Every business takes precautions to prevent a fire. It’s not only common sense, it’s a legal requirement. You can read the government guidance here, but it boils down to this: If you are an employer, the owner, the landlord, an occupier, or have control of the premises – for example, you’re a facilities manager, building manager, managing agent or risk assessor – then you’re responsible for fire safety in business or other non-domestic premises.
Ensuring fire safety is a serious business, and it’s about more than providing fire extinguishers and sign posting exits. Fire Compartmentation and firestopping strategies and devices will enable you to achieve consistent fire safety throughout your buildings.
Compartmentation
We’ve talked before about how building compartmentation is a simple and elegant fire protection system. Buildings are made up of self-contained fireproof blocks, meaning that if fire breaks out in one, it is contained there and the others are safe. This gives time to clear the building and makes it safer for the fire service to enter.
Things get a little tricky where fire compartments have to be breached. This is necessary to supply services such as power, telecoms, heating and ventilation throughout the building. It is where these breaches occur, and in the gaps between compartments – between walls, floors and ceilings – that opportunities exist for fire, heat, gases and smoke to spread rapidly.
Firestopping
Gaps must be sealed in order to preserve the fire resistance of each compartment. Firestopping is the sealing of those gaps.
A range of materials may be used to facilitate firestopping. They include:
- Wraps and coverings such as fire collars, which are fitted on pipes, and fire covers, which are used in suspended ceilings where luminaire lighting has been fitted.
- Malleable materials such as fire sealants and gap fillers, used to fill the openings and spaces through which things like conduits, wires and pipes pass.
- Coated batts, slabs of high-density insulation material, treated on both sides with fire-resistant material and handy for sealing gaps where services pass through walls, or where different materials – such as masonry and plasterboard – meet.
- Fire compound, a specially formulated gypsum-based mortar that can be trowelled in or poured around breaches in the fire compartment.
- Cavity barriers, which are non-rigid firestops used to close compartments by being placed in walls, floors, ceilings and roof voids, as needed.
Everything works together
The various components used work together to form a firestop system. A key component in how effective that system will ultimately be is making sure that the correct materials and fire rating are used in each case. It’s also essential that they are used appropriately and fitted properly. It only needs one to fail for the whole system to be compromised.
Decisions as to what firestop materials to use and where to use them should be made by suitably qualified people. What worked in one situation might not be appropriate for another; every building is different.
Fire, heat, gases and smoke are dangerous and destructive. Preserving property and limiting damage to buildings is important, but the far bigger consideration is simply that firestop systems save lives.
Fire stopping around fire and smoke dampers
Our engineers regularly inspect and test dampers that have been incorrectly fitted or have gaps in fire compartmentation evident, meaning the fire compartment would be easily breached by fire and or smoke.
Our team use independently certified fire stopping materials, rated to the specific area of compartmentation matching the building’s fire strategy document or compartmentation plan.
Repairing these breaches is not merely a maintenance task; it is returning the life critical safety system to full and effective operation.
