Managing a modern healthcare environment grows more complex as increasingly restrictive life safety requirements are imposed by authorities having jurisdiction underwriters and the Joint Commission. Among all the life safety features in the environment of care, by far the most frustrating to manage on through penetrations made in smoke and Fire barriers. This is partly because many people make openings but few of these individuals are adequately trained for this work. It is difficult enough just making certain that all penetrations are being sealed as they are created much less ensuring that they are being sealed properly and that old ones are gradually brought up to code.




This blog is intended to provide continuing education as part of a comprehensive competency based fire stop installers training program. The mechanics of installing fire stop materials are not difficult, proper product and system selection can be overwhelming without an introduction to the basics. The non-professional installer simply squirts red goop from a caulk tube, smears it around the penetration and moves on. The professional takes care to restore a barrier back to its original rating as though there had never been an opening there in the first place. You have been asked to read this blog to help provide the very basic knowledge needed to install fire stop correctly.
During the design of a building, a three-part goal for fire safety is built into the plans. While those trained in the science of fire protection, may take this for granted a basic review of these three objectives help put fire stop into the proper context.
For the rest of us, the first and most important objective is prevention. Examples of prevention practices that we're all familiar with are three components necessary for combustion: fuel, ignition and oxygen. Remove anyone and combustion ends. Since the illuminating oxygen would be impractical, all efforts at prevention focus instead on limiting combustibles and controlling the sources of ignition.
Yet despite these efforts, thousands of fires erupt every year calling the second principle of fire protection into action. No one is active suppression. This principle is dedicated to quickly putting these fires out, preventing them from spreading and limiting harm to occupants and property. Examples of these include the use of fire extinguishers, automatic fire sprinklers, special extinguishing systems and even the firefighters themselves. Each attempting to put the fire out.
Unfortunately active suppression has its limits, as precious time is consumed while firefighters travel to a fire extinguishers, also have limitations as they're not always located where they're needed, depending on a human element during an emergency and have a limited supply of agent. Even automatic sprinkler systems, which have improved the fire safety statistics in this country, are susceptible to impairment and can do little to stop smoke. The periodic downtime for system maintenance or the potential during an emergency for inadequate water pressure and it becomes obvious that spring courts are only one part of a complete fire protection plan in case of a natural disaster. Lab gas, water and natural gas lines may be ruptured which trigger not only fires but disrupting the supply of water making an automatic sprinkler system useless.
The third and final goal is passive containment sometimes known as compartmentation. It's intended as a last resort, when both prevention and suppression fail, passive containment is accomplished by dividing building space into smaller compartments that are designed to minimize the spread of smoke and fire. These compartments will neither prevent nor suppress a fire but will contain it to prevent horizontal or vertical spread of flames, smoke and toxic gases.
This three-tier were done as an approach to fire protection and designed to improve the odds for life safety and the protection of property. The NFPA life safety code and all model building codes in North America mandate compartmentation in health care facilities due to the need for defending a place in a fire. A compartment is like a box made up of a floor walls and a ceiling. Each side of the compartment or box is known as a fire or smoke barrier. A smoke barrier is defined by the wall safety code as a continuous fire wall that extends from exterior wall to exterior wall and floor to floor. Be careful, because some local authorities having jurisdiction in your area may define smoke barriers in a different way. A fire barrier by contrast is just a wall or floor designed to prevent the products of combustion from spreading vertically or horizontally for a specific time and is tested by a third-party lab to specific ASTM test standards. For these fire barriers to maintain such forces, they must be constructed from non combustible materials that are strong enough to survive the strong heat, pressure and destructive forces of both the UL test standards as well as real fires. No doubt, a fire compartment would be useless without openings to permit access for occupants, freight and building services. For this reason, openings and barriers are necessary, which presents a real problem. Though being a very serious fire codes violation, a smoke or fire barrier with a hole in it present no protection. Fire doors and smoke or fire dampers are two examples of devices which are designed to restore a barrier to its original rating. These specialized devices will close automatically in the presence of smoke or elevated temperature and restore the compartmentation that was damaged because of a door or duct opening, thus bringing us to fire stop. Fire doors and dampers are designed to restore the hourly fire rating that was lost when an opening was made in a smoke or fire barrier. The doors and dampers, for example, are installed by the same craft, each of them are trained in their craft for proper and safe installation. By contrast, fire stop is installed by every craft people, because pipe duct, conduit, cable tray sleeves and an infinite number of other service items all need to pass through barriers. The work done by different sub-trades mostly follow other crafts, these trades are often faced with fire stopping penetrations as well and rarely with adequate training.
Regardless who does the work, compartmentation depends upon two things.
1. All penetrations are sealed
2. They're all sealed correctly