Mass-Timber Furnished Apartments Fare Well in Fire Tests | 2017-08-16
Advocates for a code change that would allow taller heavy-timber frames are buoyed by the good performance of mass-timber structures in the first U.S. fire tests on full- scale furnished apartments . “The tests went as expected,” says Stephen DiGiovanni, fire protection engineer for Nevada’s Clark County Dept . of Building and Fire Protection . DiGiovanni, also chairman of the International Code Council ’s 17- member ad hoc committee for tall wood buildings , plans to use the final test report to help justify a code change that would allow wood frames as tall as 180 ft, depending on building design and use. The report is due out before Jan. 8, the deadline for code-change proposals for the 2021 edition of the International Building Code . IBC currently limits the height of heavy-timber structures to 85 ft. Under the likely code-change proposal, the maximum height for mass timber, fully protected with noncombustible sheathing, would be 180 ft. A height of 120 ft would be allowed fo...