Welcome to the PCI webinar series. This course is titled Designing for Fire Safety. My name is Stephanie Corrigan and I will be your moderator for this session. I do have a few items of note before we begin the credit portion of this course. Webinar handouts were emailed to the email address with which you registered for the course this morning. Handouts include a PDF of the webinar presentation slides and an attended sign-in sheet. If you are at a location with more than one attendee on the line, please complete the sign-in sheet and fax it back to PCI using the number on the form. As you sign the form, please keep in mind that your email is required to obtain continuing education credit for this course. If you did not receive the sign-in sheet, please email jpeters.org and she will send it over to you. Jennifer's email address is currently on the screen. PCI is a registered continuing education provider with the National Council of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors. PCI will submit all attendance data to the registered continuing education provider system for this session to grant each attendee one PDH. If this is your first webinar with us, you'll receive an email from RCEP when your certification is ready to download. This is an automatic process, so you must include your email address to get credit and obtain the PDH certificate. For those that have already had an account established with RCEP.net, your account will be updated within a few weeks. Specific step-by-step instructions for downloading your certificate were attached in the email you received this morning. The sheet is also available on the PCR webinar page, www.pci.org webinars. PCI is also a registered provider with the American Institute of Architects. AIA members must include their AIA numbers on the attendance form in order to obtain credit. Please include this information as you sign the form. If you have any questions during today's webinar, you may type your question directly into the questions area on your webinar interface screen. We will answer questions at the end, and we will get to as many as we can possibly do within the allotted time. If we cannot get to your question, our instructor has agreed to follow up with you after the webinar via email, so please do not hesitate to type in your questions into the question pane. We will get to you one way or another. Our presenter today is Steve Scalco of Steven V. Scalco PE and Associates, LLC. I will stay on the line behind the scenes, but will now turn over the course to Steve to begin the credit portion of your course. Steve, you should receive a request from me to grant you presenter status. And I can see your screen, so the line is open. Steve, we can't hear you. Steve, we can't hear you. Steve, we can't hear you. Steve, we can't hear you. Jennifer? Steve, hi. Yes, we can hear you now. Okay. I don't know why we may have a connection problem there, but now can you see my screen? Yes, we can see your screen, and we can hear you now. All right. Let me bring it back up, bring it back up, and get going here again. My apologies to the audience. Good old technical difficulties. They always show up. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My apologies to the audience. They always show up. All right. So we covered that information that Jennifer covered earlier, so now let's talk about the learning objectives for today. What I'd like to present is to discuss the basics of a balanced design approach for fire safe design, and especially that this balanced design approach is extremely suitable for meeting high-performance structures. In going through this presentation, I want to describe how, in doing the balanced design, precast concrete can be used to meet the fire safety objectives of the building code, as well as meeting the requirements for a high-performance structure. And then, of course, in going through this process, one of the areas that always becomes quite a question about fire safety design in buildings is the requirements for applying NFPA standard 285 test procedure to exterior walls that contain combustible materials. And I want to give some background information to that to the audience and let you understand a little bit more about its application and, of course, especially its application with regard to precast concrete. And then, finally, as a part of that, talking about precast concrete on exterior walls, I want to talk about treatment of joints on those walls from a building code point of view and from a fire safety point of view. One of the first things I think is important is that we, first of all, make sure we kind of understand what do we mean by a high-performance structure. And the U.S. government defines a high-performance structure as one that integrates and optimizes on a lifecycle basis all major high-performance attributes, including everything from – you see the laundry list there of the various things that can be included, which are energy conservation, sustainability, operational considerations. There's a whole variety of them. But I think what's important is today to understand the big one is sustainability. Because when we talk about sustainability in all the practices and procedures we developed over the 10 or 15 years, high-performance really encompasses all of those features, including the sustainability. Second thing to make note about high-performance structures is that it integrates and optimizes on a lifecycle basis all relevant attributes. So when we talk high-performance, we're not just talking parts and portions. Some programs that promote design for high-performance will say you can choose a few of these things and gain credits for it. We're not worried about others. From our standpoint, we think it's important that you integrate and optimize all of those items. The other part about the high-performance buildings also is that the performance should look at the building long-term and do it on a lifecycle basis. We're talking building service lives on the order of 50, 60, and 70 years. And so all of a sudden, if you're going to want to do a high-performance building and to have those kind of service lives, you need to look very carefully at the material selection. They can play a very important part. And when you do that examination, it should be done completely on a lifecycle basis. So precast concrete is a high-performance material. It integrates easily with other systems. It is inherently able to provide versatility, efficiency, and resiliency that's needed to meet many of the multi-hazard requirements and long-term demands that you'll see a high-performance building be challenged with. Some of the attributes and benefits that we think