Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome to the clear impact podcast brought to you by P G T I university. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Connor and I am your host.
Speaker 2 00:00:15 And that's why tried to tell some of our customers make sure when that new building code comes out, sometimes there's little changes here and there that you wanna check for, cuz it could be beneficial to you
Speaker 1 00:00:25 Getting in and getting out are a big deal in the Fest industry. Egres WCDs and safety glazing are all tied together. In this episode of the clear impact podcast. That's right. We are talking about safety in windows and doors 2 0 1. Our code compliance team knows all the details around the safety requirements and shares it with us today. This will help clarify any confusion you may have around these lifesaving features of windows and doors. Good morning. We are here on the clear impact podcast and we are in a series called windows and doors 2 0 1 and today we are talking about safety. So there are several points in this topic like egres fall protection and safety glazing Lynn Miller and Lisa Wilson are backend studio with us to help us answer the questions that are most often asked. So welcome back.
Speaker 3 00:01:14 Thanks. Good feedback.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Thank you. So egres is a safety that is around getting out, like in case of a fire and there's a lot of confusion around this topic. And so we really wanted to kind of explain that a little deeper. So tell us about egres.
Speaker 3 00:01:29 Okay. I'll start with that. I'll just give you a little bit of background as to why these requirements are in the building code. Okay. So egres, it's often referred as egres getting out, but it's actually more about ingress. Actually the requirements are specific opening dimensions of windows and doors, so that a fireman with an air tank on his back mm-hmm <affirmative> can actually get into your window and help you get out. Oh, so that's the reason why they have specific requirements in there and at least is gonna go through the specifics of the dimensions.
Speaker 2 00:01:54 Okay. Okay. So this is a question we get quite often again and for emergency escape and rescue. The dimensions are your opening width is 20 inches. Your opening height is 24. Your minimum SI to your clear opening is 44 inches. And then your overall, they ask for 5.7, except for grade. Then there's an exception in there or five foot overall, but you have to meet all of those requirements for egress.
Speaker 3 00:02:19 And those are square footages. The five, the 5.0 and the 5.7. Yes.
Speaker 2 00:02:23 Yeah. Okay. I don't think five inches would work on those. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:02:26 So the SI is that from the floor to the bottom of the window,
Speaker 2 00:02:30 To your clear opening. So where the clear opening would start to the floor. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:02:35 Yeah, the, the bottom of the opening. Okay. So it'd be the top of your window sill.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 Okay. Is that for every room? Is it for bedrooms? Is it for everywhere in the house? Like where is that?
Speaker 2 00:02:43 Whatever room is required to have an egres opening. Okay. For bedrooms, if they do require an egres opening, if, but there could be a door, there could be something else there that would qualify for egres. So that's really, you need to check that. Okay. And the building department will let you know which areas needed, which do not. And I will say in commercial apartments, condos, et cetera, mm-hmm <affirmative> you need to check on that. Whoever the project manager is because they have certain conditions that don't always follow what residential does.
Speaker 1 00:03:11 Okay. That makes sense. So there's just definite requirements so that if there was a fire and somebody needed to come in and rescue you, they can get in safely. That makes sense. Correct. That makes sense. Anything else about
Speaker 3 00:03:21 Egres? I think that's pretty much it. One of the things is if you happen to have a high-rise building and you're above 75 feet, they historically don't require egres openings because typically the fire department won't have a ladder that can reach you for those types of situations. So the above 75 feet, there, there are no egress requirements for the window openings. Ah,
Speaker 1 00:03:40 Cuz nobody's climbing in to get you. So you better know where your safety exits
Speaker 3 00:03:43 Are. That's where you have head to the fire escape or the uh, stairwells, et
Speaker 1 00:03:46 Cetera. Right. So if you're on the 10th floor of the hotel, you better know mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. Got it. Because I don't know what 75 feet is in floors.
Speaker 3 00:03:52 Uh, probably about seven and a half, seven or eight stories somewhere in there.
