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including a fully developed fire according to the European reaction-to-fire classification standard BS EN 13501-1.
Stone wool insulation
Some stone wool insulation products can tolerate temperatures of up to 1000°C
within the market. In June 2014, the BCA published the first issue for guidance note 18, which addressed the key issues surrounding
external wall materials, including ‘Class O’ performance and the various routes for compliance. Following this revision, the NHBC now include a fourth option for compliance, published in their technical bulletin echoing the risk of fire spread within external wall constructions. As a publicly available document, Guidance Note 18 is useful to everyone within the construction process looking to mitigate risk and advises that “As a guide, insulation of limited combustibility should be used e.g. Rock mineral fibre type, stone wool, slag wool or man-made mineral wool/fibre.”
The straightforward route to demonstrating compliance with BR 135 and Guidance note 18 in our view is to use stone wool insulation that is non- combustible. Non-combustible products will not contribute in any stage of the fire,
Stone wool insulation products are used to create a firewall that slows down the spread of fire from room to room, improving safety, buying valuable time for occupants to safely escape as well as reducing the risk of property and asset damage. In addition, the insulation does not produce toxic smoke and therefore reduces the effects of smoke damage to the building too. As the biggest cause of death during a fire, this is a key advantage for many
specifiers when choosing specified products. Manufactured from basalt rock, stone wool insulation consists of layers of bonded, water-repellent-treated multidirectional stone-wool fibres formed into a resilient batt using a resin binder. It can achieve a reac- tion-to-fire rating of A1 under the British and European standard for the fire classifi- cation of construction materials BS EN 13501-1: 2007, or “non-combustible.”
Resources
To support this BR 135, Rockwool has produced a technical publication entitled Routes to Compliance in High Rise Buildings over 18 metres. There is also a Rockwool RIBA Accredited CPD, entitled “Fire safety compliance: Rainscreen Cladding Systems”.
Tim Vincent is head of technical for Rockwool
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF FEBRUARY 2017
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