are real important from a high-performance point of view are versatility, and precast easily meets that requirement. It has aesthetics. It has structural versatility. And even when it comes to reuse, it has use versatility. From an efficiency point of view, it's very readily adaptable for site efficiencies. It also is very important from a standpoint of energy and operational efficiencies, including being thermally efficient. And of course, there's a lot of risk reduction that is enhanced by the use of precast. And then finally, the last attribute is the resiliency. Precast is an excellent material with regard to long service life, its structural durability. It has the ability to be resistant to multi-hazard natural disasters that it might encounter. And then, of course, it enhances the building from a life, safety, and health point of view. And it's that last one, the life, safety, and health point of view that we're going to focus on from a precast point of view meeting high-performance structures, and that is to talk about the inherent fire resistance or passive fire resistance that precast has. So today, we're going to talk about doing a design or doing designs from a fire safety point of view with an emphasis on how using precast can help you meet a balanced fire safe design, as well as meet the high-performance requirements that you want for your structures. The International Building Code, which is the one I show up on the screen right here, is pretty much commonly the most common building code that's adopted throughout the United States, typically by many states, some cities, and some counties. As far as the International Building Code is concerned, there are three primary fire safety objectives that you'll find embodied within the requirements of the code. One of them is safety to life. The building code acknowledges the fact that when we build structures, we're going to place people in them, and when we place people in those buildings, we want to provide for their safety, and that includes their safety from the exposures to a fire and the exposures of risk to life that a fire can have on those individuals while they're occupying the buildings, living in them, visiting them. We want to make sure that we provide that level of safety. The second thing is property protection. The building code does expect there to be some level of protection for the building so that, in fact, under fire conditions, it doesn't necessarily damage the structure too much, and at the same time doesn't expose adjacent properties to fire spread from a fire event within the individual building itself. And then the third fire safety objective is fire safety to the fire service. When a fire event occurs, the fire service obviously responds in most jurisdictions, and when they respond, they face an inherent danger of having to rescue people from the building as well as to try to contain and control the fire that's occurring within the building and, of course, also protection of adjacent properties while they're trying to bring that building under control. So fire safety for the fire service is that third objective that's very important from a building code point of view. One of the ways the code, the building code, goes about meeting those objectives is to regulate the size of the buildings, and by size of the buildings, we're talking about the height of the building, not only in feet of height as well as stories, but also we regulate the area of the building because the bigger in terms of area and the taller the buildings get, the bigger they reflect a threat or a risk from a fire safety point of view to not only to the building itself but to adjacent properties. So the building code regulates the size of the building in order to try to achieve those three fire safety objectives that I just spoke about. It does this by looking at a number of factors, including those factors in its consideration. One of the first is it looks at the occupancy that the building is going to have. Who is going to be occupying it? Clearly the characteristics of the occupants of a factory, while important, are not near the risk that they would be to a building that has persons that are occupying it for sleeping purposes like an apartment complex or to a hospital where you have non-ambulatory individuals so that if there is in fact a fire, you can't necessarily readily take them out of the building. You sometimes have to move them to safe places of refuge. So occupancy group becomes one of the important features that the building code takes into account in how large it's going to let the building be built. The second thing that it, or next factor, yeah, it is a second factor that it looks at is the type of construction. What kind of materials are being used to construct the building? We obviously have a wide range of materials from those that are combustible and readily burned and support combustion to non-combustible materials that do not. And the building code takes into account, are we using combustible materials in the building or are we using non-combustible materials? And then another important feature is the fire resistance of those materials. Anytime you can provide some fire resistance to the structural elements themselves, you inherently increase the fire safety of the building. And of course the building code acknowledges the change in the use of materials as well as the fire resistance of it in accomplishing the fire safety objectives that are expected. The building code does include factors such as open perimeter. The more open space you provide around the perimeter of a building, the greater you increase the likelihood that fire will not spread to adjacent properties. So the building code says, well, give me more open space, then I'll let your building increase in size. And then finally, and one of the other features that's typically used in the building code is automatic sprinkler protection. There's no doubt sprinkler protection has been a proven technology that when it's placed in the building, it's almost like having the fire service stationed in the building. In the event that there is a fire, the sprinkler protection system can operate and help control the fire until the fire service actually arrives and is able to do interior fire attacks. So as we talk about building design for fire safety and taking into account those features that the building code considers, from a design point of view, there are three areas that we need to focus on from a fire safe design. And one of the first is to look at the building construction. We want to look at fire protection systems and we want to look at means of egress. When it comes to the building construction itself, the