What is Fire Compartmentation?

What is Compartmentation, and When is it Required?

Fire compartmentation is a strategy that prevents the spread of fires through building design and using fire retardant materials. Most fire tragedies occur when a fire spreads from one section of a building and engulfs the neighbouring sections and blocks. Fire compartmentation aims to contain a fire in a small building area long enough for firefighters to arrive on the scene and extinguish it.

Fire compartmentation is necessary for two main scenarios:

Life Safety

This mainly focuses on the design of buildings to give occupants ample time and escape routes in case of fires. Therefore, the building’s corridors, doors, stairways, and proximity to each other are designed so that people can quickly and safely evacuate the building. Additionally, the building material is mostly fire retardant to ensure those escape routes are usable.

Fire compartmentation covers the design of sections of a building, where evacuating the entire block may prove more dangerous than focusing on specific sections. Thus the idea of compartmentation, containing the fire in a particular section, so there won’t be a need to disturb occupants in the rest of the building. This prevents cases of stampedes, mass hysteria, and related chaotic reactions.

Property Protection

Limiting the fire to a specific location prevents further damage to the premises and the associated losses. Such containment is critical in buildings that have sections containing precious and sensitive material. For example, a fire that breaks out next to your company’s server room needs to be contained in that room to prevent damage to your expensive servers and loss of the hosted data.

How to Achieve Fire Compartmentation

Several strategies will ensure your building attains the proper fire compartmentation status:

Fire Doors

Fire doors and walls are entry and exit points in fire escape routes, which need fire protection to ensure safe passage for all occupants. Therefore, these sections should remain fireproof, and installing fire and smoke dampers in those fire doors achieves this objective.

Building Materials

The choice of building materials in construction has to be fireproof or fire retardant. Such material prevents the spread of fires across the building, minimises the effect of the present fire, and keeps escape routes safe for the occupants. Such building materials include:

Concrete: This material is fire-resistant and non-combustible, making it the ideal material for slowing down a fire’s progress. A fire compartmentation approach to the building’s design will ensure that whatever other materials burn in one section, there is no link to other similarly flammable material in the next room or section through the concrete wall, floor, or roof.

Brick: Bricks are also fire-resistant and non-combustible. The only chance of fire spreading depends on the type of mortar used. Nonetheless, bricks offer better fire protection than most other materials, except concrete.

Gypsum: Gypsum is a nontoxic and fire-resistant building material commonly used in drywall. Drywall contains water that turns into steam in the presence of fire. Therefore, a fire outbreak will quickly be extinguished where you’ve used gypsum drywall, thus controlling its spread.

Cavity Barriers

Cavities are enclosed spaces within a building that remain unused and often inaccessible. Those spaces are perfect for preventing fire spreading through different sections of the building.

Fire Compartmentation Requirements

A building’s fire compartmentation standards should maintain certain thresholds before and during a fire outbreak to prevent loss of lives or injuries and minimise property loss:

The building’s design must ensure that fire in a compartment is confined solely to that area, thus preventing the fire from spreading and allowing firefighters to contain it effectively.

Fire escape routes must remain structurally sound to give occupants time to escape safely. As such, the walls, floors, and doors should prevent smoke, hot gases, and flames from seeping into the escape route sections. Additionally, the escape routes should have effective heat insulation for the fire duration.

The insulation material in the cavity barriers should effectively prevent fire from spreading to other parts of the building.

Conclusion

Fire compartmentation is a necessary health and safety measure in commercial and residential buildings. Should a fire start, it is important to contain it in that section, thus allowing effective extinguishing, saving lives, and preventing property damage.

If you’re searching for an expert and professional passive fire protection service, get in touch today, and let Ark Fire Protection help keep your premises safe.