Speaker 1 00:03:56 Okay. Yeah. So, okay. So ninth flooring up <laugh> <laugh>
Speaker 4 00:03:59 Okay. I did have a short question. We talk a lot about how it's on dimensions, but are there other things that incorporate into it? For example, how easy is it to open from the outside or if there's a screen, does anything else or is it only dimensions?
Speaker 2 00:04:11 Good question. No, you it's normal operation of the window. So no special tooling is for the windows. Doors is a little bit different, but for egres openings, as far as the windows go, it's just normal operation of a window.
Speaker 1 00:04:24 Isn't it? Like two motions or less like with locks and opening and things like
Speaker 2 00:04:29 That. Not on a window. No. Oh,
Speaker 1 00:04:31 Okay. That's different than what I understood. The
Speaker 2 00:04:34 People get that confused that's they might be looking at a door or it could be looking at an older version of
Speaker 1 00:04:40 Egres.
Speaker 2 00:04:41 Okay. For example back, this is a long time ago, cuz like I told you, I've been <laugh> right. Doing this since 2001, there used to be something in there for educational facilities where your egres lock couldn't be more than 54 inches and people would think that was the case for residential too. And it wasn't and now that's not even in the code anymore. So the code does change ever so often and little things change here and there. So for egres for windows, no, it does not call about how many locks you can have, what you need to do. It's just your normal operation of window,
Speaker 1 00:05:11 Normal operation. Okay. And the building code changes every three years they do an update and a revision. So the last one was
Speaker 3 00:05:18 20 21, 20 20 was the last building code. That's the current building code that we're in right now,
Speaker 1 00:05:23 2020 is 2020. And that was the seventh edition, right? For Florida, correct? Correct. And so they're working on the eighth edition and that'll be coming out.
Speaker 3 00:05:31 That will be, uh, the, uh, the end of uh, 2023. So it's actually December 31st. It effectively goes into effect, you know, the beginning of the year of, of 20, 24, but
Speaker 1 00:05:41 Okay. So we're halfway through this current cycle. Right? Got it. Okay. All right. So we're good with egres another safety feature or safety point around windows and doors is about not falling out. Right. And so kids fall out of second story and third story windows all the time. I see it on the news. It's horrible. And there are different ways to provide fall protection. And so what are these and why would you wanna choose one over another?
Speaker 3 00:06:07 Okay. Yeah. The building code actually has different requirements for fall protection. So kind of to give you a little bit of an idea of what this is, uh, the idea is to restrict the opening of a window, no greater than a four inch clear dimension. And so the idea is that that's, uh, basically small enough that a small child can't get their head through there and then fall out that four inch clear dimension is also used for railings clear dimension between railings on stairs and so forth. So that's kind of a well known dimension that they feel comfortable, that child can't fall out of that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so there's different options. Obviously, if you're on the ground floor, you don't have that issue. But if you're on elevated floors where somebody could fall out, there's different ways to meet that requirement. One of the ways is just simply limiting the window to the four inch dimension.
Speaker 3 00:06:45 So sometimes they have extended sash stops on the window to prevent the window from opening more than that four inches mm-hmm <affirmative>. But if the window also needs to meet egress, as Lisa mentioned, not all windows need to meet egres mm-hmm <affirmative>, there's only certain windows. So if you have a window in an elevated situation where you don't need to meet, egres the only thing you need to do is prevent that window from opening more than four inches mm-hmm <affirmative> and you've met the fall prevention requirement, but if you have to meet egres, they have a device called a w O C D mm-hmm <affirmative>, it's a window opening control device. And basically that's a device on the window that allows you to open the window all the way up, uh, to where you can have egress. So if you had a fire or something, you can get out of the building and then if someone opens the window and then closes it again, once they close the window, the device automatically resets so that it locks you from being able to open it more than four inches.