first and foremost, as was alluded to in my previous slide, is the materials that are chosen. The choice of materials can have a drastic impact on the fire safe design of the building. One of the things that is very important, of course, is to consider the noncombustible materials. The minute you remove combustibles from the building structure itself, you increase exponentially the safety of that building because you've removed materials, removed what amounts to fire load that the building structure itself could contribute to a fire. The second thing is to look at fire resistance. Building a building of noncombustible materials is a plus, but even under fire conditions, noncombustible materials may not be able to withstand the rigors that a fire can expose to them. So fire resistance of the structural elements is another item from a building construction point of view that should be considered. Finally, the third thing is about fire exposure. The building itself can pose fire exposure to adjacent properties, which we talked about. It also can pose fire exposure within the building. So the use of fire resistance to not only reduce the likelihood of fire exposure to adjacent properties, but also compartmentizing the building internally can help minimize the spread of fire within the building itself. Those are important features. And a high-performance building design really should take into account all of those features when it considers the building construction aspects. When it comes to fire protection systems, probably one of the most important, which I mentioned a minute ago, is to consider sprinkler protection or suppression. Sprinkler protection has a proven track record of controlling fires within building compartments, and when it controls the fire, it allows time for people to move away from the fire to be able to traverse to the exits and to be able to access those exits and lead the building to a safe location. Worth noting, though, is that sprinkler protection does not necessarily ensure the fire will not spread beyond the compartment of origin. There have been studies that have shown and have been evaluated that shows that sprinkler systems are approximately 93% effective at controlling fires at any given time. So there are some of the times that, in fact, the sprinkler system does not control the fire. It can, in fact, will spread beyond the room of origin. So high-performance design should not rely solely upon sprinkler protection. It needs to include that as a fire safety feature in addition to what was considered with regard to the building materials. So to use an example about the use of these features, if you look at the building code, and I'm going to use apartments as an example for today's session, right now the building code, the International Building Code, will allow you to build a four-story wood frame, i.e. combustible material building, and build it to a fairly large size. You provide one-hour fire resistance and provide sprinkler protection. The code will allow you to go to those four stories and be a fairly large building. But when you really step back and look at the bigger picture, is that really the best manner and best features to be able to provide that protection and fire safety from a high-performance point of view? The building typically is allowing the use of sprinkler protection, what's called an NFPA. Most of these apartment buildings are using an NFPA 13R standard system, and the NFPA 13 system does provide sprinkler protection in the occupied spaces, which helps accommodate the occupants. So the emphasis primarily in the building code is going to be life safety emphasis. That's what it's going to be, it's a critical factor. But the thing to realize is that when it comes to the overall building, the NFPA 13 standard allows sprinkler protection to be eliminated or not provided in the concealed combustible spaces. And not putting in those concealed combustible spaces can have some drastic results on the performance of the structure itself. Because of this emphasis in the building codes on mostly life safety, which is providing sprinkler protection and some level of fire resistance, but not as much to property and fire service, the building code is a minimum code and it should be viewed that way. And because of that, it actually is somewhat out of balance, not what we would consider to be true balanced design. True balanced design should take into account all three of those factors, life safety, property protection, and the fire service. A good example of that just in the early part of this year is a fire that occurred in Edgewater, New Jersey. This is an apartment complex. The apartment complex was a four-story wood frame apartment building that utilized a 13R sprinkler system for the building. The building was four stories sitting up on top of a fire-resistive parking garage of concrete construction. After the fire ignited, the plumbers who were doing some plumbing work inadvertently ignited some of the combustibles in a concealed space. And of course, once they ignited them, there was nothing in the concealed space to control the fire or to activate it. And the fire grew out of control. And of course, once it grew out of control, the fire began to spread. The fire being fueled by the combustible materials used in the framing lit up the night sky across the Edgewater, New Jersey area. In fact, it could be seen looking at it from the Manhattan, New York, or right across the Hudson River, you could see the large scale of which this fire had grown to. It took over 500 firefighters and other emergency personnel to respond to the fire and to try to do what they could to help control it, keep it from spreading to adjacent properties. Without the sprinkler protection, the fire spread through that building complex and destroyed over 240 units of a 408-unit complex. And besides those directly affected, which are the ones that occupy the units that were destroyed, there were more than 500 other residents in adjacent apartments, buildings, as well as residences adjacent to the site that had to be temporarily displaced while the fire service was responding to that fire condition and to get it back under control. Using a building like that, it seems like it would make more sense that the important thing to do would be to use a balanced design. And a balanced design would look at all of the features and factors with regard to that design and try to incorporate all of them to provide a truly high-performance building. So besides the materials that are used in the building, besides the suppression, and using, by the way, materials that are noncombustible as well as fire-resistive, one of the other things