, with a higher isoline crossing eastern Ohio and running up to the Lake Erie shore in the northeast. No number is recorded from that reading. Isolines on a small-scale reproduced contour map are not a state assignment of a value, the position of the line through the eastern counties could not be resolved to county precision, and the nearest CS case-study marker sits at the eastern end of Lake Erie outside Ohio, so whether any Ohio ground is in a case-study zone could not be determined. The practical consequence is unchanged: 20 psf understates the northeast Ohio snowbelt in Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake counties, where the local building official will have entered a higher figure, and the governing number is whatever that official has adopted. PRIOR AUDIT NOTE (retained; its opening statement that no value on the row was changed is superseded by the wind speed correction above): No value on this row was changed by this audit. The seismic design category A was verified against the USGS ASCE 7-16 design maps at Site Class D and Risk Category II and holds for Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Akron, the five largest metropolitan areas. It does not hold everywhere in the state: western Ohio around the Anna seismic zone in Shelby County, and the Lima area, compute to B, and a project there should not rely on this row. A second caveat matters for larger buildings: under the full two-parameter ASCE 7 determination used for commercial work, the one-second parameter puts all of these cities into B at Site Class D, so the A shown here reflects the residential code's short-period determination only. Termite risk moderate encodes the moderate to heavy band of the IRC map, which is the right band for Ohio. The 105 mph wind speed is an ultimate design wind speed at Risk Category II and Ohio sits between mapped contours. The 20 psf ground snow load understates the northeast Ohio snowbelt in Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake counties. Frost depth and winter design temperature were not confirmed against an adopted table.