installing stem footing at garage overhead door.

[Bill Garcia]

County rejected my plans and show one reason is they want to see a stem footing at the overhead garage door.
In my plan I am keeping the overhead garage door in place and I am installing a interior wall behind it. I don't understand why it would be necessary to have a stem footing at the garage door especially if its not be used to park cars inside any longer. Sac county references this code:
CRC2019317.1 #5, which i cannot find. Before I submitted my plans to county I had found information related to this that indicated that as long as the concrete garage floor was in good condition and no cracks or any environmental issues that could cause water to enter, then the stem footing was not necessary. But I did not save the info and now I cannot find it.
Can anyone shed some light on this?

[Jim Robinson]

You're probably not going to find the answers here unless one of the inspectors coincidentally lives in Sacramento. The people that will need to answer your question will ultimately be the local building department.
One guess for a stem footing is for termite or rot protection along the bottom plate. Picking up the bottom plate 8" would do a lot of good for that type of thing. You may have better luck on some contractor or building sites like JLC or Fine Homebuilding.

[Dom D'Agostino]

Agreed, and they may require certain features if the structure is defined as a "garage", no matter how you plan to use it.

Could relate to seismic or other local/necessary upgrades as well.

Schedule a trip to the Building Department and ask for clarification. Most of them are helpful.

[Jerry Peck]

One guess for a stem footing is for termite or rot protection along the bottom plate. Picking up the bottom plate 8" would do a lot of good for that type of thing.

That is a good guess - it's not just the bottom plate (which would be PT anyway and allowed to be in close proximity to earth and concrete, but the studs and sheathing wood also need to be PT that close to earth because of wood decayed.

Another guess is flood elevation if you are in a SFHA (Special Flood Hazard Area), in which case many AHJ may also require the slab to be poured with a higher finish floor elevation.