that the building code should look at is the means of egress. And means of egress, we're typically talking exit enclosures. Using that similar example that I showed earlier about what the building code expects, in today's standards, the building code will typically require the exit enclosures for buildings four or more stories when the exit connects four stories to be a two-hour rated enclosure. It also expects those fire-rated walls enclosing that exit enclosure to be supported by construction of an equal or greater fire-resistance rating. So that's why you'll see on many projects where they're using the requirements of the code, you'll see something like you see this concrete masonry stair tower that, in fact, provides the safe means of egress for the occupants. It just seems a little ironic, though, that we would use high fire safety for that exit enclosure in a combustible building. So it seems like we're giving less importance to the protection of the occupants within the dwelling units themselves as well as to the structure and their property that are located in it as well as, of course, to the fire service when they have to respond. So we're suggesting that balanced fire-safe design makes more sense, that, in fact, you should include and look at all those aspects, building material of choice, look at the fire resistance of the building materials for the structure for structural stability, the suppression to be used, as well as the exit enclosures. And we think precast has that advantage. As an example, here's a precast stair enclosure. So easily we know we can meet those stair enclosure requirements. Besides the structural elements within the building, the exit enclosure, the choice of materials, another area from a fire-safe design that should be looked at carefully is exterior wall systems, especially if you're using combustible exterior wall systems. They can be susceptible to exterior fire spread. From a fire-safety point of view and from a balanced design point of view, it makes more sense that you look carefully at what you do for the exterior walls just as much as you do for the interior structural elements and the materials of choice on the interior of the building. Precast has that advantage. It's a noncombustible material. It has some inherent fire resistance and, therefore, can help minimize the spread of fire out of the compartments of origin as well as minimize the amount of fuel load that's being added to the fire and, of course, provide structural stability for the fire service to respond. Easily, precast can provide fire-rated walls, columns, beams, floors, and roofs. It's built into the system when you put the structural elements in place. It's an excellent choice to provide that compartmentation to keep the fire confined, to not let it spread to other parts of the building. And then suppression can be added on. There's nothing wrong with that. Suppression, as I said in my earlier slides, is clearly a definite plus from a fire-safe design point of view and clearly adds fire safety to the building and to the occupants. One of the things to emphasize here, though, is it should be an add-on fire-safety feature, not an in-lieu-of, and that is one of the unfortunate things, especially if you look just at meeting minimum building code requirements, is that the Sprinkle Protection allows you to reduce the fire resistance of passive systems instead of enhancing them. A true high-performance building should include noncombustible, it should include high fire resistance, and, of course, it can include the suppression to provide a well-designed fire-safe building following balanced fire-safe design parameters. Here's an example just to let you understand this thing about compartmentation. This is a concrete masonry building that used precast slabs or hollow core slabs for the floor system. And you will notice there was a fire in this apartment, one apartment in this building, and it was confined to the apartment of origin. And the building did not have Sprinkle Protection, and that's a good example of showing this balanced design that, in fact, the Sprinkle Protection would have helped minimize the damage in the unit, the use of fire-resistant precast elements helped enhance the compartmentation of the building and restricted it just to the apartment of origin. When it comes to fire-safe design with precast, we talked about exterior walls. Exterior wall panels for precast can be insulated, so they can be used to meet energy code requirements, and they also are inherently, by their design, with many of the designs of sandwiching some of the combustible insulation, they minimize the contribution to exterior fire spread. So using precast internally from a fire-safe point of view and using precast on the exterior becomes the final components to consider when you're talking about balanced design and, of course, talking about balanced design for a high-performance building. Precast, we think, does, in fact, provide back to that balance of looking at property protection, fire service safety, and looking at life safety of the occupants, more so than what you might find from what is happening when you start building or designing just a minimum code. Now, let's change our focus for a minute, and let's talk about the IBC limitations on combustibles on exterior walls. The building code does, in fact, have some requirements where it limits the combustibles on an exterior wall depending on the wall construction. If we look at the main types of construction where it's limited, they are limited to what's called type 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 construction. Now, just a quick primer what I mean by those types of construction in the building code. Type 1 and 2 construction are where the structural elements that are used in the building are completely noncombustible, and the exterior walls on that building are also noncombustible. Types 3 and 4 construction do allow the use of combustible materials on the inside. The type 3 is the building on the lower left. It uses light wood framing in the interior. The building on the lower right is using heavy timber. Both of those are combustible materials, but still in the building code it expects the exterior walls for a type 3 and 4 building to be non-combustible materials. So when you look at section 2603.5 of the building code for exterior walls, it does under the section dealing with minimizing vertical and horizontal fire propagation, it does expect the combustible insulation and any water barriers that are to be used in an exterior wall of these types of construction, 1, 2, 3, or 4, that it shall be evaluated to NFPA standard 285. And so NFPA standard 285 is a standard