Speaker 3 00:07:30 Mm. So then a small child couldn't open that window more than the four inches. Mm. And so those are obviously important. You need to be able to get out in case of a fire and you wanna keep that child in the house as well. Right. And another thing that's, uh, very important people rely on these devices and things. There's always cases where, you know, maybe somebody didn't reset that sash or, or something. And, um, you have, somebody may have some furniture near the window, cuz there's also SI height requirements for the, uh, fall prevention. I think it's, uh, 24 inches for, uh, residential and currently in the commercial code. It's also 24 inches, uh, off the floor, but that may be changing again. But if you happen to have a window, let's say that you're at that 24 inches. You don't need to have these fall prevention devices, but you may have furniture in front of the window. Mm. And a small child could still get up on that furniture and fall out of the opening. Mm. So it's very important that consumers understand that you can't just rely on the window itself. Uh, you know, the, the height of the window, just because the code says, that's okay, you need to keep an eye on your kids. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and keep furniture away from openings like that. Right. So that they can't crawl out and fall out
Speaker 1 00:08:30 The window. Right. And screens are not safety devices. A screen is not gonna keep a kid from falling out. That's
Speaker 3 00:08:36 Correct. There are fall prevention screens, but typical insect screens that we provide with our products are not safety screens at all. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And we actually have a, I believe we have a label on those screens that mentions that they're not fall prevention devices.
Speaker 1 00:08:48 Mm-hmm <affirmative> and there are even, I've heard stories too, of people with their pets going, you know, where they get freaked out, if there's a storm or whatever, and the pets will actually go out of an open window on the second floor and sustain some serious injuries. So not just the actual kids, but the fur babies too.
Speaker 3 00:09:03 Yeah. Oh, and I also wanted to mention is, uh, at order entry. So this is another situation where it's very important to know what your applications are before you order the product. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So for example, if you have this upstairs window and if you order the product and you didn't know that it also needed to meet egres, then you may have an issue when it comes to the inspection. And with the case of our WCDs in our products, they're actually made to order. So they actually fabricate the window to receive that w O C D device mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so if they order a window without that, then they could have issues that, you know, they may need to either reorder the window or possibly look at an aftermarket device. So it's, it's very important that you know what you need before you
Speaker 1 00:09:39 Order you can't put it on later. Right. That's correct. Got it. Okay. With sash stops you could put on later.
Speaker 3 00:09:44 Yeah. But again, if you need to meet egress, the sash stop does not qualify for that. Ah, okay. Because it has to be a permanent fixture. You can't take those out right. To meet egress. You can't be able to take the sash stops out and then open the window because it doesn't automatically reset when you close it. That's the reason.
Speaker 1 00:09:58 Okay. That makes sense. Cuz we don't want anybody not getting in or not getting out when they're not supposed to. Right. Got it. Okay. Be sure to tune in for upcoming episodes to help you understand the Fest industry, what you need to know when buying windows and doors and other related topics, you can find out more about
[email protected]. You can also find us on Facebook and LinkedIn. So we have one more topic around safety and that is safety glazing. And this is involving the glass. And so let's bring some clarity where there might be some confusion on the requirements of glass.
Speaker 2 00:10:36 Okay. Um, take this one. I used to be in charge of our safety glazing audits for a long time. But as our glass plant has grown now the engineers at the glass plant take care of the, uh, safety glazing audits, but I'm still involved. I still try to stay in what's going on. And
Speaker 1 00:10:52 What is that? What is a safety glazing audit?
Speaker 2 00:10:54 It's a safety glazing certification council. And twice a year, we have to send our glass in our tempered glass and our impact glass to make sure that it is performing properly to meet the requirements for safety glazing.
