FIRESTOP SLIDE SHOW PAGE 9 OF 10

Next

(Smoke and tray movement)

Back

(proper firestops)

Firestop Site

Main Site

Glossary

Contact

Here is a ULC fire test of a firestop mortar, with mechanical and electrical penetrants, pipe covering, re-entries and repairs, which resulted in this UL listing The ULC equivalent is SP646. The ULC version is more compact, but not on the net yet.

Scroll down please.

Main Site

Firestop Site

Code Evaluations AVAILABLE!

Glossary of Fire Protection Terms

3M Fire Barriers

Vectorising Drawings and Maps; Paper to CAD

Circuit Integrity Fireproofing

Bounding

Code Req's for Firestops

Essay on Performance Based Codes

Master Spec. Section 07840 Firestopping

Related Sections to 07840

Penetration Seal Drawings

Building Joint Drawings 1

Building Joint Drawings 2

Building Joint Drawings 3

History of Firestops in North America

Warnock Hersey Experience

Firestop Trade Jurisdiction

Achim Hering Bio

Man Made Mineral Fibres

Fire Protection Industry Links

Firestop Products and Equipment

Firestop Mortar

Firestop Silicone Foam

Intumescent Products

Endothermic Products

Insulation Products

Caulking & Paint Firestops

Firestop Pillows

Firestop Devices

Firestop Slide Show 1 of 10 Basics

Firestop Slide Show 2 of 10 Code

Firestop Slide Show 3 of 10 No Seal

Firestop Slide Show 4 of 10 Deemed-to-comply

Firestop Slide Show 5 of 10 Misinstalled

Firestop Slide Show 6 of 10 Re-entered

Firestop Slide Show 7 of 10 Faulty Spec.

Firestop Slide Show 8 of 10 Proper Firestops

Firestop Slide Show 9 of 10 Test

Firestop Slide Show 10 of 10 Smoke and Trays

Sample Firestop Listing

Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning; Boiling-Hot Pressure Washing

ULC           UL

T O S

(Theory of Survival)

DIBt

TU Braunschweig iBMB

CONTACT

This is an efficient test set-up: one slab with a 2m² hole, ready to be penetrated and sealed. A steel frame, all around, holds penetrants in place.

This may be somewhat difficult to see. The top picture shows foamglas pipe covering around a pipe. Foamglas is great refrigeration insulation. And it does very well in fire testing, as you will be able to see in here. It does not disappear or require intumescents around it to make it pass the test. The fibreglass, on the other hand, requires one intumescent wrap strip per inch of fibreglass pipe covering. The fibreglass disappears and as this occurs, the intumescent wrap strip expands to close the gap. This is possible, yet creates an unnecessary expense for a construction project, as the same thing can be accomplished with rockwool, which does not require intumescents.

In this spot, the cable trays touched the sides of the opening. Actually, we had to use a forklift and a sledge hammer to drive the 36" trays into this 36" hole. Since this is tough to mortar in, an intumescent latex caulking was used to fill the interstices between the hole and the trays.

Mix and place.

Here, you can see some ULC tested and certified repair procedures. In the above picture, the repair is done with more of the same mortar. Below, it is done with a caulking and a permanently pliable intumescent putty.

 

Top left: intumescent caulk repair. Top right: intumescent putty repair.

This is the finished sample in-flight towards the furnace.

Here, the sample has been placed on the furnace, and the furnace is being lit. Fortunately, the 2 hour burn time was rather uneventful. Some of the cables blistered a bit at the top. Actually, a 3" thick mortar seal is really an attempt at economics. The less mortar, the cheaper. Mortars really come into their own at 6" and more. This is where they can achieve better T ratings by absorbing heat from the penetrants, as well as to hold trays in place, when they expand, twist and move as a result of the fire. Given identical cabling, T ratings for a 3" mortar seal are better than 3" of wool and any sort of rubber applied thinly at either side (whether endothermic, intumescent or otherwise). However, competitive pressures demand ever thinner and otherwise cheaper systems from manufacturers, usually at the peril of safety. T ratings are particularly required for occupancy separations and fire walls as well as a common sense measure for certain high risk applications, such as control rooms, operating rooms, etc. T ratings define the ability to keep the unexposed side cool – below 140°C heat rise, both on the penetrant and on the seal. Mortars can get the best T ratings because of their density (typically between 0.5 and 1.2 kg/L), which helps to conduct heat away from penetrating cables. Without T ratings, you may stop the fire – but start another one on the other side because of heat having gone through the penetrant to the unexposed side. These finer details typically get missed in construction. The most common such failures occurs in apartment buildings and hotels, where the slab between parking garage and the first floor of suites or retail is really an occupancy separation, requiring T ratings. The trouble is all the piping penetrations. Even mortars can’t do much to keep fire-exposed pipes from conducting heat up through the firestop and to the cold side. Insulating those pipes with a 3’ length of rockwool pipe covering, however, does the trick. Particularly copper pipes just ROAST! The T rating of uninsulated copper pipes is typically measured in minutes. The simple solution is, once again, to stick to rockwool pipe insulation. Call Roxul in Milton or Fibrex in Sarnia. It would also help in such cases to see that the insulation be held on with wire, in addition to any jacketing other than stainless steel. Otherwise, despite the best intentions, it may just sit on the floor below – to no avail.

