Code and Standard News
By Ron George,CPD,
President, Ron George Design & Consulting Svcs.
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 implemented, designers will be able to use either the 1991 standard 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, recreational, 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 jurisdictional 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 adaptable code.
As with its other codes, the ICC will provide continuous refinement to the IGCC, which follows the code council’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 available as adoptable language or as resource tools in the development or revision of green regulations at all jurisdictional levels. The IGCC is designed to integrate with 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 submitted 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:
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 opening plugged by an untrained person.
In the “Mythbusters” episode, the water heater makes a tremendous explosion. To watch the three-minute YouTube video, click here. 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 the roof. 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.
Since the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 there has been a federal mandate for saving energy through various methods, including water conservation. Recently, since the inception of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, an abundance of products introduced to the market have been touted as conserving water.
The goal of LEED is to develop more sustainable buildings by promoting energy conservation through the design and construction progress. I applaud their efforts. The green building craze, however, has created a demand that has many unknowing (or not so well intentioned) individuals, trying to cash in on the water conservation movement. Engineers, designers, contractors and consumers need to be aware that many of the products being marketed as energy or water conserving conserve neither water nor energy.
The test
I came across a product that would fall into the category of “all hype and no performance” and decided to put it to the test to see whether it really does save water. (The product shall remain nameless, as I don’t want a visit from their attorneys.)
The device consists of a soft plastic washer with a rubber o-ring in a slot that is apparently supposed to flex or modulate to maintain a constant flow rate over various pressure inputs. It costs only a few cents and was being promoted as saving great amounts of water and energy. The salesperson said that all you had to do was replace the aerator on your faucet with “this new water saving aerator” and that large quantities of these devices had been sold to water utility companies for distribution to their customers.
I had two packages of aerators that listed flow rates of 6 lpm (1.58 gpm) and 9 lpm. (2.37gpm). I decided to install and test one of the 6 lpm aerators on the sink in my office. I started by measuring the flow rate prior to removal of the aerator that came with the faucet, which meets the 1992 Energy Policy Act and was installed within the last five years. Prior to removal, the flow rate was 1.5 gpm; with no aerator, it was 3 gpm. These tests gave me a baseline for comparison with the new aerator.
The water pressure in my office is between 45 and 50 pounds per square inch. After I installed the new aerator, the first thing I noticed when I turned on the faucet was that the water shot out of the faucet in a couple of streams with the force of a small fire hose and bounced off the bottom of the sink, splashing on everything within three feet of the sink, including me.
The flow rate with the new “water conserving” aerator was about 2.9 gpm. The performance of the aerator was very poor. If I were to replace the existing aerator on my faucet with this aerator, I would actually use about 1.4 more gallons per minute.
This simple test shows that this myth is Busted! Many inferior products are being sold by people wanting to cash in on the green movement. They are selling the idea, not the solution. If you deal with reputable, well-established manufacturers you should be fine.
Faucet regulations
In the past, faucets were not a primary focus of water efficiency advocates, given that the Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 1992 and subsequent EPAct actions limited faucet flows to 2.2 gpm (8.3 L) (at 60 psi). In the mid-1990s, however, the U.S. model plumbing codes and standards (ANSI standard ASME A112.18.1/CSA B125.1) further reduced that maximum flow rate to 0.5 gpm (1.9 lpm) for public (non-residential) applications.
This standard is frequently neglected, because many people are not aware of it. Some design engineers, specifiers, plumbing contractors and building owners believe that the maximum flow rate for faucets in non-residential applications is still the EPAct rate of 2.2 gpm. This confusion has resulted in the illegal installation of non-compliant faucets in some new commercial projects
The governing standard and test procedure, as established by the U.S. Dept. of Energy ((DOE), for faucets was and continues to be the ANSI national standard, ASME A112.18.1/CSA B125.1. In the early 1990s, this standard was changed to reflect a lower maximum flow rate of 0.5 gpm (1.9 lpm) for all “public” applications, which are all applications not defined as “private.”
The codes (Uniform Plumbing Code, International Plumbing Code, and the National Standard Plumbing Code) each define “private” as inclusive only of fixtures in residences, hotel/motel guest rooms and private rooms in hospitals. The “public” category includes single-tenant and multi-tenant office buildings, schools, gymnasiums, manufacturing facilities, public buildings (including those where the general public is denied access), bars, restaurants, retail stores and any other type of building that does not fall within the “private” definition.
Metering faucets for public applications are subject to the same codes and standards, all of which set the maximum water use at 0.25 gallons per cycle (.94 L). That is, the “On-Off” cycle (or time during which the faucet is on) cannot result in a total flow in excess of 0.25 gallons (.94 L) of water. Source: The Alliance for Water Efficiency.
It appears that many products out there allow more water than specified in the codes and the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and that they do not save water at all, although they are being heavily marketed as water conservation products.
Buyer beware!
Ron George is president of Ron George Design & Consulting Services. He has served as Chairman of the International Residential Plumbing & Mechanical Code Committee. To contact Ron, write him at rgdc@rongeorgedesign.com.