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Thread: fire barriers

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    fire barriers

    how far do you go to make sure that your electrical installation will not impair the fire walls integrity...

    do you close up all the holes in the walls...and do you take the time to find out which walls require fire barriers...and to what point...from the cable trays right down to the single conduit pipe which goes thru the wall...industrial...commercial and domestic.

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    Junior Member sparkydelux's Avatar
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    Fire Barrier is just that. To minimise the pathway of fire.
    Just looked up in my UK regs (its pretty much my holy grail). It states:

    the risk of fire shall be minimized by the selection of appropriate materials and erection
    A wiring system shall be installed so that the gereral building structural performance and fire safety are not reduced.
    Where a wiring system passes through elements of building construction such as floors, walls, roofs, ceilings, partitions, or cavity barriers, the openings remaining after passage of the wiring system shall be sealed accordingly to the degree of fire resistance prescribed for the respective element of the building construction before penetration.


    If it was my installation, I'd more than likely attend to the areas of breach and patch them.

    They make a fire retardent expansion foam that many contractors use, it usually supersedes fire rated design on buildings, which is OK. The only thing more sparks dont realise is that the chemicals they use in the foam has a reaction with cable called ' marring' which makes cable insulation brittle. So if you do go through a wall, be sure to conduit that section. This provides access at a later stage and protection of the cable.

    Good Topic Murdoc

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    part i am concerned about are the wires inside the conduit...if you use a pvc conduit it will melt and therefore exposed a hole...unless you actuall seal the inside of the conduit...thats the part i am concerned about...this will be a topic i will discuss with hilti...i have to give then credit when it comes to technicali information...they will give you the exact spec required for any ankor with all the data to back it up...you cant fault them on this type of stuff...but need to sort out their service department when it comes to us little guys.

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    Junior Member sparkydelux's Avatar
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    there is a putty that can be bought which when comes into contact with fire / heat, it expands and seals gaps / holes. i know for smoke detectors we used this disk that sat between the ceiling and the detector. Basically if the detector got hot, the disk would react and seal up the breach through the plaster board.

    To be honest, there is no way you can prevent fire from spreading, the only thing you can do is try and restrict passage. These fire / flame retardant items still burn through, eventually. As long as there isn't a gaping hole your chances that you have done the best to minimize it to a conduit hole would be remarkable.

    i have seen stuff where Ducters have knocked out section of walls and left them. Its bad, and hard to enforce. Unless everyone was on the same page as you, you are fighting a losing battle!

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