To T or not to T, that is the question…

If you work in residential, hotel, hospital or any other I (Institutional) category of construction you may be interested in following along for the next two weeks, because we are going to take a deep dive into some things that are of particular interest to those types of projects.  

If you are a firestop manufacturer, feel free to chime in with your product information. If you are a jurisdictional inspector and you disagree, I want to hear from you too!  Let’s make it a code debate for everyone to participate in because all too often these debates are in private and my goal (if you haven’t figured it out yet) is to help people build better, when it comes to firestop and passive fire protection. 

The topic of discussion this week will be T ratings in floors.  

These have been a code requirement since before the I codes. They were in the legacy codes and they are in your code today. The thing is, they have changed. They have been misunderstood and they have been summarily ignored.  

So tell me, in any type of project where your floors are fire rated,  

If you are an inspector- Do you require a T rating? 

If you are a builder- Do you provide a T rating? 

Does this matter based on our floor assembly?  If you don’t know the answer, stick around and find out.  

Do you know what the codes say? If not, then how do you now if you are building to the code? If you are not building to the code you may be creating a liability for your company, for your client and for the people who will live work and play in the building when you are done. Stick with me in the next two weeks and you will have a better understanding of how to answer these questions and how to build better.  

Remember, If YOU Want to Build Better, We Want to Help!