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Windows

Re: Windows

Uncle Bob, it say's by NOT LESS THAN 1/2-inch gypsum board applied to the garage side your words.

The personal crap is not neccesary
Do you have a copy of the 2006 IRC; or do you just sit back and take cheap shots at code questions and answers
I agree, so please will you refrain from these cheap shots. If I apply a material that is equivalent or better, I'm good to go. If you know of a code section that disallows this application post it :!:
 
Re: Windows

Would a full glass sliding or swinging patio door then be allowed?
 
Re: Windows

Pcinspector1 said:
Would a full glass sliding or swinging patio door then be allowed?
If it were rated I'd say yes. I have never seen or heard of one, do they make those?

I've had two projects that installed, at great expense, automatically closing overhead rated doors because they wanted glazing in a rated wall. That makes me think rated glazing is hard to come by.
 
Re: Windows

IMHO...

You can't have openings between garages and sleeping rooms. so, if there is a fixed window (not an opening), it would have to meet ALL of the requirements of a wall...w/ no less than ½" gyp board...or the equivalent...etc...And that means that it has to pass all of the same UL, ICC, IAPMO, ASTM....blah, blah...standards' tests (whatever they are). if it can't stand up to fire, then water...or whatever...its not a [complying] wall. (I feel pretty strongly about the hose stream tests and its effect on glazed assemblies, in case you couldn't tell.) Glass block will pass...or some assemblies will...but sheet glass prolly won't.

If the wall doesn't separate a garage from the rest of the dwelling, then the assembly must pass all of the tests for a door with a 20 minute label. Glazing in doors must pass the same tests...and remember that the glass in a door is part of the door *assembly*, not a window by itself.

Is any of this any good, considering I’m shooting from the hip? (If you can't dazzle them with brilliance...)

Peace
 
Re: Windows

JShoe said:
it would have to meet ALL of the requirements of a wall...w/ no less than ½" gyp board...or the equivalent...etc...
Where is that wall definition? Garage separations aside, what about all (or mostly) glass walls?

Phillip Johnson's famous "Glass House" couldn't be built today with that definition.

glasshouse.jpg


Or even our famous Eichler tract homes.

eichler-homes-brochure.jpg


Or Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Fallingwater.

fallingwater-831x624.jpg
 
Re: Windows

only talking about the wall between the garage and the dwelling. there are no requirements that i'm aware of for exterior walls...ie walls that separate the dwelling from the countryside. i don't see a garage in the sample dwelling...as beautiful as it may be.

=P
 
Re: Windows

conarb; why do you say they couldn't be built today?? I know they can, and meet minimum code requirements.
 
Re: Windows

couldn't build an all-glass house in *my* climate zone (15). Not sure i'd want to. I'd likely have to sign the mortgage over to SCE!

:shock:
 
Re: Windows

Kilitact said:
conarb; why do you say they couldn't be built today?? I know they can, and meet minimum code requirements....or the equivalent...etc...
JShoe's statement scared me, he stated:



JShoe said:
it would have to meet ALL of the requirements of a wall...w/ no less than ½" gyp board..
My question was whether there was a section of the code that had requirements for a wall that included a definition of a wall. My concern is that we try to get around new home requirements and fees by leaving parts of an old home up and building a new home around what's left, just the other day I got some requirements from a county geologist that exempted me from some odious requirements if 50% of the "walls" were left standing, most of my walls are glass and I was concerned that I would have to remove lots of glass walls to comply. Not only would geology be impacted but sprinklers would be required as well. It's interesting that the old UBC 50% requirement to bring an entire home up to code some code cycles back, gut it still shows up in other areas like geology and sprinkler requirements. To give another example, Steve Jobs has been trying unsuccessfully (in the same area) for 30 years to get a permit to tear a house down and build a new one, had he left up part of the old home and built around it he may have had his house 30 years ago, to say nothing of saving many millions trying to fight city hall.

From what JShoe responded this only applies to walls between homes and garages, but his language scared me.
 
Re: Windows

Perhaps my choice of words was unfortunate?

the only definition of a wall that i would be implying would be the difference between an opening and a not-opening...i mean you either have an opening, like a door or a [normal] window product, or you have some solid barrier that typically is called a wall, but has certain charactaristics...like it keeps flames, smoke, hot gases, or whatever, from passing from one side to the other...that are often quantified by putting a representative sample in a furnace and trying to set it on fire for a while, then trying to put out the fire by blasting it with water under pressure for a while...blah, blah, blah.

i think i was meaning that if a window-like product is going to be considered a not-opening in a wall, then it must behave like the wall that it is intended to immulate. since the requirement for the separation between a garage and a dwelling is a wall with not less than 1/2" gyp board, then the window/wall will have to perform like the wall when subjected to all of the tests that the wall would be subjected to.

is this what i think i thought i said(!)? do i still scare you? if so, then please forgive me, because i must be denser than even my wife thinks i am...i don't see what is so scary.
 
Re: Windows

jshoe, what scares me is I understand you and agree with you! :shock: :D
 
Re: Windows

BTW, over the years, under the UBC, I have put windows between homes and carports, they were always two-hour (I believe) assemblies with steel frames and wire glass, none were openable, but as I recall they could have been if they were fusible linked. Of course those installations were under older codes.
 
Re: Windows

Lot of difference between a carport and a garage!
 
Re: Windows

conarb said:
JShoe said:
it would have to meet ALL of the requirements of a wall...w/ no less than ½" gyp board...or the equivalent...etc...
Where is that wall definition? Garage separations aside, what about all (or mostly) glass walls?

Phillip Johnson's famous "Glass House" couldn't be built today with that definition.

Sure you can with similar construction- (or equivalent.)

You just need fire-rated glass (plastic) and whatever that 1/2" gypsum provides but your wall is only columns. The glass is just a big window. Can be done. Walls (or columns) are your load bearing system.

You're designing a post & beam system with pipe columns that meets the fire-rating, live/dead loads and the lateral loads such as shear resistance through sufficient axial resistance for the added shear stress.

The 1/2" gypsum is just part of prescriptive design with is conventional stud framing.

In case of Fallingwaters, the masonry and concrete has the inherit fire-rating of probably over 9 hours in the documented fire-rating of materials in the 1930s. It would probably be several hours rating with the consideration of the mass.

1/2" gypsum is like 45 minutes fire rating. So, all you need to be sufficient to meet the fire-rating is 1 hour level on the structural members.

This can be just in the material used.
 
Re: Windows

jshoe said:
IMHO...You can't have openings between garages and sleeping rooms. so, if there is a fixed window (not an opening), it would have to meet ALL of the requirements of a wall...w/ no less than ½" gyp board...or the equivalent...etc...And that means that it has to pass all of the same UL, ICC, IAPMO, ASTM....blah, blah...standards' tests (whatever they are). if it can't stand up to fire, then water...or whatever...its not a [complying] wall. (I feel pretty strongly about the hose stream tests and its effect on glazed assemblies, in case you couldn't tell.) Glass block will pass...or some assemblies will...but sheet glass prolly won't.

If the wall doesn't separate a garage from the rest of the dwelling, then the assembly must pass all of the tests for a door with a 20 minute label. Glazing in doors must pass the same tests...and remember that the glass in a door is part of the door *assembly*, not a window by itself.

Is any of this any good, considering I’m shooting from the hip? (If you can't dazzle them with brilliance...)

Peace
Windows are not walls. We can always use some of the new space age stuff that can withstand re-entry through the atmosphere.
 
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