Ten-minute rule for building safety

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Town of Strathmore council had Gerry Baron from the Safety Codes Council come in and speak about the 10-minute rule.
Brown provided an overview of the 10-minute rule in terms of safety codes for buildings.
“The 10 minute rule is what the industry coins it in the building code. In that part of the building code (it) talks about around limiting distances that would be envisioned as the distance between building a wall and a midway point to another building,” said Baron. “It’s based on a mirror image principle, so the identical building to the identical building. It turns into a more scientific approach based on criteria: what’s the use and occupancy of a building, what’s the nature of it’s construction, what’s the height and length of the wall by how many openings are in it.”
The approach is essentially based on the fire protection surrounding the building.
“The building code also says where the fire department takes more than 10 minutes to respond to get there, which in itself is a whole other set of calculations, because when a call does come in, when does the clock start,” said Baron. “The way the code looks at it is when you exceed the 10 minutes that limiting distance now doubles.”
Baron cautioned that there is no way of really solving the 10-minute issue.
“So there’s not a particular straight answer to the 10-minute issue because of all of these other factors that need to come into consideration. So within that … changes to the construction types and techniques,” said Baron. “For example if you were to put in a standard 2X6 wall and you had to put some exterior grade x-rated drywall (up), then you have fire proofing on the outside, you change the characteristics of the performance of that wall, which invariably changes that distance to the midway distance of that wall.”
Councillor Steve Grajczyk admits this will be a complex formula that will not be implemented over night.
“This already complex to me anyway,” said Grajczyk. “I don’t know about the rest of council, but I need a Reader Digest version of all these numbers and everything else can’t be done in one evening.”
Grajczyk had asked Baron about how another fire hall could mitigate some issues. “You can build as many fire halls as a community grows,” said Baron, “but you’re never going to get caught up to it because it’s always the type of construction and the use of not building it that drive the expectation of performance.”
Baron offered his answer to Councillor Bob Sobol’s question whether the builder’s costs adhere to the law and is it in reach.
“It’s always within reach, I don’t know what normal (cost) would be. I do know a normal here is going to be different than a normal in the City of Calgary, where they start getting into the one million dollar envelope on housing,” said Baron.
“I don’t expect you’ve got that here. If your builders in your community are big on steel studs for example … I had that blip happen when I was in the field and I had builder’s come through … and all of sudden they’re big on steel studs, building houses on steel studs. It can be done.”
Baron added that the costs are not astronomical to do this project.
Deputy Mayor Rocky Blokland thought Baron’s information was of value.
“I’m getting a lot of information here tonight that’s certainly starting to straighten things out. I like the possibility of more fire halls not being the answer,” said Blokland. “One of the best things we’ve got going in Strathmore is our volunteer fire department and kudos to them, we’ve got a great fire service in this town. I stress the word volunteer because I firmly believe we can have three fire halls in town, but as long as we’re strictly volunteer to get to those 10 minute response times can be pretty difficult.”