Tag Archives: Life safety

Styling with fire-rated glass

The last few decades have witnessed an explosion of innovation in fire-rated glass, glazing, and framing materials. Today’s product range offers options that surpass traditional wired glass in fire performance and provides a variety of appearances that contributes to and enhances the overall design of fire-rated separation.

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Free e-book discusses rolling doors

In the latest edition of a series of free, downloadable e-books, an article provides examples that highlight the various life-safety threats specifiers can safeguard building occupants against with rolling door assemblies. To get your copy of the “Designing MUSH Facilities” e-book in either pdf or digital edition, visit www.constructioncanada.net/ebook/designing-mush-facilities-de.

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Rethinking wired glass

Traditional wired glass, which for years was labelled as a ‘safety glass,’ is increasingly being recognized as not being safe when it comes to human impact—it has directly caused serious injuries, most often to school-aged children. In the United States, building code effectively banned wired glass in the 2006 International Building Code (IBC), but Canada has been slower to change its rules.

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Cutting through the smoke

For decades, the words ‘design flexibility’ and ‘fire-rated glass’ would not have appeared in the same sentence. Traditional polished wired glass was the only glazing material permitted in fire-rated areas. Its network of wires holds together broken glass during a fire to slow the spread of flames and smoke longer than was previously possible with other available glazing products.

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Firestopping and effective compartmentation

Fire resistance is one of the oldest fire protection strategies. Fire-resistance-rated walls and floors, joined together continuously, mean ‘effective compartmentation’ for a room of any size. Materials specified in MasterFormat 07 84 00−Firestopping maintain the continuity of this fire-resistance-rated construction through treating the holes made for cables, ducts, pipes, and joints.

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Fire Doors, Life Safety, and Hardware: Avoiding code confusion

It is an all-too-common tale: a job is finished, and it is time for the inspectors to show up and sign-off on the entire project. Unfortunately, they find the doors and hardware are not to code. This comes as a surprise. After all, the design team relied on the same code information used on its last building in Ontario and… this facility is in Québec, which has different requirements.

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Perfecting Firestopping: Materials, techniques, and specifications to reduce building fire fatalities and injuries

Most construction specifiers, architects, engineers, and contractors are aware of the National Building Code of Canada’s (NBC’s) firestop compliances, but proper materials and application techniques are nevertheless often overlooked. This situation could lead to needless injuries and fatalities in a commercial building fire. However, using the correct firestop materials can save a project thousands of dollars without affecting efficacy or limiting life safety.

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