What is Passive Fire Protection & Fire Stopping?: A Comprehensive Guide

1. What is the Purpose of Passive Fire Protection?

So, what is Passive fire protection? Passive fire protection is a series of measures designed to promote fire safety in various buildings. It aims to help slow the spread of fire or contain flames by installing fire-resistant walls, floors and doors. By cordoning off building sections, the potential damage caused by a fire is limited. It is also a useful way to give occupants more time to evacuate a building if there is a fire safely.

When trying to understand why passive fire protection is important, it helps to know how it works. By using materials that are designed with materials that can withstand high temperatures, the structural integrity of the building is greatly enhanced. Structures will take longer to collapse with passive fire protection measures installed, and other issues like fire or smoke spread are also limited.

2. What is the Difference Between Active and Passive Fire Protection?

There are several types of fire protection systems. The term “active fire protection” refers to equipment installed in buildings that activates when the equipment (or a person) detects a fire: for example, a smoke detector, sprinkler system, or fire extinguisher.

While all of this active fire protection is required, it is far more effective for a fire not to spread in the first place. The fire can be contained by multiple passive fire protection measures before it becomes too large to handle.

That said, you aren’t required to pick just one method. Both active and passive measures will be included in a comprehensive fire protection strategy. The fire protection plan you choose depends on factors such as the building’s design, size, and purpose, as well as other elements like water availability in the region and the allocated time set for evacuation.

3. Why it’s Important to Have a Passive Fire Protection Strategy

Every structure, no matter how big or small, should have an emergency fire plan. The Building Regulations 2019, Fire Safety, Approved Document B – Requirement B3, Internal Fire Spread (structure) states “The building shall be designed and constructed so that, in the event of a fire, its stability will be maintained for a reasonable period”, therefore it is incredibly important to comply with these laws and regulations. Passive fire protection is a key component of any emergency fire strategy because it was created for three fundamental purposes:

• To decrease the amount of financial damage caused, by ensuring the structure of the building remains intact.

• To increase the amount of time people have to evacuate buildings, by making it harder for the fire to spread from room to room.

• To save the lives of people within the buildings, by allowing escape routes to remain protected.

PFP provision is required in every structure, whether it’s residential or non-residential. The Building Regulations 2010, Fire Safety, and Approved Document B are the regulations that must be followed when constructing new buildings, renovating old ones, or extending existing structures in England. It states that “If a fire separating element is to be effective, every joint or imperfection of fit, or opening to allow services to pass through the element, should be adequately protected by sealing or fire stopping so that the fire resistance of the element is not impaired”.

5. Fire Stopping

Fire stopping is the sealing of any aperture to keep fire, smoke, and heat from passing through building compartments. Fire-resistant compartments may be used to compartmentalise a structure both vertically and horizontally, limiting the spread of fire. To limit fire propagation, structures must implement fire stopping.

The typical structures being built today have far more combustible materials or components than those that have been constructed previously. Modern building fires develop and spread at a rate of around 5 to 10 times faster than buildings did in the past, according to CTIF.org. In this modern age, it is critical to safeguard or extinguish a fire if one should break out, as this means the need for priority protection of the structure or prevention of a fire is paramount.

With new structures, building firms invest heavily in pipes, HVAC ducts, and other fixings that pass through compartment parts of the property. “Weak spots” are created in the structure when gases, smoke, and flames are not adequately controlled or protected.

Firestops are used to fill in the holes or strengthen areas where heat, gas, and open flames may pass through to other parts of the structure. They’re intended to prevent hot gases, poisonous smoke, and uncontrolled fires from spreading throughout the area and surrounding structures.

7. Intumescent Coatings

The use of intumescent coatings for structural steels has been proven and successful in protecting buildings from structural failure.

Intumescent coatings, often known as reactive paint, react with the heat from a fire, specifically temperatures above 120°C. The paint will intumesce (swell) 50 times its thickness and form a proactive, carbon layer that thermally insulates the steel for a specified duration when exposed to temperatures above the threshold. Depending on the covering, this can be anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes. This time allows people to be safely removed from the building and protects the building’s structural integrity before firefighters can put out the fire.

There are two main types of intumescent coatings:

• Soft char – Thin film intumescent coatings are the soft char intumescent coatings for steel. They’re lightweight coverings that, when heated, form a foam-like char layer that is an ineffective heat conductor and thus slows heat transfer. The char is caused by a chemical reaction between ammonium, polyphosphate, pentaerythritol, and melamine; however, other combinations can also be used. To delay the swelling reaction’s activation, a fire retardant topcoat may be applied to the thin film intumescent coating.

• Hard char – Hard char intumescent paint for steel is also known as thick film intumescent paint because it is applied in thicker layers than soft char solutions. These intumescent coatings were designed to combat hydrocarbon fires, but they may be used for a variety of applications. The char is created from sodium silicate and graphite.

8. External Fire Barriers

External fire barriers are used to stop the spread of flames and smoke throughout a building’s roof and ceiling regions, as well as any hidden voids. Fire barrier systems are recommended for voids of up to 10.5 meters tall. Vertical fire barrier systems keep both insulation and integrity for periods of up to 120 minutes, whereas friction fire slabs only provide up to 60 minutes of protection. External fire barriers limit the spread of fire and smoke within a building, when there is no barrier, fire and smoke may rapidly travel up the structure.

10. Fire Rated Partitions

Typically, fire resistant walls that are used to separate existing rooms in buildings must provide a barrier to the passage of fire from one side of the room to the other. Building codes and requirements for workplaces and factories typically demand a 30-minute fire resistance rating for any partitioning product.

Fire-rated partitions must meet each of the required protective criteria, depending on the application, such as integrity, insulation, and in some cases, load-bearing capacity.

There are two types of fire rated partitions, vertical and horizontal:

• vertical – walls, partitions, and vertical membranes.

• horizontal – floors, ceilings, and horizontal protective membranes.

11. Passive Fire Protection Accreditation(s)

Third-party product certification gives assurance that the item is suitable for its intended use, that it adheres to a defined quality system, and that it is connected with factory production through testing by a fire laboratory. The different methods of third-party product certification vary somewhat from who is offering them, but they all evaluate most or all of the following criteria:

• Inspection and monitoring visits to ensure that manufacturing processes and facilities are consistent with requirements.

• The product’s initial type testing.

• An evaluation of the product test and assessment evidence against a ‘technical schedule’ to ensure that the accreditation covers the most possible applications.

• Traceability from the start of production, through to factory, to the site.

• Product labelling to provide consumers with assurance and facilitate tracing.

12. Who is Responsible for Passive Fire Protection?

In the United Kingdom, passive fire protection must comply with Building Regulations, which ensure that people can safely exit a building that does not collapse as a result of a fire. Fire safety standards are determined by legislation, which places the duty on building owners, managers, occupants, and designers to conduct regular fire risk assessments that should include a review of the PFP.

According to experts, the construction plan should have a clear fire protection strategy that includes certified passive fire components. To protect against compromising fire protection, the number of persons who might modify the specification must be limited. If a significant number of modifications are made, it is recommended that a qualified third party revises the fire protection strategy.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 states that “You are responsible (for fire safety) if you are an employer, landlord, owner, occupier, or anyone else in control of the premises such as a facilities manager”. “As the responsible person you must:

• Carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly

• Tell staff or their representatives about the risks you’ve identified

• Put in place, and maintain appropriate fire safety measures

• Plan for an emergency

• Provide staff information, fire safety instruction, and training.