PASSIVE FIRE

PROTECTION

One of the most often overlooked areas of fire safety is passive fire protection. Sometimes referred to as ‘fire stopping’, passive fire protection is basically the prevention of the spread of fire using physical barriers.

Fire doors and fire door seals are the most obvious type of passive fire protection in many buildings but countless other measures will be required, including intumescent coatings such as paint or varnish, intumescent pipe collars, dampers, constructional steel protection, gap filling, sealing fire barriers where services have penetrated and so on.

Argos Fire Protection Ltd are experts in all areas of passive fire protection so contact us today.

All buildings have to be compartmentalised to help prevent the spread of fire from one area to another

However in order to allow people to move around the building there obviously need to be doors.  These ‘fire doors’ as they are called have two very important and quite distinct functions: when closed they stop fire and smoke from spreading, and when open they provide a means of escape.

A well designed and properly installed fire door will delay the spread of fire and smoke without causing too much hindrance to the movement of people and goods.

Fire doors obviously need to be of fire resisting construction, but that’s not the end of the story.  In order to stop the spread of hot gasses and cold smoke, fire doors need to have intumescent strips and smoke seals installed to both sides and the head of the door.

It is often more cost effective to replace existing doors with complete new certified framesets, but where this is not desirable or possible then upgrading may be the answer.  Some methods of upgrading include: facing with non-combustible board, sandwiching door panels, and fitting intumescent paper, paints or varnishes.  It is likely that other upgrading measures will be required in conjunction with any of these methods.

Contact Argos Fire Protection for advice.