 

Here we have the sample being raised after the 2 hour fire exposure, ready for hose-streaming, 30PSI at the base of the nozzle.

hose-stream test as per ULC-S115 or ASTM E814

And here we have the hose stream. If two hours of fire exposure are boring to some (never to me, if it’s my slab, my money, etc.) the hose-stream gets exciting. Just a few minutes of sheer terror potentially, followed by bliss or disappointment. Unfortunately, the hose-stream is optional in Canada. (H-rating). Luckily, the fact that most firestop manufacturers want to compete in the US, or are from there to begin with, has saved us in Canada from ultra-cheap (and not particularly safe) systems that can’t pass a hose, which is mandatory in the US. The pressures generated in real fires, would pop such systems out. This is why we insist of 50Pa positive furnace pressures for plastic pipe fire testing. Making hose streaming optional is a grave error. But the US are keeping us safe – so far.

 

Test Sample immediately after Hose-Stream Test

This is the sample AFTER hose streaming.

Unexposed side after hose-stream test. Armaflex pipe covering wrapped with 3M FS195 inside mortar seal.

What you see here is a foamed rubber insulation around a 3" copper line. It is actually quite remarkable that this material did not ignite on the unexposed side. It did, however, get very brittle and totally separate at the top. Within the mortar seal it pretty much disappeared. This is why this material requires the use of an intumescent wrap strip all around, within the mortar. That expands and then forms a tight bond between the pipe and the mortar. The 3M wrap strip in there was so tough that it would have to be chiseled out, if one were to try to remove it after the fire. So, it is possible to firestop this pipe with the insulation going through, but it is more expensive that way. This would not have been required with rockwool or calcium silicate or foamglas pipe covering.

Close up of how the FS195 wrap strip closed off the gap left by disintegrated Armaflex pipe covering.

This looks like a dog’s breakfast but what you are looking at is the same scenario as in the foam rubber pipe covering above. Only this is the mortar interface, where the fibreglass pipe covering has been removed. Above, you can see the use of the same 3M FS195 wrap strip, all around the fibreglass pipe covering. The combination worked just fine. When I pulled the fibreglass pipe covering off at the top, though, I saw nothing but expanded 3M wrapstrip FS195 between the mortar and the pipe. The fibreglass pipe covering had disappeared. If you want to spend more money on firestopping, use fibreglass or other insulations that disappear in a fire. Or just use rockwool or foamglas or calcium silicate. Rockwool is the logical choice because it works and costs less. If you really need refrigeration insulation though, and figure that rockwool won’t do the trick, use foamglas – at least one section of it, centred in the opening, or live with the added cost and control measures (the tough part – seeing to it that this actually gets used because you can’t see it) of using intumescent wrapstrips within the hole. All of this, of course, has to be bounded by active certification listings.

Little old me....

Aaaand, a bit of propaganda. Marketing = The End of all Truth. But seriously, I could stand and jump on this sample afterwards. Test standards of course don’t mandate this sort of abuse.

Concrete block loading test on 3M fire barrier mortar test sample after fire and hose stream testing.

Well, a similar test I ran in 1992 @ Warnock Hersey (never again) sees a big stack of blocks on top of the same mortar. This time it was 4" thick, also burned and hosed for 2 hours. About a 2m² hole c/w 36" trays, up to 6" pipe covering (rockwool, calcium silicate, perlite block) and a big bus duct with copper and aluminum bars.

FIRESTOP SLIDE SHOW PAGE 9 OF 10

Next

(Smoke and tray movement)

Back

(proper firestops)

Firestop Site

Main Site

Glossary

Contact

Main Site

Firestop Site

Code Evaluations AVAILABLE!

Glossary of Fire Protection Terms

3M Fire Barriers

Vectorising Drawings and Maps; Paper to CAD

Circuit Integrity Fireproofing

Bounding

Code Req's for Firestops

Essay on Performance Based Codes

Master Spec. Section 07840 Firestopping

Related Sections to 07840

Penetration Seal Drawings

Building Joint Drawings 1

Building Joint Drawings 2

Building Joint Drawings 3

History of Firestops in North America

Warnock Hersey Experience

Firestop Trade Jurisdiction

Achim Hering Bio

Man Made Mineral Fibres

Fire Protection Industry Links

Firestop Products and Equipment

Firestop Mortar

Firestop Silicone Foam

Intumescent Products

Endothermic Products

Insulation Products

Caulking & Paint Firestops

Firestop Pillows

Firestop Devices

Firestop Slide Show 1 of 10 Basics

Firestop Slide Show 2 of 10 Code

Firestop Slide Show 3 of 10 No Seal

Firestop Slide Show 4 of 10 Deemed-to-comply

Firestop Slide Show 5 of 10 Misinstalled

Firestop Slide Show 6 of 10 Re-entered

Firestop Slide Show 7 of 10 Faulty Spec.

Firestop Slide Show 8 of 10 Proper Firestops

Firestop Slide Show 9 of 10 Test

Firestop Slide Show 10 of 10 Smoke and Trays

Sample Firestop Listing

Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning; Boiling-Hot Pressure Washing

ULC           UL

T O S

(Theory of Survival)

DIBt

TU Braunschweig iBMB

CONTACT