 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. Today, I'm joined by Jim Bell. I'm the director of operations, the National Storm Shelter Association. That's probably one of my favorite tests I've ever gotten to observe because we basically have a giant air cannon and we shoot two by fours at the door in specific spots and the door can't deflect past a few inches. Nothing can come off on either side. It looks so fun, but it is such a serious conversation and topic. I've never worked with more nervous people than I work with with the hardware group because the hardware is vulnerable. And if they're there making sure everything's put on right, make sure all the bolts and everything is done right because you have to do three tests. And if you lose one item on one test and even if there's a paper behind the door, so something falls off the door and rips the paper, you fail the test and you got to start from scratch again. So it's nerve-wracking to do that testing, but it's there to protect. So when people haven't done that testing, they say, oh yeah, this will pass. We say that all the time, every test we do, oh, this is gonna pass. And then something very small will go through and tear the paper and on it again. Luckily, the one time I was out watching this in person, nothing went wrong. So we passed, everybody was so happy, but... Well, there's a celebration almost when you do that, when you pass a test and there's nothing goes wrong. And so it's usually preliminarily tested a couple of times and then you go to the serious test of whether or not you pass or fail and then you go through that whole process again, that you hope everyone did everything right. It is pretty serious and it's, when someone says, oh, my door will pass it, it's good and strong, it's a thick door. And that's not what you really had. You never usually have to worry about the door itself. It's all the connections and all the parts and pieces that make that process work. There's a label from your certifier that tells you that goes on the door just like a fire label or we laugh sometime, there's so many labels on the door, you just have one edge of the door would be a label and that's the bottom line. That's right, at the end of the day, it's just protecting the life inside. Can you talk about the differences between residential shelters because we're seeing the demand for that increase and then community shelters, which is what you'd find on a school or any public building? Basically the guideline is anything under 16 persons, or under can be a residential shelter if it's used in a residential application. In 2020, when the new FEMA 320 came out, before that FEMA 320 was for residential and light commercial shelters. During that time, we found that people were using residential shelters and commercial buildings when there wasn't a high occupancy requirement. But remember I said that you still had to build it to the building code. And in the building code for commercial buildings, you've got to have, there's egress requirements, there's, if you've got three points of latching, you need to have just one lever motion to operate all three points of latching so you can get out of a building. There's a number of requirements in commercial that residential buildings don't require. So they've changed that to just residential for FEMA 320. You can have a shelter with three dead bolts and a classroom door that doesn't meet egress. And that was one of the points that people had to wrap their heads around so that they have to build a shelter for a commercial facility. Or, if it's a pre-built shelter, it's got to be using the three point hardware that will have single release retractions, there's prior codes, there's other things that you have to be aware of that that door has to meet. And swing it out swings an important issue when you're dealing with building codes rather than just residential standards. And you have to build it as, because it's gonna function 99% of the time as a regular door in a commercial building. Then when it comes time that you're gonna be in the path of a tornado, it's got to latch down and be just, operate just like the wall will. It can't allow a failure during a severe storm as the bottom line as we're protecting the occupants really doesn't matter about how pretty it is or all the bells and whistles that we would like to have. The bottom line is it has to protect the occupants of the shelter when things are all set and done. That was one of the big differences is the occupancy, residential, you build them for, I think it's three square feet per person, five square feet per person and a community shelter. And then it goes up to 20 square feet if you have a wheelchair occupants you gotta have so many wheelchair occupants and a community shelter. And so there's complete differences as to the occupancy of the shelter. Those are the major ones that kind of define the difference between a commercial or community shelter. And it's, like I said, the residential shelter 16 persons or less, all other sizes are called community shelters. Everything that's not a residential shelter is called a community shelter. You can have some small community shelters but you still have to build it to FEMA 361 and ICC 500 and the building code for commercial buildings. All right. Well, Jim, do you have any final thoughts to share with us today? Yeah, that you continually have to keep up because like I said, the code people are working year-round now. Usually we just prepare for the next version of the code and the 2014 ICC 500 and we had the 2020 ICC 500. We had the 2018 update. So we're gonna keep seeing those. And as people, you know, we get changes brought up from the general public to architects and engineers and building owners also, you know, so I didn't, well, why can't we do this? And they have to look at it and see, and they try to look at it to make sure that they're not adding too much expense to, if we make the shelters too expensive to build and people are just going to opt out of building them even though they're required in most codes. And then the fact that they're for residential shelters, there's rebate programs that require you to build shelters a certain way. Alabama, June 1st is requiring that all their residential shelters meet the 2020 code which has different requirements. Most shelter manufacturers, they don't have that updated testing. You know, it requires follow-up service with your certifier that if you make any changes in your shelter, you have to have it written off so that it doesn't weaken the shelter, change anything. You have to use the shelter exactly the way it was tested if you can't change it afterwards. So that's what the follow-up service does is to make sure you're manufacturing it the same way that you tested it. And right now that's with a lot of the municipalities or that's a state of Alabama that's put that into effect there and we're really pushing on building officials. Now that all they got to do is look and see if that has a label. Building officials might be more apt to go in and do those inspections to make sure that there's still a lot of manufacturers that don't test anything and they're out there selling shelters. So it's still a buyer's beware for homeowners that make sure that they're buying the proper thing. The big things that we're looking at right now with the individual states. I just found out that state of Mississippi is adopted the 2020 code. So that's the one thing you need to look at is what the state has adopted and so what your requirements are for putting a shelter in. So my takeaway for residential shelters is check for certification and leave your label on. You know how your pillows say don't remove this label? Yeah. Don't remove your label from your storm shelter. No, absolutely. That's that verification that I went through the proper testing that they had the proper drawings to how to install it because that's, you know, don't ever have someone say, oh, you can install this shelter in your closet. It doesn't have a slab or it connects to because if the house blows, so does the shelter. So, you know, there's all kinds of things that people will say you can do, but you can't. If you want to be protected, if you want to sit in your shelter and worry about what you're gonna see once the tornado goes through instead of are you gonna survive it? There's a big difference. Yeah. All right, Jim. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great seeing you again. It's been such a long time. And if anybody else is interested in learning anything else about what they've heard here today about storm shelters, you can go to the National Storm Shelter Association. I'm gonna put that link below. You'll also be able to get in contact with Jim if you have questions about shelters through that website and his LinkedIn profile will also be linked below. That's what I do. Thanks for watching.