for evaluating fire propagation characteristics of exterior non-load bearing wall assemblies that have combustible components. So this next portion of the program I want to talk about NFPA 285, and especially I think it's important to give you a little bit of history behind how we arrived at that in the codes that it's used today for evaluating these exterior walls. One of the things to understand is that in the mid-1970s the building code, even back in the older days, did have this limit on the use of combustibles in exterior walls. It basically called for those types of construction to be non-combustible. But the other thing that was happening in the mid-1970s is that we obviously started paying attention to energy conservation, especially with the oil embargo. And so as the energy code started showing up on the scene and we started saying, well, we need to do something to provide more energy conservation in our buildings, that even included trying to address the exterior envelope of the building to minimize heat losses through the exterior walls. And so putting insulation in those walls became one of the ways in which to accomplish the goals of the energy code. One of the difficulties about that, though, is one of the more common ones, foam plastics, but not the only one, but one of them, presents an option to comply with the energy code, but it is also a combustible material. And so in that time frame, a lot of what was being considered to meet energy codes was the use of exterior insulation finishing systems and metal-clad panels with foam plastics on the cores to be used in the buildings. The only difficulty with that is that at that time in the mid-70s, that could present a potential for vertical and horizontal fire spread due to the foam plastics. So at that time, the foam plastics industry got with the code officials of the day, as well as testing agencies, and started to put together a test protocol, realizing that they did in fact have a combustible material. It couldn't just readily be put on the buildings without trying to have some way to evaluate what the impact would be from fire spread, both vertically and horizontally, should the combustible material on the exterior ignite. So when they developed the test protocol, the items, the goals that they wanted to do was one, reduce flame spread over the face of the exterior wall coverings. They wanted to minimize the flame propagation that may occur within the combustible core of any portion or part of that exterior wall. And they wanted to minimize lateral flame spread across the wall system to adjacent areas in the building, in order to, which obviously works against the concept of keeping the fires contained within the, hopefully within the room of origin. So the test protocol resulted in a full-scale, multi-story building test. The building itself is a multi-story building constructed outside, wasn't constructed in the labs, it was constructed outside, a full two-story building using 12 feet of building height per floor between the two stories. It would have a, three of the walls would be walls of non-combustible material to form the enclosure. The fourth wall would actually be the test wall, whatever's being evaluated under the test procedure, and it would form the fourth side of the building. The test wall was about 26 feet high by 18 feet wide. And the test wall then would have in the lower story, it would have one window cut into the wall available for there to be fire ventilation to come out of that lower story and impact the exterior wall in order to make the evaluation. A fire source was put into the lower level, the first story of the room. It was started, and then of course, when it started on fire, it would have flames extending out the window, and in that manner, they could start to be able to determine what the fire spread characteristics might be from that fire. And then what they did was they evaluated, they evaluated it for a 30 minute period. If it passed it within the 30 minutes, it was considered to pass the test. If flame spreads propagated over the surface or within the core, or spread outside the room of origin, then in fact, the assembly was considered to be a failure. This is an example, it's not in y'all's handout, I added this after we prepared the PDF, but this is an example of an actual test under that original test procedure. The original test procedure was given the title UBC 17-6. The UBC was because it was first developed in the western part of the country, and it was under the Uniform Building Code. So it became test procedure UBC 17-6, and as you can see, it's outside doing a test. You will see the majority of the fire you see down in the lower part is through that window opening that I described earlier, and of course, from that, they're evaluating the fire spread on the exterior of the building, as you see in the picture. Once they've established that protocol in the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, the southeastern and northeastern parts of the country, that same test protocol was adopted into the BOCA National Building Code up in the northeast, as well as the standard building code that was predominantly used in the southeast part of the country. And so it became this multi-story, full-scale test, became the standard for evaluating the exterior walls. There are some difficulties, though, at that time about doing this full-scale testing, and these limitations were creating some difficulties from the standpoint of product development, as well as having the products be able to be transferred into the marketplace. One of the challenges was the fact that the test facility had to be built outside. It had to be built outside because of the size of the facility, and of course, then the test itself would be subject to changes in the weather. So if weather conditions weren't quite right to do the test, it would delay, and you'd have to wait until the weather conditions did get right. The weather conditions also could delay construction of the building. So sometimes they wanted to construct the building, be able to put the test wall assembly on the building. They may be delayed, and obviously, as I think many of y'all on the webinar today know, time is money. So it obviously would increase the cost in order to be able to perform this test. And of course, the construction of the building itself, as well as the test wall, had an inherent cost associated with it, and it made it very difficult from the standpoint of trying to have an effective test to be able to apply it. So they decided that they needed to do something a little different. And what they did was got back together and started looking a little bit more carefully