Fire Protection Strategies: Understanding the Hidden Defences in Your Building

When most people think about fire safety, they picture alarms, sprinklers, or extinguishers. But behind every wall, floor, and ceiling lies another critical layer of protection, one that often goes unnoticed.

In this blog, we’ll explore the key passive fire protection strategies that keep your building safe, and why maintaining your passive fire protection systems is essential for both safety and compliance.

What Is Passive Fire Protection?

Passive Fire Protection (PFP) is a part of the fire strategy that aims to contain the spread of fire and smoke within a building using fire-resistant materials and structural elements.

What Passive Fire Protection Systems We Provide:

Fire Compartmentation
Fire compartmentation is vital for life safety and regulatory compliance. It is designed to contain the spread of fire and smoke within a building by subdividing the structure into more manageable sections or compartments using fire-resistant materials.

Fire Dampers

Fire Dampers are essential components of a building’s passive fire protection system, designed to prevent the spread of fire and smoke through heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) ducts. When a fire occurs and the temperature reaches 72 degrees Celsius, the fusible link is activated, causing the blade/curtain to close and therefore blocking flames and smoke from moving through the ventilation system, protecting the building and giving occupants more time to safely evacuate.

In addition to standard fire dampers, there are motorised smoke dampers (MSD), which are electronically controlled and specifically designed to prevent the spread of smoke rather than flames. These dampers are connected to the building’s fire alarm or smoke detection system, and they automatically close when smoke is detected, even at lower temperatures, ensuring that escape routes remain smoke-free and enhancing occupant safety.

Fire Doors

Fire doors are a crucial part of a building’s fire protection system. Unlike standard doors, fire doors are specifically designed and tested to withstand fire for a set period of time, helping to contain the spread of flames and smoke within a compartment and providing occupants with valuable time to evacuate.

However, there is an important distinction between fire doors (FD) and fire and smoke doors (FDS):

• Fire doors are designed to resist the spread of fire and heat for a specified duration, such as 30 or 60 minutes. They contain intumescent seals around the edges, which expand when exposed to heat, sealing gaps to prevent flames and hot gases from passing through.
• Fire and Smoke doors provide the same level of fire resistance as standard fire doors but also include cold smoke seals. These seals prevent the passage of smoke, particularly in the early stages of a fire, before temperatures are high enough to activate the intumescent seals. This added smoke control helps to maintain clearer escape routes and reduces the risk of smoke inhalation.

For example:

• FD30 means the door can resist fire for 30 minutes.
• FD30S (or FDS30) provides the same 30-minute fire resistance, but the “S” indicates smoke control, offering protection against both fire and smoke.

Penetration Seals

Penetration seals primary function is to maintain the fire resistance and integrity of fire-rated walls, floors, and ceilings wherever pipes, cables, ducts, or services pass through them.

In normal construction, openings made for electrical, plumbing, or HVAC systems can create weak points in fire-resistant barriers. Without adhering to a tested procedure, these gaps would allow flames, heat, and smoke to spread rapidly from one compartment to another during a fire. Penetration seals are specifically designed to close these openings and restore the compartmentation of the structure.

Types of Penetration Seals

• Pipe Penetration Seals: Used where pipes pass through fire-rated walls or floors.
• Service Penetration Seals: Installed around multiple services like cables, conduits, and ducts to maintain the fire resistance of building elements.
• Intumescent Seals: Contain materials that expand when exposed to heat, sealing gaps and preventing the spread of fire and smoke.

Intumescent coatings and materials
Intumescent coatings are a key component of the passive fire protection (PFP) industry, designed to protect structural elements such as steel, timber, and concrete from the effects of fire. These coatings are specially formulated paints or sprays that expand significantly when exposed to heat, forming a thick, insulating char layer that slows the transfer of heat to the underlying material.

Fire-rated partition walls
Fire-rated partition walls are designed to contain fire and smoke within a defined compartment for a specified duration. Their main purpose is to maintain the structural integrity and compartmentation of a building during a fire, limiting the spread of flames, heat and toxic gases and allowing occupants more time to evacuate safely.

These partitions are typically constructed using fire-resistant materials such as gypsum boards, calcium silicate boards, lightweight concrete, or metal stud frameworks with fire-rated linings. The design and materials used depend on the required fire-resistance rating, commonly 30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes, which indicates how long the wall can resist fire exposure while maintaining its integrity and insulation.

• Types of Fire-Rated Partitions:
  Vertical Partitions: Installed between rooms to prevent horizontal fire spread, made from fire-resistant materials.
• Horizontal Partitions: Installed in floors and ceilings to prevent vertical fire spread, especially important in multi-story buildings.

These components are essential to the overall fire safety design of any building, working quietly in the background to limit damage and save lives.

However, over time, compartmentation can be compromised by unsealed service penetrations, maintenance work, building movement, or structural changes. That’s why routine fire stopping inspections and fire compartmentation surveys are crucial to maintaining compliance and performance.

Your Legal Responsibilities

Building owners, facilities managers and responsible persons have a legal duty to maintain fire safety compliance under regulations such as:

• The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022
• The Building Safety Act 2022
• Approved Document B of the Building Regulations
• Golden Thread
• 2005 (RRO) Regulatory Reform Order – places legal duties on the Responsible Person

Failing to maintain passive fire protection systems such as fire doors, fire compartmentation, and fire dampers can lead to legal action, enforcement notices and most importantly, a serious risk to life.

Protecting What’s Behind the Walls
Passive fire protection may be hidden, but it’s one of the most important safety systems your building has. By understanding and maintaining these defences, you’re protecting your structure, your occupants and your business.

Don’t wait until a fire exposes weak points; schedule a fire compartmentation survey or inspection with us to ensure your building’s hidden defences are performing as they should.