Code Change Proposal Involves Air Leakage in Glazed Doors

The February 12 edition of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) included a proposed change to Standard 90.1-2013, Energy Standard for Buildings except Low-Rise Residential Buildings in regard to entrance doors.

According to the document, the revision “provides guidance on the air leakage requirements of two new types of entrance doors, aligns the text of 90.1 with the testing protocol required for sectional and metal coiling doors, and provides default U-factors for unlabeled metal non-swinging doors.”

The proposed changes can be viewed on pages 49-51 here.

“They realized that there were a number of different door types they didn’t have fully covered, such as metal coiling doors (e.g. seen in distribution centers) and garage doors,” says Tom Culp of Birch Point Consulting.

He says the alteration most related to the glass industry as they realized power-operated glazed sliding doors, such as entrances to grocery and big box retail stores, weren’t properly addressed in the air leakage requirement. “So they added it similar to other heavily-used entrance doors like glazed swinging entrance doors and revolving doors,” he says.