Fire prevention has become an important issue in recent years. In compliance with the most recent regulations on fire safety (Decree on Building Regulations), each new building must be divided into fire separation zones. Unsafe penetrations of water and electric installations negate the fire resistance of walls, floors and ceilings in a fire separation zone. Securing penetrations and joint seals in fire and fume compartments, or zones, is becoming an increasingly essential part of the job that installers must perform.

One of the primary safety objectives of the building regulations is to ensure that people are able to leave a burning building as safely and quickly as possible. Also that emergency services can enter the building to save lives and carry out effective fire containment.

The regulations aim for the following:

• To contain and limit the source and development of fire and smoke
• To limit the extent of the fire
• To safeguard people’s escape options
  

The requirements of the building regulations have been set down in the standards. BS476 (Fire resistance of building components) defines the duration of fire resistance of partition walls and ceilings. A construction component has a separating function if it is designed to prevent a fire from spreading through this component from one space to another, for a certain length of time. The integration of European test methods in EN 1366-2 and EN 1366-4 form the foundation for standards in most European Union countries.

A fire will exploit any opportunity to spread:

• by means of increased temperatures
• by breaking through floors and walls
• through apertures for pipes and cables
• up and down lift shafts
• fire spreading via outside of building

Passive, or in other words, constructive fire protection works by containing the fire within the fire separation zone where it started. By preventing fire (or smoke, hot fumes and flames) from spreading through a building, lives are saved and damage is limited.When Active Fire Protection Systems fail, as so often happens, there is still a Passive Fire Protection System that protects lives. When correctly applied, it assures users that there is sufficient time to leave the building before fumes, smoke and fire can spread.

Contrary to what many people believe, in a fire it is not the flames but the smoke and toxic fumes that are the biggest enemy of humans and animals. When a fire starts, visibility in a building can rapidly become restricted as a consequence of rapid and intense development of smoke. Smoke can spread with a velocity of approximately 15 metres per second, or 50 kilometres per hour. This is faster than the progress of fire and quite a lot faster than the speed of a human. When we assume that a human can keep his breath for just about 30 seconds and he moves approximately 1 metre in a smoke-filled room, that human can travel only 30 metres in those conditions!

Intense development of smoke makes it very difficult indeed for users to get their orientation in their efforts to vacate a building. In order to prevent this, the Building Regulations make general demands with regard to the maximum permitted development of smoke by a construction component that has a surface facing a room. The BIS Fire Protection System offers various products with adequate smoke retardance in fires.

BIS Pacifyre^® MKII Fire Stops together with Tangit^® Fire Resistance Systems meet the UK and European standards by a good margin. This is why the system has been so positively assessed by Chiltern fire in the UK and Efectis Nederland BV. More than 300 penetrations were tested by renowned test houses locally and abroad. The test reports are available for viewing.

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