Ron George, CPD President, Ron George Design & Consulting Services
Code Classroom Code and Standard News
New Department of Justice accessibility guidelines reference the IBC The newest accessibility standards to be enforced by the
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will include means of egress requirements from the International Building Code (IBC). The DOJ has adopted the 2004 Americans with Disabilities Act/Architectural Barriers Act (ADA/ABA) Accessibility Guidelines. The U.S. Attorney General signed documents that officially adopted the 2010 Accessibility Standard as the referenced standard for DOJ on July 23, 2010. The final step is publication of the new standard in the federal register. The new DOJ standards will take effect six months after
publication of the register, in early 2011. Once imple- mented, designers will be able to use either the 1991 stan- dard or the 2010 standard for about a year. In 2012, all facilities will have to comply with the 2010 standards. With the cooperation of the International Code Council, U.S. Access Board and other interested parties, the IBC and ICC A117.1 – Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities are already extensively coordinated with the new federal regulations. The guidelines will be the enforceable DOJ standard for
most buildings, including institutional, commercial, recre- ational, transportation and government facilities. The ABA/ADA standards are already adopted and used by the U.S. Government Service Administration, the Postal Service and the departments of Transportation and Defense. New requirements in the regulations address recreation and detention facilities, social service programs and university housing.
International Green Construction Code (IGCC) development schedule As part of its commitment to green and sustainable
safety concepts, the International Code Council (ICC) has announced a new set of green codes under its initiative entitled, “IGCC: Safe and Sustainable by the Book.” This initiative includes ASHRAE Standard 189.1 as a jurisdic- tional requirement option and the collaboration of the ICC’s partners, as well as input from our members and the general public. The ICC has made a commitment to developing an enforceable, useable, adoptable and adapt- able code. As with its other codes, the ICC will provide continu-
ous refinement to the IGCC, which follows the code coun- cil’s development process including: Public Version 1.0, March 15, 2010 issue date; Public Version 2.0, November 3, 2010 issue date; 2012 International Green Construction Code, early 2012 issue date. These documents are avail- able as adoptable language or as resource tools in the development or revision of green regulations at all juris- dictional levels. The IGCC is designed to integrate with
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the existing I-Codes to create a new regulatory baseline for green construction. In August, the IGCC Public Comment Hearing
Committee considered more than 1,500 comments sub- mitted based on Public Version 1.0. The "2010 Report of Public Hearings" includes the actions and reasons for the actions taken by the committee. The next steps for the IGCC are as follows:
Action: Post Public Version 2.0
(updated based on Aug. Hearings) Code change submittals due Code development hearings Public comment deadline Final action hearing
Publish 2012 International Green Construction Code
Date: August 2010
January 3, 2011 May 16 – 22, 2011 August 12, 2011 Nov. 2 – 6, 2011 March 2012
Mythbusters — green marketing “Mythbusters,” on the Discovery Channel, is one of my
favorite TV shows. The guys on the show, who are a bit eccentric, investigate myths to see whether they could really happen. They usually choose some oddball myth and determine whether it is Confirmed, Probable or Busted — and they usually get it right. I especially enjoyed the recent episode about a water
heater exploding and shooting up through the roof of a house. I have some old film footage with a 1950s-vintage segment from the Watts Regulator Co. that was used to promote their line of pressure and temperature relief valves. The Watts video shows what would happen to a water heater if the valve seizes up due to calcification from hard water or if the valve is removed and the open- ing plugged by an untrained person. In the “Mythbusters” episode, the water heater makes a
tremendous explosion. To watch the three-minute YouTube video, visit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo. Since these guys seemed to enjoy blowing things up, they decided to do a follow-up episode where they refer to a story about a water heater blowing up and shooting up through a two-story house and out
(
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bU-2ZiML0). They built a two-story house in accordance with current building codes and had the water heater explode and go up through both stories. It flew through the roof and hundreds of feet into the air with a tremendous explosion. That was great stuff for Hollywood! I recently had the opportunity to perform my own
investigation to try and debunk a myth, and, although not as exciting as the one on the TV show, the results were interesting.
Continued on page 20 February 2011
the roof
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