by Thom Zaremba, shareholder at Roetzel & Andress
My last few blogs have looked at my superhero: the passive, fire-rated protection features built into the structures of our buildings. Fire-rated glass in the walls, doors and windows do their regular job every day—until there’s a fire. Then, like Superman, they shed their everyday jobs and become superheroes!
When there’s a fire, the fire-rated glass and other fire-rated construction materials in the corridors, horizontal assemblies (floors or ceilings) and exits stand strong to stop the fire’s smoke, flames and hot gases from reaching occupants moving to exit discharges. As occupants are getting safely out of the building, that same fire-rated glass and other fire-rated materials protect first responders racing to get into the building!
But don’t a lot of buildings have sprinklers? If a building has sprinklers, why do we need active systems and passive construction? If both work, why isn’t one enough? It costs more to use both and, since construction costs are reportedly up 30% from 2020, isn’t it a fair question to ask why both types of fire protection are necessary?
Allowing builders to choose between installing active fire-suppression systems or fire-rated construction materials would certainly reduce construction costs. However, just like highway travel poses its own unique risks, so do buildings. Every building has a myriad of fire loads. Just like highway travel requires cars with redundant safety systems (i.e., seat belts and airbags), fire loads require redundant fire safety systems to properly protect us.
Fire loads in buildings are increasing daily. For example, our homes and office buildings are now likely to have photovoltaic roof panels to generate electricity. In turn, that electricity will often be stored in a battery energy storage system somewhere in or near the building. Inside the building, everyone has a computer, powered from energy stored in lithium-ion batteries. Everyone now also has a cell phone, again, powered with energy stored in lithium-ion batteries.
Walk outside. There are electric bikes powered by lithium-ion batteries parked right next to the doors. A growing number of electric vehicles throughout the adjoining parking lot are also powered by banks of lithium-ion batteries.
These new electronics that fill our homes, offices and garages significantly increase the fire loads where we live, work, eat and sleep.
The International Code Council (ICC), established in 1994, spent a lot of time addressing the cost-effectiveness of requiring buildings with redundant fire safety systems. Over six years of merging the country’s three local model building codes into a single International Building Code (IBC), ICC devoted an extraordinary amount of time to finding an appropriate balance between active and passive fire protection systems.
On that front, all three local codes were different. For example, the east coast code (BOCA) favored the use of sprinklers, while the southern (SBCCI) and west coast codes (ICBO) favored more fire-resistant building materials. When the ICC merged them together, it had to select the safest and most cost-effective combinations of automatic fire suppression and fire-resistant construction materials to use in its new code.
The selections it made were far from haphazard. Numerous hearings over six years were held, and each time new drafts were submitted to experts and the public for comments. As comments were received, more hearings were held to provide those supporting and those opposing changes to the draft an opportunity to have their positions heard and determined by a committee of experts.
In 2000, the IBC finally emerged as a technically sound building code that cost-effectively uses active and passive fire protection features to deliver life safety and property protection in the event of fires.
Through its arduous and lengthy code development process, which continues to this day, the IBC not only provides buildings with redundant fire protection features, but it does so while keeping construction costs at a minimum.
In my next blog, we’ll look a little more closely at the new types of fire loads and risks that lithium-ion batteries are adding to our built environment and the role that fire-rated glass can play to keep us safe. Please stay tuned!