Fire compartment walls

Compartmentation is one of the most important concepts in fire safety. Compartment walls create a barrier to the growth of fire, avoiding fire to expand to the next compartment and to the whole building. They are also essential to create safe shelters for the people.

Resistance to fire of compartment walls basically includes the stability of the wall itself and the control of breakthrough of fire in the presence of cables or pipes going through the wall (service penetrations). Structural stability may include REI (stability to collapse, containment of fire passing through, thermal insulation) or simply EI. Penetration systems are normally rated for EI.



In many cases existing walls of different nature and materials can be upgraded to be an efficient fire compartment barrier with the addition of a protective material, including passive materials (fire rated renderings) or reactive materials (intumescent coatings).
The service penetrations issue may be dealt with with several solutions including intumescent sealants, intumescent collars and others.

CHAR 21 intumescent paint is used to achieve fire resistance for up to 120 minutes on many common non-loadbearing walls made of masonry bricks or concrete blocks according to the European Standard EN 1364-1. Approval for compartment walls is supported by classification according to EN 13501-2.

Solutions for service penetrations include our IRISeal intumescent sealants, available for a large number of cases with different pipes sizes, pipe materials and configurations, cable number and types including bunches of cables into plastic cable conduits. These are certified according to the European standards EN 1366-3 and EN 13501-2. Joints can be sealed with IRISeal PG1 certified to the EN 1366-4 and EN 13501-2.