Metal Studs and the IECC

[fasboater]

What effect is this international energy conservation code having on the metal stud market? What changes are being made in the industry to accommodate for the new IECC?

 

[ishvaaag]

As an architect in Spain I have seen all the evolution from traditional façades where no insulation was not (by prescription) neccesary to apparition of more and more stringent codes. I would say that the approach to the issue has been in general quite easy-going and not till very recently, the last decade at most, that a more serious compliance of detail-insulation (other than at the industrial façade industries) has become more important. Even now, however, and starting from prior practice, the answer to the problem is still casual, since the practices (nor codes, nor softwares, nor construction types) have evolved to any predominant ways as in the past there were. The grown requirements of professionals involved has produced that someone in the mechanical services area is caring in most significant cases of the final insulation matters, and so it is normally a matter of the moment in which the collaboration of such professional starts that the design can have a more integrated structural and insulation design.

The competitive nature of the bidding in construction also perturbates the stability of the designs, as well in this area. The designer's team can't count on that its design is going to be the constructed one, availability or pricing changing what projected.

All this, plus the fact that two systems aiming to disparate objectives such structural and insulation fitness are always to have design friction issues will surely make that for some time ahead the structure vs insulation issue will remain a non stabilized matter.