Passive Fire Protection

Passive fire protection is a crucial part of any businesses fire safety strategy. It slows the spread of fire throughout a building, in turn protecting from enhanced fire damage and also protecting lives.

What is Passive Fire Protection?

Passive fire protection is built into the fabric of a building in the form of fire-resistant walls, flooring, fire rated ducting, fire stopping and fire doors. It slows the spread of fire, and helps to prevent escape routes from filling with smoke for longer to aid evacuation.

Passive protection requires no activation. Unlike active fire protection such as fire extinguishers which need external stimuli, passive protection is already in place ready to protect from fire.

Passive protection works by:

• ensuring walls and floors are fire-resistant to help limit the spread of fire, heat and smoke
• containing fire in its original ‘compartment’ for longer to limit spread
• protecting escape routes for longer to lengthen escape time for occupants
• protecting critical structural elements of a building

With compartmentation built into the building’s fabric, ensuring the integrity of these compartments is fundamental to allow safe escape in the event of a fire. Maintenance is essential. Therefore both reinstating fire barriers when penetrated and repairing damaged fire doors are urgent works. Rectifications should be carried out as soon as any non-conformities are identified to ensure effective fire protection.

Additionally, it is critical to use certified and tested products for the penetration or damage present, as well as using a suitably accredited company, with responsible, competent and fully trained engineers. Fire protection is one area where corners should not be cut. Fire Plus Security are BAFE accredited and have many years’ experience in ensuring buildings and businesses are safe from the devastating effects of fire.

As part of the Passive Fire Protection (PFP) System, Fire Doors and their integrity are critical to reducing the spread of fire and smoke in an emergency situation.

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Regular fire damper maintenance is essential to ensure they operate correctly in an emergency. They prevent the spread of fire throughout a building to ensure safe evacuation of people.

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The compartmentation of property plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of a properties fire escapes and limiting the spread of fire.

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