Bill, I haven't purchased 06' yet but the portion of your first item has not changed. Two stories, plus the basement has always been the rule, and no the basement is not considered a story unless it is less than 50% back filled if I remember properly.

As far as Item 2 goes, any story over 10' has too be engineered anyways so I guess that has always been up to interpretation whether a wall and gable combo over 10' is considered a story. Here the BI have never challenged a wall and gable over 10' nor does it sound like they have in Minnesota.

Thanks for the insight, I guess if the IRC-2006 is available now its time for me to buy one.

Dave

Well, maybe I am misiintretpreting it, but my take is YOU can design any thing to be built out of the IRC (doesn't matter what year) and if YOU have a project that goes beyond the scope of the IRC you can still do it with the design services of a engineer.

I may be all wet here, but I ran into this with the Ontario Building Code years ago, I needed to build a basement 9'6" from top of footing to top of wall and backfill to 9' (It was a walk out lot) I spec'd everything out of the OBC except the front wall which required engineering services since backfill exceeded 7'6".

I'm just guessing here, but Bill if you are in Minnesota I would assume (Not always a good thing) that you could have blanket engineer detail for common practices (such as gables) or even get the engineer to calc out several gables at once, say 4/12 up to 30' span, 5/12 up to 30' span. This could save future aggrevation and keep you ahead of the competition (Mind you I just posted this on the internet, so a few others will read it).

Nudura's stamped details in their installation guide saved me having to engineer every project in Ontario, Now in California everything is engineered...IRC is finally getting in here I expect it to take a year or so for us to see the changes from the UBC.

"How do the rest of you interpet that section?"

Question is "how will your building inspector interpret that section?"  My county interpreted it as giving a height limit above which cannot be ICF without an engineer's stamp.  That being said, my design was for a two story with the second story being a 4 foot knee wall and a 14:12 roof to give enough headroom.  The overall height in the gable peak was a couple feet above what the plan reviewer deemed the limit of the IRC.  I told him that if he preferred, I could just put foam in the top couple of feet so that the "C" in ICF ended per his interpretation of the IRC.  He thought that a couple of extra feet of concrete in the gable peak was okay and approved my design.  Of course, he was in design review and I probably won't get him for my pre-pour inspection.

Mark Fleming