at the parameters, and would there be a way to change the building size so that, in fact, it would still be reflective of an adequate test to test these wall assemblies, and yet reduce the cost and reduce the delays. And of course, the result of that was the development of what's referred to as an intermediate-scale multi-story building test for these exterior walls. That test procedure under the intermediate scale was given the designation UBC 26-9, and so 26-9 became the manner in which to do it. As that test procedure was finished in its development, it also was proposed to the National Fire Protection Association for them to consider to be adopted as a standard within their family of standards. And of course, NFPA 285 then is the outgrowth of what originally was UBC standard 26-9. And of course, the NFPA standard is still the same standard that is used today. It was referenced in the first edition of the International Building Code in 2000, and it still continues today to be the standard of reference for evaluating these non-load-bearing wall assemblies that have combustible components when they're being used for buildings that are type 1, 2, 3, and 4 construction. This is a little graphic I wanted to show you about the test building itself, again, what I'll call the intermediate-scale test. What it's comprised of is a two-level building. The story heights obviously have been changed drastically from the 12 feet per story down to 7 feet per story. That allows this to be built within a test building itself. This is a smaller building built within a building, if you want to think about it that way. The two floors and the roof are constructed of 6-inch concrete. The exterior walls are constructed of 8-inch concrete block or equivalent. The concrete and the concrete masonry walls are lined both with an insulating material as well as gyp board in order to minimize damage to the structural elements themselves, so the test chamber itself can continue to be used each time and not have to be built new. You will notice in the figure on the right, you will see the test window that is required similar to what was in the original full-scale test. It is a 30-inch high by 78-inch wide window that is in the test wall panel itself, placed 30 inches off of the floor of the lower room, which is referred to as the burn room. The burn room is only approximately a 10 foot by 10 foot dimension in terms of its planned dimensions. In the left-hand graphic, you will see that they put some gas burners in the room and within the window opening. These gas burners are for the purpose of using gas to simulate the fire conditions where the original test was using wood cribs. They'll use gas as part of it and, of course, go through a very careful calibration procedure in order to get the burning rate and the intensity of fire consistent with what the parameters of NFPA 285 specify. The test assembly is the thing that you'll see on the far left in a slight brown look. The test assembly, if you look at the right-hand graphic, you'll see the dashed lines. It does, in fact, extend beyond the outer walls of the test building and, of course, the whole purpose is to have the fire in the lower level to have some kind of impact on the test assembly and be able to evaluate the flame spread over the surfaces of the test assembly as well as the combustible cores and, of course, the 30-minute pass-fail still applies today. This is a graphic example. This also is not in your PDF. It was added after, but I wanted to at least let you show you. You can see this is, in fact, a wall assembly. You can see, if you look carefully, you'll notice the wall assembly is part of the test building that is within the larger testing facility that whoever's running this test uses. Of course, again, this is an example of how it would be run today, done in a test lab with these smaller test buildings. It does, in fact, from the IBC point of view, it applies to all exterior walls that are being used. If it's got combustible materials in the exterior wall, being used on types 1, 2, 3, and 4 construction. When the test is applied, is it expected that the test procedure is for a complete wall assembly? You're not evaluating a part or portion or a component of this wall. You're evaluating the wall assembly as a whole. Of course, because the results apply to the tested assembly, then, in fact, you need to be careful if you try to extend the wall configurations to use other parts or components and think that they'll perform the same way as that tested wall. Some of the reasons, for example, are you may have a material substitution using one particular type of insulation and substitute it with another and think, well, my wall will perform the same. That is not necessarily the case. The material substitutions can, in fact, could have a detrimental impact on whether this wall assembly would pass or fail. Another example is you may want to say, well, I tested it with a certain insulation thickness. I'll increase the thickness or I'll add a water resistant barrier to the assembly. Those two can have an adverse impact on the wall assembly and you're not necessarily guaranteed the same performance as what it was for the assembly that was actually tested to the requirements. There may be some configuration changes. The test assembly may involve a certain amount of some type of veneer, stud work, insulation and interior lining gypsum board. The fact is you may want to introduce an air gap in that assembly or you may want to change the configurations of the layers that are used or change what the exterior facing is used. Those can also alter the results. So you have to be real careful when you're choosing certain wall assemblies on whether or not the assembly matches what was actually tested and if it was changed, to be conscious that it needs to be evaluated very carefully before it just is outright assumed that it was still passed the NFPA 285 test. As I said earlier, 260355 says combustible insulation and water barriers have to be, can be permitted in these exterior walls that are otherwise non-combustible provided they're tested to NFPA 285. There are some exceptions to that. One of the first is an exception that in fact allows the walls not to be tested for those walls that are in a single story sprinkler building where it's using four inches of thick foam plastics and it's covered with steel or aluminum. The whole purpose of this exception is to acknowledge and recognize that there are already out there being used and being used effectively coolers and freezers. Because those coolers and freezers are using the materials that are found to be suitable with the introduction of the sprinklers and limiting