By Brian Pallasch
The Institute for Building and Home Safety (IBHS) hosted IIBEC members and staff this week at its research center in South Carolina. The IIBEC participants had an informative tour of the research center, including the full-scale main chamber facility, which includes a specially designed wind tunnel that is exceptionally large—6 stories tall and 145 feet wide by 145 feet long—followed by a tour of the hail lab where researchers create hailstones and then fire them at building enclosure components and systems using a hail-firing cannon. IBHS’s lab is the only one in the world that can test full-scale one- and two-story residential and commercial buildings in a controlled, repeatable fashion for highly realistic windstorms, wind-driven rain, hailstorms, and wildfire ember storms.
After the tour, the group had a wide-ranging discussion about the ways the two organizations can work together to improve building performance. This included discussions on educating IIBEC members about the research conducted by IBHS, providing more information about the benefits of the FORTIFIED Commercial program, and common goals to advance the resilience of codes and standards provisions. The FORTIFIED program is based on a voluntary construction standard backed by decades of research. Designers and contractors can use the program to make the building enclosure more resilient to severe weather.
The IBHS facility enables researchers to more fully and accurately evaluate residential and commercial construction materials and systems under realistic recreations of severe weather hazards.
This facility is also a tangible, public demonstration of the property insurance industry’s deep commitment to reducing and preventing losses that disrupt the lives of millions of home and business owners each year. The research conducted here significantly advances building science and influences residential and commercial structural design and construction, helping to create more resilient communities.
IBHS conducts full-scale demonstrations to illustrate and validate IBHS guidance. IBHS has staged several full-scale demonstrations and leveraged the impact of these demonstrations through traditional media, social media, presentations, and public policy engagement.
About IBHS and FORTIFIED
In an effort to reduce damage to commercial structures and help businesses reopen more quickly following severe weather, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) developed FORTIFIED Commercial™, a voluntary, superior construction standard and designation/compliance program.* FORTIFIED Commercial employs an incremental approach with three levels of designations available—FORTIFIED Roof™, FORTIFIED Silver™, and FORTIFIED Gold™—so design professionals can work with building owners to choose a desired level of protection that best suits their budgets and resilience goals.