Speaker 1 00:11:09 Oh wow. I did not know that. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:11:11 And this is one of the questions I get quite often is we'll have people who are using an impact just impact window. And it's say over the bathroom or by a pool and they'll get questioned by the inspector that they don't see a tempered logo on there, but it's impact. And some of them think, well it's impact, but it needs to be a tempered tempered piece of impact last to meet safety. But that's not the case impact last, you can use a yield and yield and it, it meets the safety glazing
Speaker 1 00:11:36 Because it's not gonna break into giant shards, which is the whole point of tempering or having the heat strengthened or the tempered is to prevent those giant, giant deadly shards from happening when a window breaks,
Speaker 2 00:11:48 Correct. And heat strengthened glass alone, won't meet safety glazing. It needs to be tempered or impact. So our products will meet that. One thing that did change recently is so the Florida building code, we work mostly with a lot of, uh, inspectors in Florida. They, they call in the most mm-hmm <affirmative> and the laminated insulated units. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's where the confusion comes in. So the Florida building code was modeled after the international building code. And back in the day before the 2001 or before all the hurricanes came mm-hmm <affirmative> when they had the safety glazing in the code, they really weren't addressing impact. It was mostly just insulated units or monolithic units mm-hmm <affirmative> so it was a little confusion and people, the way it read, they had to have that cap tempered mm-hmm <affirmative> on the laminated insulated units, but they just recently changed that the Florida building code did.
Speaker 2 00:12:36 So now there's an exception and I'll just read it real quickly for you. It says outboard sacrificial pains and laminated insulating glass units, and walls where the exterior of the unit is not exposed to any of the hazardous locations specified in the above. You don't have to have that side piece tempered anymore. So that's a huge thing that was just introduced into the floor building code. So that's a big thing for us. Mm-hmm <affirmative> now again, if it's in a location, like buy a pool, buy a walking surface, it does. But if it's outside, above your shower, you don't have to have that anymore.
Speaker 1 00:13:05 Okay. And so for those that may not be quite up to speed with this. Let me just do a little layman's recap. Sure. So the sacrificial pain for our products is the outside pain. When we're talking about an insulated product, right? So you have the piece of glass and then you have the airspace and then you have the other piece of glass and that is considered an insulated unit when it's laminated. Then that laminated piece, which is actually two pieces. And then the vinyl in the middle of the plastic, the grilled cheese sandwich is on the inside. So when, so for P G T I don't, I guess CGI is the same is CGI the same. Yeah. For
Speaker 3 00:13:39 The most part, there's a couple of products that it's reversed, but most products are.
Speaker 1 00:13:42 So for the most part, the expensive part of your glass package is on the inside. And then that sacrificial pain is the one that's to the outside. So if it's, you know, by a pool, then that has to be safety glazing as well has to be tempered. But if it's just, you know, out in your backyard and there's no sidewalk or any kind of, you know, reason that you need to have that safety glazing, it's okay to have that be in a kneed piece in that package. Correct. Mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. Got it. Just, just making sure <laugh> perfect. I try to keep up. <laugh> perfect. And so that, yeah, so that just got changed. Uh, yes, not that long ago. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:14:15 Mm-hmm <affirmative> and this code cycle.
Speaker 1 00:14:16 Right. And so that makes for a more economical window package because you're not paying for that extra treatment for that piece of glass. It may get broken. Right.
Speaker 2 00:14:24 Mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. And that's why I tried to tell some of our customers, like, make sure when that new building code comes out, sometimes there's little changes here and there that you wanna check for, cuz it could be beneficial to you. Right.
Speaker 3 00:14:34 Lisa, do you wanna touch on some of the other safety glazing requirements?
Speaker 2 00:14:37 You're talking about H V H, Z and well
Speaker 3 00:14:40 That, but also like when is safety glazing required?