it to the thickness as well as the single story. There's another exception that you need to be aware of. This exception is in the 2015 edition of the IBC. It is not in older editions, but this was introduced with the masonry and precast industry because tests had shown that when you take a wall that's got foam plastics and you cover each face with a minimum of one inch of thickness of concrete or masonry and then either have no air space for that wall assembly or with a maximum one inch wall space and a foam plastic that has a very low flame spread index. Lo and behold, those walls have been found to be suitable to be meeting the test requirements without having to be subjected to a test each and every time that that wall assembly is configured. So we're talking that anytime you want to use the foam plastics and you provide an exterior wall assembly with a minimum one inch thickness of concrete or masonry and either no air space or the air space with the flame spread limitation, then in fact the code will accept using that without having to have it tested each and every time. I do want to acknowledge that many times a question I'll get asked is, well, it's in the 2015 code, but it's not in the 2012 or 2009 or previous edition. Most code officials are willing to consider things that are in the newer codes. The thing you have to do is present it to them and present them the information to support it. And in a case like this, the exception that's in the 2015, even if you were in a jurisdiction using the 2012 code, I think this could be presented to the code official and show them that in fact it is now an acceptable part of the exceptions to these combustible, to the NFPA 285 test requirements. And I think most code officials would be receptive to accepting it and to be used on projects even though it's the 2012 code or earlier codes. So let me take a few minutes now and talk about precast wall panels with joints and realize that a joint in a panel, a precast panel, does in fact can pose some risk with regard to impact from fire. One of the things to note is that if you've got walls that the exterior wall is not required to have a fire resistance rating, then in fact the joint sometimes can be just treated as unprotected openings, just like the opening for a window, that there's no reason to have to do anything special. On some walls that have a fire resistance rating, the joints need to be considered and perhaps be provided a fire resistance rating of which I'm going to talk about in just a few minutes and cover what the IBC has for some provisions. And the provisions you'll note in this particular slide are covered in section 722.2 of the IBC, which is the calculated fire resistance section, and in specifically 722.2.2.1.3, which is joints for precast wall panels. And what it does in the IBC is it has what amounts to a chart, the figure on the right, that allows you, in this case, this is for using a ceramic fiber in the joint for joint protection where the joint's a 3-8 inch width joint, and that ceramic fiber is required to have a certain amount of thickness based on reading it off of the figure on the right. You would enter the figure on the right based on the full thickness of the panel, and you would read up until you got to the fire resistance rating, whether it be 1, 2, or 3 hours, 1, 2, or 3 hours, and then read across here to see what the thickness of the ceramic fiber will be. I've shown a graphic on the left. That graphic is from PCI's MNL-124 standard. That standard helps cover all aspects of fire resistance calculations for precast, but the figure that's on the left is very similar to the figure that's in the IBC for the precast panels. The one exception is the backer rod, the backup rod that you see right here, is not a requirement in the IBC provisions. It is shown in the MNL-124 document. If you have a wider gap, up to, let's say, an inch in the panels, the code, in fact, will allow that wider gap to exist. You use the same procedure for determining what your thickness of your ceramic fiber blanket will be. Coming in, looking at your panel thickness, going up the chart, let's say if I had a 5-inch panel I come across, I find that I need at least 2 inches of ceramic fiber blanket stuffed into that joint in order to provide the fire resistance rating of 2 hours. If you have a joint that's something between 1 inch and 3 eighths of an inch, the building code does allow you to interpolate whatever the thickness is between those two charts that I've shown you so that, in fact, you can do an interpolation to arrive at what the amount of ceramic fiber blanket would be required in order to meet the fire resistance if you're dealing with a joint thickness that's in between the 3 eighths inch and the 1 inch. There are alternates to doing those figures that are in the IBC, and I wanted you to realize about those alternates. The alternates are that they can refer you to, and the IBC can refer you to, using PCIM and L124. In Chapter 8, there's quite a bit of treatment on how to handle joints in precast panels, and so it covers a variety of types of panels, not just the ones that are shown in the IBC, and so, lo and behold, MNL124 becomes a very good resource when you're dealing with configurations that are outside the parameters of what you see within Chapter 7 of the IBC. And of course, as far as the use of the MNL124, it is a recognized document in the IBC, but I want you to realize part of their making the use of it is because the IBC also has provisions under Alternate Materials and Methods, Section 104.11, and the whole purpose in 104.11 is, in fact, to allow designers to offer options on how to meet the code where it's not explicitly covered in the code. You have other technical documentation that helps show that it's just as acceptable, and of course, the code official, subject to their approval, can go through an evaluation with you and decide if it's suitable. What I want you to realize under the Alternate Materials and Methods section is commonly it's considered a code alternate, so it's not that you're saying, I don't want to comply with the code, what you're saying to the code official is, I have an alternate way that I can meet the intent of the code, and here's what I want to present to you. Sometimes it will include presenting research reports and other supporting data that may help justify it. Some assemblies and some configurations may, in fact, require performing testing to be able to show it. For the precast industry, what we're fortunate is we've already gone through that process and used what's called the International Code Council's Evaluation Services, and we have an evaluation report, ESR 1997, and ESR 1997 