Codes&Regulations
ICC Passes Two Glass Walkway Provisions
The International Code Council (ICC) passed two provisions related to glass walkway standards, both of which were supported by the Glass Association of North America’s (GANA) Glass Industry Code Committee (GICC).

In 2006, the GICC had asked the International Building Code’s Technical Committee to withdraw a provision from the code that offered loading calculations for glass walkways based on ASTM E1300. The GICC had advised the committee that ASTM E1300 is a wind-load standard and is not applicable to the design of glass floors, leading to its withdrawal.

As a follow-up to the 2006 action, the GICC recently asked the committee to reinstate the glass walkway provisions of Chapter 24, but to utilize ASTM E2751-11 - Standard Practice for Design and Performance of Supported Glass Walkways as the standard that addresses the design and performance of supported laminated glass walkways. That standard contains a calculation method for determining glass assembly stresses and deflection, test methods to verify post-glass breakage performance and reference standards to assess slip resistance, according to GANA.

GICC requested a companion change to Chapter 7 of the IBC, adding “floor/ceiling” assemblies to the fire safety provisions dealing with fire resistance-rated “walls.”

The provisions passed during ICC’s Final Action Hearings and will become part of the 2015 IBC.

“We feel the provisions adopted by the ICC will offer better guidance to the architectural community and result in safer glass walkway assemblies,” says Valerie Block, chair of the GICC. “Our committee, along with our Fire and Structural Codes consultant Thom Zaremba, have done a great job to convince the ICC of the appropriateness of these provisions.”

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