Welcome back, clearly you are one of the teams who want to be sure you are building right. This series is addressing shaft wall construction because it is so critical to the life safety of your projects.  The last video talked about how shaft walls are tested differently so that when we talk about how they are built differently, in this video, you have a different level of understanding of why things are important. Check it out here!

If you are an architect or kitchen designer who specifies commercial kitchen grease duct doors, this video will help you understand some products that might not meet the requirements.

If you clean grease ducts, you are going to love this new door.

If you operate a kitchen and have ever had performance issues after cleaning, this door will eliminate these problems.

Here is a short video that will introduce you to a grease duct access door that is a game changer.

You know shaft walls are built differently than other rated wall assemblies, but did you know they are tested differently too?  Understanding this difference will help you understand why the need to be fire stopped differently as well.  Shafts are critical to the life safety of your buildings. They impact multiple floors, so they deserve a little more attention. This video series is designed for those of you who want to do things right. We hope this will make it a little easier for you to understand how to evaluate field installations and ensure they are built properly. Check out the video here and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout. We are happy to help if we are able.

Thanks for your time.

Firestop Spray at head of wall joints is an installation that can look professional or it can look like a blood bath. This video will help you know, regardless of what it looks like, if you can expect it to perform in a fire scenario. We walkabout what to look for but also WHY each element is important. You can see this new video here. Please let us know what you think about this and what other topics might be useful for you. If we can help on a project, don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Welcome to our Coffee Break Training Series. Do you look at firestop at head of wall joints and think its easy or basic, what about shaft wall construction or other rated joints such as bottom of wall or wall to wall joints? If you think they are basic, this video series may help you see these installations in a new light. If you have a means of egress shaft built of gypsum wall board, PLEASE watch the one on bottom of wall applications because you may look at exit shafts a whole new way after that video. There is A LOT packed into this multi part series and despite the fact that we are talking building codes and fire test standards, you might actually enjoy yourself, but you will definitely learn something. So, welcome and I hope we can help you look at firestop a whole new way.  Here is our introductory video- see you next week

If you are an AHJ- Authority Having Jurisdiction; a building official or fire marshal, this video is for you.

This is the second in our three part series. It is designed to help you understand the requirements as they are called out in the ICC Special Inspection Manual as they are related to the requirement for third party special inspection of firestop pursuant to the IBC 1705.17

If you are an architect or a building official, we hope this video series helpsyou do your job a little more easily.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us!

Firestop special inspection is a relatively new requirement in our building codes. This three part series is designed to help architects and building officials understand how this code change impacts their responsibilities. Understanding how to verify that you have someone who is capable and qualified to do this work for your team is critical and this video is designed to help. While we are not digging into the requirements of the building code or the inspection standards this information is from the ICC Special Inspection Manual.

Our first video in this series will show you an easy way to confirm that your special inspector meets the requirements of the inspection manual. The next two videos to follow will explain the responsibilities of the building official and the architect as they are called out in the ICC Special Inspection Manual.

If you are an architect or a building official, we hope this video helps you do your job a little more easily.

If you have any questions, feel...

Firestop at head of wall joints seems like a basic installation, but this video is designed to help you look at this basic installation a bit more critically so you can ensure the life safety of your projects meets codes and standards.

The world is a weirdly different place, where its not rude to walk to the other side of the street when you see someone coming. Many of you know that I am in NJ so with this change in place I have decided to to come up with a Covid Creation to share with you all. This will be a series of videos that will focus on fire rated joints. In time we will add in membrane and through penetrations as well, but we have to start somewhere and since I have a sponsor for a few of the videos I figured this was as good a place to start as any.

I hope this serves you and maybe entertains you a little as you learn.

Please let me know what you think of this video, other topics you would find valuable and any suggestions to make this better.

You can check out the video...

Welcome back. We are still hunkered down in the Halpert Home and still talking about how to properly patch a rated wall. I’m having a great time putting together these videos for you and can’t wait to share them with you.  We are going to stick to the same topic as last week, which is patching rated walls. Now you know how to patch a one hour rated wall but that document didn’t really give you enough specifics to know how to patch a two hour rated wall. We can fix that today though.

If you know me, you know I used to live in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is in Clark County, NV and  the building officials are county officials.   The only reason this matters is because they have this awesome document that relates to the discussion of patching rated walls. They took the Gypsum Association document I shared with you last week and mandated that for repair of rated gypsum walls.

Here is their Field Inspection Guide (FIG). If you have any...

Today’s Topic- How do you properly patch a one hour rated wall?

Hi everyone. I hope you are doing well despite the lock down and virus. We are breathing easy over here and I pray that the same is true for you, your family and your teams.

I have been capitalizing on this time to develop a new skill and I can’t wait to share the results with you. It will be some training videos.

One of them will discuss the difference between regular drywall and type X, another will talk about type X drywall vs type C.  Since that is all coming down the pike in the next week or two, I wanted to share somethings that will compliment that discussion.

Once you have built a rated wall at some point in time its likely SOMEONE will poke a hole in it. This could happen during construction if someone decides to relocate a pipe for example.

So how do you patch it. If you ask the Gypsum Association, this is how you should patch a rated wall. Please take a...