ACEC/MA Urges BBRS to Establish Clear Criteria for Fire Resistive Duct Assemblies for Town Officials

ACEC/MA Urges BBRS to Establish Clear Criteria for Fire Resistive Duct Assemblies for Town Officials

Download Letter sent to BBRS on 3/1/2021

ACEC/MA as part of  a group of stakeholders including designers, code consultants, general contractors, subcontractors, manufacturers, owners and suppliers involved with constructing buildings, recently contacted the Massachusetts Board of Building Regulations and Standards (BBRS) with the letter referenced above. ACEC/MA's Building Engineering Committee (BEC) discussed this issue at two recent BEC meetings. ACEC/MA is grateful to Joseph Kelly at Mass Construction Consultants, Inc.
for his leadership on this issue.

The stakeholders are asking BBRS to establish clear criteria for fire resistive duct assemblies

The letter follows up on a discussion at the Sept 8, 2020 BBRS meeting. At this meeting the Board voted to distribute the proposed memo “Fire Rated Duct Assembly Product Alternatives” to building officials throughout the commonwealth and left open the opportunity for further communication
around the topic to be discussed.

The stakeholder group is using the memo  as a starting point to help resolve the current unintended hurdles that exist to build with new, safe and, in some cases, better products. The memo served the purpose of clarifying the procedure for Building Officials to accept an AMMR and resolved the issue of a
non-BBRS memo that was misleading some jurisdictions. The stakeholder note that the BBRS memo does not address certain issues, causing confusion and/or refusals by building officials.

The stakeholders propose two (2) options. 

1. BBRS could choose to issue a bulletin similar to one issued by the City of New York (Bulletin 2018-003) on April 30, 2018 regarding fire resistive assemblies. The City of New York has explicit requirements for fire-resistive duct assemblies that all manufacturers, contractors, consultants, and engineers have to follow, creating clarity .

2. BBRS could adopt ICC ES - AC 179. The International Code Council (ICC) has a subsidiary group called ICC-Evaluation Service (ICC-ES). ICC-ES develops acceptance criteria for products not adequately covered within the codes. ICC-ES has published Acceptance Criteria for Metallic HVAC Duct Enclosure Assemblies (AC 179). This document was originally published in February of 2005 and has been revised several times since. The ICC-ES Committee is made up of code officials from across the country and holds public hearings to approve the Acceptance Criteria documents. AC 179 requires testing of fire rated duct systems in accordance with ASTM E 2816, Standard Test Methods for Fire Resistive Metallic HVAC Duct Systems.

It is important to note that a similar process occurred as part of the evolution of grease duct
enclosures. In the 2006 Edition of the International Mechanical Code ASTM E2336 was first
referenced. Prior to this specific reference, ICC-ES AC 101, Acceptance Criteria for Grease
Duct Enclosure Assemblies was used to document the acceptable performance of grease duct
enclosure assemblies.

Please contact our ACEC/MA BEC Co-Chairs if you have any questions:

Nick Ferzacca, PE, LEED
Principal 
Architectural Engineers, Inc.
(617) 542-0810 

Daniel G. Tenney, III, AIA
Senior Project Manager / Lead Architect
Weston & Sampson
(617) 412-4480 x7714