Securing Reinforcing Inside Mullions For Glazing Contractors

https://youtu.be/LYBfavxsEnI
Stewart Jeske, MS, P.E. | Company Founder & Inventor

 

Hi Stewart Jeske, P.E. with JEI Structural
Engineering.   I’m going to talk a little

bit today about the importance of being
able to secure reinforcing inside of
mullions.  Vertical mullions and horizontal
mullions so that it is engaging the mullion

where it needs to be for loads.  The first
area that I want to talk about a little

bit is horizontal mullions and
reinforcing that we would put inside to

reinforce.   Horizontal mullions so
this is a solid tubular extruded

horizontal mullion.  So if we had to
reinforce this say for a 10-foot opening

or a 12-foot opening or even greater.
What we would need is some reinforcing

that goes inside of it.  Now here’s the
importance of securing whatever we use.

If reinforcing a tubular
reinforcing out of steel or something

like that we want to make sure it just
doesn’t sit there on the bottom of the

mullion because if it just sits there on
the bottom of the mullion it’s creating

additional load to the aluminum mullion.
It takes a long time and a lot of

deflection for it to actually engage and
support the aluminum mullion so it’s really

important for us to be able to fasten at
the ends of the horizontal mullion and

also, the center of the horizontal mullion
to make sure that this reinforcing is

     always at the top part of the horizontal
mullion and it’s actually doing the work

to keep thealuminum which is
the weaker part from deflecting downward.

That’s the important part we
actually, had a case we’re out in the

field we had several different mullions
that were reinforced over a tall wall

and it was over an entry area and they
were seeing a lot of

deflection and whatever we asked in the
field. We asked them you know how was

this secured how was the reinforcing
secured inside the mullion and they

actually, indicated it wasn’t it was
actually, just setting in there and so it

was actually causing additional
deflection of the horizontal mullions. So

that’s one item that I wanted to talk
about. The other is with a horizontal

mullion.  If we have an infill plate as is
seen right here this is a bottom infill

plate it’s important that we do not load
that infill plate or shim off of that

infill plate because it may cause too
much load for that infill plate to be

supported.  In this case we wouldn’t be
able to shim the thethis

reinforcing into place we would need to
have connections that actually connect

it either through the tongue through the
tongue into the into the structural

shape or we would have to have some type of connections in through the top part

to be able to actually engage that
reinforcing inside of the horizontal but

it’s very important that we do not load
the infill plate because it’s just a

snap in plate and we don’t want to
overload that snap in plate so that’s

horizontal mullion and what we will see
in terms of securing the reinforcing

inside of that the other item that I
wanted to talk a little bit about today

that we’ve kind of found out in a field
that’s important is security reinforcing

inside of vertical mullion as well the
importance of that is if we if we

have some type of a reinforcing that
might be a bent plate something like

this in the shape of a channel and we
try to put it inside of the vertical

mullion for reinforcing the vertical
mullion actually has a lot of distance in

there that it can actually deflect back
and forth before it actually engages in

it and so the appropriate thing that we
to do with this reinforcing to be able

to engage it and make sure that it moves
with the wind and that there’s not

noises in the system is that we would
either have screws that actually engage

this at the horizontals where the
horizontals go through or again we would

need to shim this reinforcing into place
to make sure that there’s shims at the

ends and in the middle so that it
adequately engages that reinforcing and

make sure that it does not
deflect until it reaches the reinforcing

one of the items that we experienced in
a project with reinforcing vertical

mullion was where we had some very long
and tall runs vertical tubular mullion

and we had some type of a reinforcing
that was a bent c channel and that was

supposed to be inside of it and we
actually, received reports from

inspectors in the field that this this
channel was not straight it was actually

bowed and out of place inside of the
vertical mullion they were hat somehow

they were able to gain access to the
inside look and see what was going on
and so it was not appropriately shimmed
or attached at the at the horizontal mullions so that very important for reinforcing to be adequately connected to the mullion at the ends and at the horizontal mullions.

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