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Passive Fire Protection
It’s something you lose sleep over and hope will never happen: a fire roaring through your building. While every building owner, facility manager or property developer will do what he or she can to ensure that a fire never begins in the first place, the next step is knowing how to minimize its spread.
Most people are familiar with the basics of fire suppression (sprinklers, fire extinguishers, etc.), but a passive fire protection system is what actually contains a fire at its point of origin. It might be invisible and nearly forgotten, until the day come and you truly appreciate and depend on it.
Passive fire protection (PFP), despite its name, is always at work. Based on compartmentation of fire and preventing collapse through structural fire resistance, when properly installed and maintained, your building’s passive fire protection can save lives and assets, and the building itself.
Ultimately, you can’t afford not to have adequate passive fire protection throughout the building. Saving lives should be your No. 1 concern followed by asset protection. If the worst happens and a fire breaks out in your building, your due diligence will pay off when the fire is contained – people will have time to evacuate, and you will be back in business much sooner than if no passive protection systems were in place.
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Penetration Seals
Fire stopping or penetration seals are designed systems which include High Density Mineral boards coated with intumescent mastic installed in and around all penetrating services. Linear gaps sealed with intumescent acrylics and silicones ensuring the integrity of the fire barriers. Penetration and joints seal systems are available for up to 4 hours integrity and in accordance with national and international standards. Products are also available to protect against hydrocarbon fires.
Penetration seal systems must be specified in strict compliance with the manufacturer’s data sheets and tested/assessed for specific purpose. Seals should be used as a tested system and installed by a competent approved installer and in compliance with the manufacturer’s application instructions.
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Vermiculite Cement Coatings
Vermiculite coating is a tough, hard and highly stable passive fire protection coating system applied to structural steel members by spray application. It is a cost-effective way in ensuring structural steel integrity during a fire. It consists of a specialized factory produced blend of vermiculite, cementitious binders and supplied as a dry mix to which clean water is added on site. It does not respond to any form of expansion, foaming or chemical reaction to impart its fire protection properties. Fire rating of up to 2 hours can be achieved using a vermiculite cement coating system.
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Sprayed Intumescent Coatings
Intumescent coatings, often referred to as intumescent paint, are used in buildings as a passive fire resistance measure. They can be applied to structural members as an aesthetically pleasing fire protection system to steel elements. Various types of intumescent products and manufacturers are available and 30, 60, 90 and 120min fire rating on structural steel can be achieved.
The key feature of the intumescent coating is that it expands significantly when exposed to high temperatures, such as those found during a fire. Some intumescent products can expand to more than 50-times the original thickness. As the product expands it becomes much less dense, which then acts as an insulator that keeps the high temperatures away from structural members ensuring stability in the steel element.
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Smoke and Fire Curtains
A fire curtain is a specially manufactured and constructed curtain that is static or automatically descends from the ceiling to block an opening and stop fire and smoke spreading between two areas. In larger structures, several fire curtains are used which divide the building into ‘fire compartments’ when a fire occurs.
Automated Drop-down Fire curtains – Most non-static fire curtains are in fact automatic. They are linked to the fire alarm system so they automatically descend when a fire has been detected by the alarm system.
Static Fire Curtains – Also called fixed fire curtains, these curtains are permanently in place and are used to provide compartmentation in open spaces such as warehouses or lofts. These are predominantly used as smoke barriers to ensure effective smoke extraction.
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Fire escape and safety signage
Emergency safety and escape signs is crucial within a building both during the occupancy to indicate escape routes of the building, and in the event of a fire, indicating the required services to the fire department.
– It is important within a building to ensure that occupants are effortlessly directed to the nearest escape route out of the building, or indicating the vital fire-fighting equipment.
– It is a legal requirement to have these signs throughout the building and all signs are Photoluminescent signs to ensure clear visible direction during darkness.
– All signs should be SABS approved and kept according to building codes and standards.