is basically already considered, been reviewed and accepted by ICC Evaluation Services to show that PCI MNL is, in fact, an acceptable document. So, if you get a copy of ESR 1997, and it is available at ICC Evaluation Services, and look at sections 2.0, you will see that it does, in fact, identify MNL 124, which is our design for fire resistance of precast, prestressed concrete, as an alternate to be able to be used, and so it's suitable for use. It's in the 2012 code, the MNL 124 is even in the 2009 IBC, and of course it continues to be acceptable for use in the 2015 code as an alternate design for fire safety. There's an example of what the publication looks like. It is available from PCI online. If you go to PCI's website, you can look at obtaining a copy, electronic copy, to have it available for use in your designs. Now, what I want to conclude with about this session is talking about balanced fire safety design, and when we talk balanced fire safety design, I want to tell you that I've been trying to emphasize that precast concrete is an excellent choice of materials and a method of construction to meet balanced fire safe design, and by meeting balanced fire safe design, we also feel like it is inherent that it is, in essence, providing for a high performance structure to meet those attributes of passive fire resistance. When you follow the minimum building code, or when you follow the building code, sometimes it's really just a minimum. That's what the building code will say in the beginning of the scope, that in fact it's minimum, and as I've hopefully showed you earlier in the presentation, following the minimum does not necessarily assure that you're getting balanced design, because you're sometimes finding there's more emphasis in the building code placed on safety to persons, and not as much as there could be on property protection as well as protection to the fire service, and when you're talking about high performance buildings, we really should be talking balanced design. There's no reason that we shouldn't be trying to obtain those attributes and benefits that come from a balanced design, fire safe design, where the code is minimum, a high performance structure is going to be above minimum, and because it is, you would want to follow that approach, and then, of course, the last thing I want to comment on is, of course, precast material, precast concrete is already a non-combustible material, that's a positive attribute. Inherently in the development of the structural members themselves and the elements, whether they be walls, floors, roofs, columns, it has inherent fire resistance that's already built into the element, and, of course, the fire resistance can depend on the structural design of the element itself to help meet the fire safe design, and so when you look at using precast, you're, in essence, meeting non-combustible fire resistive objectives for a high performance building, and so with that, I'll conclude, and we'll, Stephanie, at this time, see if we have any questions. Thank you, Steve. We do have one question. It says, for fire resistance of joints between precast wall panels, the ceramic fiber joint protection detail does not appear to be symmetrically applied throughout the thickness of the panel. Furthermore, only one side is identified as the fire side. Would these details be acceptable for interior and exterior fires? The answer to that is yes. What's being accomplished with the ceramic fiber material is its thickness across the length or width of the joint, however you want to think about it, going through the panel itself, and so when you're putting that ceramic fiber material in that joint, using the guidance from the charts that are there based on the fire resistance, it's not going to matter whether the fire is occurring at an exposure from outside in or inside out. That joint is being protected by the thickness or, again, length across the joint that the ceramic fiber blanket is installed. Great. One more question. When is ceramic fiber in joint not required? One of the ways would be that if, well, let me first of all say if you've got a building construction and the exterior wall is not required to have a fire resistance rating, then my first comment is if the wall is not required to be rated, there's no reason to consider having to provide any fire resistance rating to the joint, and so because of that, your joint treatment may be something that doesn't even involve the use of the ceramic fiber blanket. The other thing is on some buildings, if the building, let's say the exterior wall is required to have a fire resistance rating, but it has some separation distance from an adjacent property line or another building on the same property, the building code acknowledges that as that distance increases, even though the wall is required to be rated, it begins to allow what it calls openings to be unprotected, unprotected meaning no special protection, so that if you have on an exterior wall a certain number of windows in a certain amount of area, and the joints in the walls, you add the area of the joints to that and find that you're under the limit, then the code would treat that joint just as if it was an unprotected window. You have to make the calculations and take a look at it in relation to what that fire separation distance is, but the code is simply saying provide a fire rated wall, and in some cases it says, but you don't have to protect openings, the joint sometimes can be treated as an unprotected opening. Okay, excellent. We do have a few more questions, but unfortunately we are out of time. If you submitted a question that we did not get to, Steve will follow up with you via email and respond to your question. Thank you to Steve very much for the presentation. For everyone else, thank you for attending. We do have just a few quick closing remarks. As a reminder, if you are at a location with more than one attendee on the line, please complete the sign-in sheet and fax it back to PCI using the number that's on the form. Your certificate will be ready for download from your RCEP.net account in a few weeks following this webinar. Additionally, a survey will appear as you exit the webinar. Please complete the surveys. This will help us plan future courses and help make sure that we're offering the most valuable courses to our attendees. This concludes our session for today. Thank you again, Steve, for a wonderful presentation, and thank you to everyone for attending. Have a great afternoon.

balanced fire safety design

precast concrete

building code

safety to life

property protection

fire safety to the fire service

non-combustible

fire resistance

precast wall panels

NFPA 285