Title 24 Requirements for Banks and Financial Institutions
A bank branch is not lit or ventilated quite like an office. The code gives the teller and customer area its own function area, gives ATMs and drive-up windows their own outdoor allowances, and puts the vault in a different class of air from the lobby.
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The banking hall is its own function area
A financial transaction area is where an institution that collects funds from the public completes transactions — tellers, workstations and the customers' waiting area. The definition then excludes private offices, hallways, restrooms and other support areas, so a branch is calculated in several categories rather than one. Table 140.6-C gives the transaction area a decorative and display allowance; the private offices behind it fall to their own category.
A bank can instead use the complete building method, which Table 140.6-B lists for bank or financial institution buildings where one use makes up at least 90 per cent of the building or tenant space. Choosing it gives up the additional allowances entirely.
The ATM and the drive-up lane
Outdoors, Table 140.7-B allows 100 watts for the first ATM and 35 watts for each additional one, for luminaires within 50 feet, and a separate allowance for each drive-up customer service position, for luminaires within two mounting heights of the window sill. Neither applies in lighting zone 0, and what is granted is the smaller of the table figure and the power actually installed for that purpose. An ATM inside a parking garage is handled in the indoor table instead, with its own allowance per machine.
Where a health or life safety law requires it, outdoor lighting may keep a longer time-out or a higher dimmed level than the motion-sensing rules otherwise allow.
The vault is a different class of air
Table 120.1-A puts banks and bank lobbies in Class 1, while bank vaults and safe deposit areas are Class 2; both are listed at five people per 1,000 square feet. Class 2 air may not be recirculated into Class 1 spaces. The Compliance Manual uses this very case to illustrate redesignation: the space ancillary to the safe deposit area can be redesignated Class 2.
Mechanical follows the office rules
For space conditioning the code groups financial institution spaces with offices and libraries. On the prescriptive path a single-zone direct-expansion system up to 240,000 Btu/hr must be a heat pump in climate zones 1 through 15; in zone 16 it is an air conditioner with furnace below 65,000 Btu/hr of cooling, and a dual-fuel heat pump at or above it.
Where to go deeper
Private offices in a branch take the same occupant-sensing rules as offices anywhere — see the office building requirements for the zoning rule above 250 square feet. The site lighting around the ATM and drive-up lane is part of the wider outdoor lighting calculation.