 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. Today, I'm joined by Jim Bell. Jim, welcome and please introduce yourself. Thank you, Mia. Actually, I've been retired from ASA Abloy for about two years now and going on two years and it doesn't seem like that. But I became the director of the National Storm Shelter Association, director of operations. For those who don't know the National Tornado Shelter Association is basically code driven to look at the ICC 500 and also we're involved with the FEMA 320 and three one guidelines for shelters. My position is to promote the codes throughout the country for shelters be involved in the ICC 500 committees and the FEMA committees. And I'm here always to answer questions any questions about shelters either from residences what kind of shelter they can buy or building officials, emergency managers. I talked to them a lot about looking at shelters. So it's a very narrow thing, but I'm all about shelters. It's a very important thing especially in certain pockets of the country. That seems like a big role. What's your tip? Do you have a typical day to day? What does your typical day to day look like? Typically I'm either on an ICC 500 code meeting. I take calls all day long from, I probably get three to four calls from different people asking, what's the best shelter we can buy to what does the code say about doors? Just general questions. We've hired a secretary to NSSA that does all the keeping and all the seals and does all that. So I'm basically, I work on our conference. I get interviewed a lot. Whenever there's a bad tornado, I'll get NPR newspaper or somebody to interview us. So I do all those. So it's an interesting job and I still try to be retired too. Well, I don't think we've ever had a guest that's been interviewed by NPR. So you might be our most famous guest on the channel so far. Well, I'm in the middle of a process working with the weather channel and doing expanding shelter codes. And actually, what can we do to protect the general public better? Interesting job. Yeah, sounds like it. So can you tell me what's new in the storm shelter codes? It's ever evolving, right? It is. It's ever evolving the standard itself, the ICC 500 comes out just about every six years with a whole new version. But now since the 2020 code, the code committee works all year long coming up with any changes. Right now we're working on a 2020 code update for the 2020 shelter code. You wouldn't think, but there's a lot of modifications that's going on but they're just very, it's more like tweaking it now. We're talking about louvers and walls with louvers and doors because there wasn't much information about that last code cycle we talked about overhead doors and having requirements for those. And there's always things for swinging doors. And telling me earlier, we spent, we have a call yesterday and we spent an hour and a half on toilets. So it's not always glorious. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you guys get into everything. We need to protect all those essential functions in the shelters. And yeah, it's, there's new products come out and different things will come out that changes what we're doing. But the whole thing is all about protecting the occupants of the shelter. Sometimes we get away from that and talk about the owners and the owners don't wanna do this. But the gist of, and one thing that keeps us going is it's for the protection. And we're talking about school kids because most of these shelters are for K through 12. There's a lot of university to have these ICC 500 shelters being built in them. And the gist of it is protecting the occupants. Yeah. Now we're seeing an increase in hurricane shelters. What's, can you tell us what's driving that? The hurricane codes is, it started out basically Miami-Dade and the codes after Hurricane Andrew where we started having certain requirements about testing products in a shelter and how you build hurricane shelters. And now those codes are going up the coastlines. It's almost the entire coastline of the Gulf of Mexico and going up the East Coast because of different hurricanes we've had in the past. And really in the code itself, it talks about, and I think it's section 424, 423 or 424 where it says if you're going to build a shelter, it's not a tornado shelter, hurricane shelter. If you're going to build a shelter, you need to build it to the ICC 500. Those are more stringent codes than most of the local codes in Florida. It's kind of confusing right now because there's certain jurisdictions are asking for the Florida code, but to be testing towards the, most of the central facilities that you build for hurricane codes is the ICC 500. That's where we're seeing more and more because that's in most of the local codes along the coastlines that are requiring shelters and certain types of shelters. I grew up in South Florida, so I know about the differences in codes. So you need to pay particular attention to the type of code that the jurisdiction is asking you to meet. They're getting closer together. Some of the lighter codes are getting more stringent and also know that when you're building products that meet the code, if you're building in a commercial building, they have to meet the commercial code as well as the hurricane codes. And that's something that we've learned in the tornado shelter business is the fact that you have to meet the building code. The building code is the base code of how you build the building and then the tornado code is how you strengthen that to meet the tornadoes. Hurricanes is a big part of it in throughout the country. If you noticed the last couple of years that the Gulf of Mexico has been hit hard, especially Louisiana. So they're looking at their codes very seriously in the Texas coast. And one quick thing about Hurricanes, Texas, they used to be governed by the Texas Department of Insurance. Just a few years ago, they accepted the IBC of 2018 IBC for Texas. So they're following that code more than the requirements for the Texas Department of Insurance. Shelters are sheltered to us. It doesn't matter. You don't build a hurricane shelter to meet a tornado, but certain guidelines and different testing things that are required. What are some common questions that you hear about tornado shelters? The lot of questions that I get is products that people will try to use that maybe haven't been tested. Tornado codes are strictly, you test it as a unit because there's so many, especially a door. Now, one of the big changes in the last three years or so is they don't call a door a door in the code anymore. They don't call a window. They don't call a louver. It's all listed under Opening Protective Systems. It's protecting and opening in the building. It's required to be tested. It's required to be labeled. So when you're testing a door, you're not only testing the door. You're testing the frame. You're testing the hinges. You're testing the lock sets or exit devices. You're testing the reinforcements to hold those lock sets and exit devices. So there's no simple way of saying, oh, this worked on this door. It should work on that door. Component substitution is not a thing in the tornado shelter code. And that's the reason why is that there's so many moving parts that the door has to act like a regular door that meets all the ADA codes and meets everything else that you need a door to meet when it's not in a lockdown situation. But when there's a tornado coming or hurricane coming even, it has to act like the wall. So it has to be very strong and very secure, specific lockdown procedures. You don't have time to put up shutters over the openings to protect them that way. So the windows, the doors, the louvers, everything has to be strong enough to meet the impact that hit buildings during a severe storm. We tested the most severe storms. So if you're in an EF3, you shouldn't have any problems getting through it, but if an EF4 or 5 hit, that may be the last thing that's standing is that shelter. And we can't, going back to your substitution, component substitution statement, we can't take a door from one manufacturer and a hardware from another manufacturer unless it's all been tested as the system. Every manufacturer uses specific hardware to make their door and hardware meets as a unit. And while the testing, you know, working for ASA-Obloy, I've witnessed probably hundreds of tests going through the process, you know, when you're developing a new product, you know, you can go through and something will fail on a test and you go in and add reinforcements, you make it stronger. The next time you hit it, something on the completely opposite side of the door would fail because they were missing a reinforcement or something like that. So the testing is very specific for how a door and the hardware and the frame all interact with each other. So there is no substitutions allowed. Thanks for watching.