Speaker 2 00:14:42 There's quite a few different areas, right? Where safety glazing is required. I will say there's so many. I probably won't be able to list them all. Yeah. But they're in chapter 24 of the building code. Okay. So if people have questions, they can check that one. But of course, if you're within so many feet of a, a pool, a sauna, et cetera, it needs to be safety, glazed, stairways, landings, safety glazing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> like we were talking about showers, bathrooms, safety glazing so far off the floor safety glazing. So there's quite a few different areas and it's very specific. So like I said, it's in chapter 24 in the building code. If people ever have a question mm-hmm <affirmative>, they can also call in. We we're happy to help. I talk to building departments all the time. Okay. As well as homeowners and uh, some of our distributors. And then the H VHD is the high velocity hurricane zone and that's date in Broward county mm-hmm <affirmative> and they have some special requirements that are a little different than the rest of the state. So you wanna check with them too, mm-hmm <affirmative> on your high rises if they're gonna require that. Right. Even in the laminated insulated units. Okay. Check with
Speaker 3 00:15:39 Them. And another important application is doors. Anytime you have a sliding glass door or a, a French door, any door that has glass and it, it has to be safety glazing. Mm. Um, and for obvious reasons, if you have a large sliding glass door panel, some of the doors that were built before these safety glazing codes years ago, uh, would just have a piece of a kneed glass mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, uh, if you fall through that, um, there's cases where people have been killed, right. It's just, they're like dagger. And, uh, it's very dangerous with the tempered glass or the laminated glass with the tempered glass, the glass breaks into really small cubes. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so it, you know, it's not gonna slice you open, you may still get cut. Right. But you won't get the, uh, the lacerations that bleed to death, uh, and laminated glass, of course, that plastic inner layer that we talked about holds it together. Right. So that makes that safety glazing.
Speaker 2 00:16:21 Right. And that is something PGT is aware of. And mm-hmm, <affirmative> when you order, you don't have to special order those, all of our doors come, if it's an insulated unit, it's automatically tempered. If it's eliminated insulated unit, we always temper the outside piece. So all of our doors already have that,
Speaker 3 00:16:36 Right? Yeah. Yeah. Cuz that's considered a hazardous location, both the inside and the outside. Sure. Cause you can fall through the door either way. Right. So it all has to be safety lazing.
Speaker 2 00:16:44 Right. And I believe PGT as well on our windows, if you have an insulated unit and it needs to be tempered that we temper both pieces.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 Okay. All right. And so if a homeowner happens to get ahold of this, you can tell that something is safety GGL because there's a little bug, a little laser etched detail at the bottom corner, or sometimes the top corner sometimes inside or outside, it just kind of floats around. But it does have the manufacturer's watermark that this piece has been tempered or heat strengthened to. Is it heat strengthened or just tempered
Speaker 2 00:17:13 To be safety glaze? It has to be tempered heat strengthened does not meet that recorder
Speaker 3 00:17:17 Or laminated glass laminated glass also qualifies. So that that bug will be on the laminated glass as well.
Speaker 1 00:17:23 Okay. So if you're wondering if your door is safe, if your window is safe, you can look for that little bug and if you don't see it there, then chances are, it's not gonna be safe. So might wanna, might wanna replace that correct? Mm-hmm
Speaker 2 00:17:34 <affirmative> there will definitely be a watermark just like windshields have, or they used to have that little mark and the windshield windows or doors will have that as
Speaker 1 00:17:41 Well. Right. Okay. All right. Anything else around safety glazing? Any questions? No. Okay. All right. Well that wraps it up for episode three and windows and doors 2 0 1 and Lisa and Lynn. Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll carry on to our next conversation. And um, what is the next one? Energy codes. Ah, energy codes. That's a big deal. So absolutely. We're gonna talk about that one next time around. All right. Sounds good. All right. You so much. Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks again. Take care. Bye.
Speaker 1 00:18:10 P G C I university is the customer education team for an entire family of brands. We began with the original easy breeze porch and closure line then became P G T America's leading brand of impact resistant windows and doors. We then added CGI CGI C window, Western windows, new south windows, echo windows and doors, and our latest acquisition and Lynn windows and doors. We create products built to withstand major storms, keeping people safe, secure, and prepared. Our exceptional brands give you the protection you need without compromising design or functionality. P G T I university is here to educate you our listener so that you can be more informed about window and door products.
