International Building Code

And so there's a ton of openness to this.

What we have found is there are awareness gaps here, which is why we're putting together a training through the Code Council program.

For code officials across the country, we're talking to dealers in Minnesota and Illinois and Michigan who say, you know what? I've never sold a residential wind rated door, but I'm ready.

I want to help.

I would say the standard for air sealing should be more like a northern standard.

The current International Code Council says that in our climate zone, this hot, humid climate zone, we can get away with a 5 ACH 50 on the blower door.

whereas in the north they have to do a 3 ach 50 national builders building in the south you should be building your houses to a 3 ach 50 and if you're building a custom home if you're building a house with me i'm looking at 1.5 ach 50 is the standard that i want to get to that's a really good air sealed house you're never going to get to zero you don't need to be at zero but we want to get as tight as we can Then we're going to deal with a right size mechanical system.

We're going to add additional supplemental dehumidification if we're in the hot humid south, maybe even the north.

You take a look and you can see what's happened.

Um, and those are fed to the International Code Council as recommendations for changing of the next building code.

So every three years, the building code is updated and a new code is put out, then it's up for states to adopt and then local towns and, and cities to adopt as well.

And in that case, they will take from the mitigation assessment team reports during that cycle of disasters and change the code to build better.

And then like businesses of a certain size that are expecting a certain number of occupants are required to have them.

The International Building Code requires one fountain for every 100 occupants expected in like a public place.

But almost always drinking fountains come in pairs.

One is higher and one is lower as sort of outlined by ADA requirements.

There's very, very specific kind of requirements.

So because of that, that's why you get the kind of... offset dual water fountains that you see in all kinds of public places.

But to your point, in recent years, more places have been using water bottle refill stations, which I believe still, according to the International Building Code, can substitute 50% of like a large public places number of water fountains.

So you can put those in and have fewer water fountains if you have the water refill stations in there.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Buildings 2.0. Today, I have a really special guest, Gabe Mazur.

He's the Executive Vice President of Innovation and Growth at the International Code Council.

If you ever pulled a permit, gone through a home inspection, you've been living inside the Code Council's work, whether you knew it or not.

For many of the things we take for granted, including our day-to-day safety.