Firestopping guides, explainers & free downloads.

Some people think that firestopping is just filling holes and the truth is that it isn't. Hey guys, I'm Tom Ford, director here at Skyline Firestopping and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what goes on behind the wall. Every building is divided up into what we call compartments and every pipe, cable and whatever else passing through these compartment or walls creates a weakness. If those openings or what we call penetrations aren't reinstated properly, then this means that the compartment no longer works and that essentially is what firestopping is.

We make sure that the compartment lines stay intact when services or penetrations pass through. Fire stopping isn't there to stop fires, it's there to stop fires from spreading and those are two very different things. Fire compartmentation buys valuable time, it protects escape routes, it limits smoke spread and it protects residents and emergency services also. Purpose of compartmentation is actually to preserve the building exactly as it was designed.

Now there isn't just one firestopping product, there's obviously a range of different products and manufacturers and different penetration types behave differently in a fire. For example, you have combustible and non-combustible, some pipes melt away, some stay in situ and transfer heat and when we talk about fire ratings we're not just talking about the products themselves, we're talking about the system, so the range of products which are used together in a system and that is where many mistakes can happen. Most firestopping problems aren't actually installation problem, they can often start much further upstream, either planning that was left too late, poor design coordination, sometimes the wrong tested system for the actual situation, sometimes they can be incorrectly installed, sometimes it's a lack of quality QA and sometimes it's missing documentation. Most defects actually start weeks, sometimes months before the installation team actually even arrive on site.

Creating safer buildings is actually everybody's responsibility, architects, M&E contractors, main contractors, consultants and like us, specialist installers. Not one of us can achieve full compliance alone, we have to work together as a team and my personal opinion is that that's the best way to look at it, it's a coordinated effort among everyone. We've created Behind the Wall to explain firestopping in a bit more detail, it's free to download, if you're a developer, contractor, architect or even a building manager, it will help you understand what good firestopping looks like. The link will be below, make sure you click it and don't forget to sign up to our email newsletter because we're creating more content just like this in an effort to make London's buildings safer.

Feel free to click the link below, download your copy and if you need anything further, please don't be afraid to reach out and contact us. Thanks guys!