Soft furnishings
Using fire retardant fabrics to transform a home safely
There has never been a wider range of fire retardant fabrics and all care homes should make sure that fire retardant soft furnishings are an integral part of their safety provision, says Christine Willis, managing director, Furnish
We were all shocked by the events at Grenfell Tower – the speed at which the building was engulfed by flames, leaving little time for or means of escape and resulting in such a huge loss of life. It was a sombre reminder of the sheer speed and force with which fire can devastate. Fire is an even greater risk in care home environments where residents are less agile, more susceptible to confusion and less able to respond quickly in the event of an emergency. This is just one of the reasons why there are different domestic and commercial standards for soft furnishings.
Should a fire break out - and there were 120 accidental fires in care homes in London alone last year1
- fire retardant
soft furnishings can buy valuable time. In less than two minutes, untreated curtains and furnishings can become the source of a major life threatening fire while a fire around a treated fabric would still be at a manageable level.
Fire safety in non-domestic buildings, which includes care homes, is controlled in the UK by the Regulatory Reform (Fire safety) Order 2005. This order imposes
It is a legal requirement that curtains, blinds and soft furnishings, including bed runners and cushions, are fire resistant
a duty on the operator of the building to take responsibility for fire safety and part of this responsibility includes the appropriate selection of furnishings. The UK General Product Safety Regulations 2005 require all products to be safe. Suppliers test their products against such standards in order to provide evidence that they meet the regulations. The tests typically involve exposing fabric to sources of ignition. The principle of these tests is to apply a flame to a vertically suspended piece of fabric for a specified number of seconds (between 5 and 30) in order to assess how it behaves. The development of any holes or the way in which the flames spread across it are assessed in order to determine whether it has passed or failed. In the case of lined curtains, both
Fire is aneven greater risk in care home environments where residents are less agile, more susceptible to confusion and less able to respond quickly in the event of an emergency
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the fabric and the lining will have been tested individually to ensure they meet the required standard.2
In relation to BS5867, the UK standard for flame retardant curtains and blinds, passing Part 2B means that an item can be washed 12 times and still passes the fire retardant test, while Part 2C relates to inherently flame retardant fabrics; these can be washed up to 50 times and continue to be fire resistant. It is also worth noting that there are two further standards for bedding (BS7175) and upholstery (BS5852).
Fire retardancy
It is a legal requirement that curtains, blinds and soft furnishings, including cushions and bed runners, are fire resistant. So, what is a fire retardant fabric?
There are two methods of making a fabric flame retardant. The first involves treating it with a flame retardant chemical. This improves resistance to ignition and in the event that the fabric does catch fire, the rate at which the flame spreads through the fabric is slower than it would be in an untreated fabric. The flame retardant chemicals are dissolved in water and then introduced into the fabric by dipping.
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com • January 2018
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