Compartmentation Survey

A compartmentation survey is a detailed assessment of a building's fire safety measures, specifically focusing on how well the building is divided into compartments to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. These surveys evaluate the integrity of fire-resistant barriers like walls, floors, and ceilings, as well as fire doors and seals around service penetrations. The goal is to ensure that the building's compartmentation is adequate to contain a fire, allowing for safe evacuation and potentially limiting property damage.

Fire Stopping

Fire stopping is the process of sealing openings in fire-resistant walls and floors to prevent the spread of fire, smoke, and heat between different compartments of a building. It's a crucial part of passive fire protection. Essentially, it involves using fire-resistant materials to fill gaps and joints, ensuring that a fire is contained within a specific area for a designated period, allowing occupants to escape and firefighters to respond.

Fire Barriers

Fire barriers are fire-resistant materials, often made from stone wool, designed to prevent the spread of fire and smoke within concealed spaces in buildings. They are a type of passive fire protection and are crucial for containing fires within specific areas, giving occupants more time to escape and preventing extensive damage.

Cavity Barriers

Cavity barriers are fire-resistant materials used to seal off concealed spaces within buildings, like wall and ceiling voids, to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. They act as a barrier, restricting the movement of fire and smoke through these cavities, helping to maintain compartmentation and improve overall fire safety.

Structual Steel Protection

Structural steel protection in fire stopping refers to measures taken to safeguard structural steel components (like beams and columns) from the damaging effects of fire. This is crucial because steel loses significant strength at high temperatures, potentially leading to structural failure and building collapse. By applying fire-resistant materials, the steel framework can maintain its load-bearing capacity for a specified duration, allowing for safe evacuation and firefighting efforts.

Linear Gap Seals

A linear gap seal is a fire protection product designed to fill gaps and joints in building structures to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. These seals are typically made from fire-resistant materials and are designed to expand when exposed to heat, effectively sealing off the gap and creating a barrier against fire and smoke.

Intumescent Coatings

Intumescent coatings are fire-retardant materials applied to steel to protect it from the effects of fire. When exposed to heat, they expand significantly, creating a thick, insulating char layer that delays the steel from reaching critical temperatures that could cause structural failure. This allows more time for evacuation and firefighting efforts during a fire.