International Code Council (ICC) Approval

The following explanation was provided by Hoot Haddock to clarify the importance of the ICC (International Code Council) approvals and the differences between some states official requirements in building, in this case, California and Florida.

ThermaSAVE approvals
18 August 2009

The International Code Council, or ICC, sets the standards for building. All building officials are members of ICC. The ICC writes all building code. They hold conventions each quarter and building officials, engineers, architects and report holders are invited to attend. They discuss codes and decide if anything needs to be added, changed or deleted and then they vote on it.

This is where codes come from. The ICC has a lot of staff engineers that check and approve everything, and then they write it into the code. This includes the International Building code and the National Electrical and Mechanical Codes among others.

To get an ICC report, you have to get a licensed engineer to write the approval you want. ICC goes over it and then the testing starts. All tests with ICC have to be according to ASTM Standards, which is the world standard. There are over a hundred tests done. Everything imaginable is tested over and over again. All tests have to reach three times what your engineer says that it will sustain.. The tests include fire, wind, earthquake, termite, aging, freezing, thaw, moisture, and all connections and fasteners, to name just a few of the many things that are tested in their process.

When all of their engineers have been satisfied, you have to sign a contract with a licensed and bonded Quality Control Company. The one hundred page manual is written and accepted by the Quality Control Company, International Code Council and the Report Holder. Now the plant can start building by ICC standards.
Next, the Quality Control Company has to certify the plant by building some of our panels and testing them by three times the design load.

You have to be trained to do the Quality Control Program, then the Q.C. Company sends an inspector out unannounced to check to see that you are doing all of the Q.C. Program which consists of buying the proper materials, inspecting all of the materials as they come in and doing daily Q.C. tests. There are several of these daily Q.C. tests which must be documented. Q.C. documentation has to be kept up to date.

After meeting all of the requirements, the plant is given a stamp that has the ThermaSAVE logo, Q.C. Company logo, the address of the plant and the ICC approval number on it. Each and every panel that is built by ThermaSAVE bears this stamp of approval.

This process takes between 3 to 5 years and an enormous amount of testing to achieve. When you see this stamp, you can be assured that you are getting a quality product.

The quality control inspections continue for as long as you keep the stamp and the report must be upgraded when the codes change.
As you can clearly see, the International Code Council approval is the ultimate approval in the building industry. You can also see why so few companies have it. One can spend an enormous amount of time, energy and money in the pursuit of an ICC approval. There are no guarantees of success and if you fail the test, there are no refunds.

The state of California accepts the ICC, but it also has its own requirements. California has high wind loads on the coast and high earthquake loads. They have strict Quality Control programs to enforce the code. The State of California also puts its own stamp on our panels making it four stamps: State, ICC, QCC and ThermaSAVE.

The Florida Building code consists of a test putting an 8 foot X 12 foot wall in an opening in an airtight chamber and pulling a vacuum of 142 pounds per square foot and an outward pressure of the same force. They pull the vacuum and check for air leakage, spray water on it to check water penetration, and then they shoot 8 nine pound 2"X 4" boards at hurricane force that hit the wall on the end. If they break through to the inside of the wall, you fail. Our system passed.

This is the only part of the Florida Building code that I saw which I thought had value. Hurricane force, according to Florida and Dade County, is 135 miles per hour. They do not have a safety factor in their tests nor a Quality Control Program to see that you follow what you test. Also, they only test walls, not floors or roofs. Their approvals are written by a consulting engineer that you pick and hire to do the approval. There is no stamp on the product.

Since there is no Quality Control, it is up to the manufacturer to control quality.
Although The State of Florida claims to have the highest wind loads, our system was developed in Alaska where they have 200 miles per hour winds, the most earthquakes, and the heaviest snow loads. Alaska does require ICC approval which means that you have that safety factor of three. We have lots of buildings of several types in Alaska and to date, they have no known problems. Our first building was a house which was built in 1984 and it is still performing well.