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Glass and Glass Garage Doors


iskiebaedistillery

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Hello,

I have seen a lot of breweries with garage doors, and a few distilleries here and there.  I am looking at the glass ones in particular. Given you have approved padlocks or locking mechanisms, can anyone share info about how these doors fit into the fire and security codes? I think they look very nice and would like to incorporate them into my distillery if it is feasible. I am looking at doors along the lines of these:

http://www.etodoors.com/full-view-aluminum-clear-glass-commercial-garage-door-2598.html/

 

Thanks!

 

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Do you mean to use the door as a opening to the outside? Or between the production area and public space, like a tasting room? Very different requirements. If your fire marshall is going to require multi-hour fire separation between the latter, and explosion-proof shielding, the door itself will be very expensive, and you will like have to have a heat-triggered secondary fire door that would close over it as well.

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Of course, your fire marshall has the final call, but IBC separation rules are 1hr (basically standard construction) between F1 and A and no separation requirement between F1 and B, assuming sprinklered space.

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Bluestar, the plan is to have garage doors both between the production area and the cocktail room as well as between the cocktail room and the outside. Neither of the doors will be in close enough proximity to the stills deeming explosion proof shielding necessary. So my main concern is security for the exterior garage door.

 

Thanks for the info 3dog, yes the space will be sprinklered.

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5 hours ago, 3d0g said:

Of course, your fire marshall has the final call, but IBC separation rules are 1hr (basically standard construction) between F1 and A and no separation requirement between F1 and B, assuming sprinklered space.

Right, if you are F1. That limits you to 240 (sprinkled) or 120 (unsprinkled) gallons of stored spirits. If you are classified as H3 for larger quantities of stored spirits, then you will need a multi-hour separation. Also need separation between F1 or H3 and M. M is often used to allow unlimited storage of spirits in bottles, and to separate that quantity from the F1 or H3 quantity limit, you need more separation.

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1 hour ago, iskiebaedistillery said:

Bluestar, the plan is to have garage doors both between the production area and the cocktail room as well as between the cocktail room and the outside. Neither of the doors will be in close enough proximity to the stills deeming explosion proof shielding necessary. So my main concern is security for the exterior garage door.

No problem to the outside. To the production area, you still may have the separation problem, even a 1 hour glass door can be very expensive. Distance for explosion protection is not usually so much the question, it is direct line of sight. But if you are far enough away, you can always put a fixed explosion-proof glass or lexan separation in between. And if you need more fire separation, the drop down fire doors can be added. It is all just money ;-) but in the end, it will be up to your fire marshall.

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18 hours ago, bluestar said:

Right, if you are F1. That limits you to 240 (sprinkled) or 120 (unsprinkled) gallons of stored spirits. If you are classified as H3 for larger quantities of stored spirits, then you will need a multi-hour separation. Also need separation between F1 or H3 and M. M is often used to allow unlimited storage of spirits in bottles, and to separate that quantity from the F1 or H3 quantity limit, you need more separation.

Key tips are sprinklers and avoiding A for tasting room designation. F-1, B and M have a 1 hour separation requirement from H-3. Not sure M buys a distiller much as who wants to take the tax hit storing bottled spirits outside the DSP? They're exempt from storage limits under 27 - 2701.1-1 anyway. M also has a lower square foot per occupant than B, driving up bathroom and parking costs.

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Thank you for the replies gentlemen. No need for unlimited storage, I am starting out small in quantity and budget. The 240 gallon limitations should serve me alright along with the wood cask exception. Our big focus is whiskey and rum, so the majority of the stored spirits will be in processing (and I if I recall there might be an exception for that as well?). Bluestar, do some fire marshals really require anything in direct line of sight be explosion proof? Being that the space is a rectangle, that would get pricey extremely fast. Is there a certain thickness of Lexan that qualifies as explosion proof?

3dog, from what it sounds like talking to the city we would be classified F1, but I'm not sure on the tasting room. Is there fire ratings for glass in general? I have seen two distilleries with glass walls separating the cocktail room and production area. 

 

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On September 5, 2016 at 9:03 AM, 3d0g said:

Key tips are sprinklers and avoiding A for tasting room designation. F-1, B and M have a 1 hour separation requirement from H-3. Not sure M buys a distiller much as who wants to take the tax hit storing bottled spirits outside the DSP? They're exempt from storage limits under 27 - 2701.1-1 anyway. M also has a lower square foot per occupant than B, driving up bathroom and parking costs.

M occupancy can make sense if you have a larger retail outlet as part of the building, including sale of packaged (bottled) goods and cocktails, because it has no limit on amount of bottle stock. But if you are going to push those limits up, that could increase separation requirement above the 1 hour between occupancies (code on that is a little fuzzy, like how you determine to handle barrel storage exception in H3). And, as you point out, you need the sprinklers or separation will have to be greater than 1 hour as well.

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17 hours ago, iskiebaedistillery said:

The 240 gallon limitations should serve me alright along with the wood cask exception.

Under the newest IBC code, the wood barrel exception only applies to H3 occupancy under certain conditions (adequate ventilation, etc.). There was a very good presentation on this at last year's ACSA meeting, grab the viewgraphs from that if you can. You might get by with the exception under F1 occupancy, if your code reviewer and fire marshall are using older versions of the code or something like UBC. We have 1 hour separation between sprinkled F1 (production) and H3 (storage/processing), and then no special separation required between F1 and B or M (the F1 is between the H3 and B/M).

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The MN Fire Code groups wines and distilled spirits in casks together as non-applicable under the chapter of flammable and combustable liquid, but I'm sure conflicting codes can be found in just about every aspect of a DSP.  I would really like to stay away from H occupancy, so I think the F1/B combo is the way to go if we can.

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