The intumescent coatings industry is sharpening up its act with a range of new initiatives to provide specifiers with reliable and consistent third party assessment of the performance of protected structural steelwork. Debbie Smith of BRE Fire and Security and Geoff Deakin of Warringtonfire explain.
Intumescent fire protection technology continues to develop at a pace, where new products offering greater performance with lower thicknesses emerge frequently into the market. This continuing trend of ‘using less to do more’ often raises questions among designers and specifiers, as well as regulators and enforcers, about the reliability of products and their performance. These products, which must be described as ‘high technology’ by comparison with most other forms of fire protection, tend to be value engineered for performance. This places additional demands on those who are responsible for their evaluation and their application.
Against this background and other challenges faced by the industry, not least the implications of new requirements from Europe, the various manufacturers and suppliers of thin film intumescent coatings have been meeting regularly – with the support of Warringtonfire and BRE Fire and Security – to address these challenges. As a consequence of the regular venue (Stratford upon Avon) the activity was initially christened the ‘Stratford Initiative’. Recently, this has been adopted jointly by the Association of Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP) and the British Coatings Federation (BCF) and has been named the Intumescent Coatings Forum, the membership of which is given at the end of this article.
From Stratford to Europe
Within the next two to three years, intumescent fire protection – together with all other forms of structural fire protection a – will have to be CE marked under the Construction Products Directive, if they are to be sold on the European market. While CE marking is not mandatory in the UK, many manufacturers of intumescent fire protection work at a European, if not worldwide level. CE marking, as proof of conformity involving third party certification of the product, is viewed by the industry as the most effective way to demonstrate performance and reliability.
This does bring with it, however, the need for product performance evaluation under new harmonised European test standards that are more stringent than those currently used in the UK. In line with other sections of the UK fire protection industry, the intumescent manufacturers and suppliers have conceded that there should be no reduction in performance levels in Approved Document B (Building Regulations, England and Wales) to compensate for the increased severity of the fire resistance tests. They accept that to align with Europe, they will need to enhance product performance or increase the required product thicknesses to satisfy fire resistance requirements.
Manufacturers and suppliers are also concerned about contractors who may undermine the performance of their products, by not understanding their special requirements and by not applying them correctly. As a consequence, the product may have inadequate adhesion (due to poor application or incompatibility of the primer or existing paint protection) or may not be applied to the correct thickness, within tolerances and with adequate controls over accuracy. To circumvent this danger, the industry has agreed to collectively address this issue by committing itself to ensure high standards of reliability for the installed product.
As a consequence of the Stratford discussions, the Intumescent Coatings Forum has set itself a vision for the future. By 2010, it aims to establish intumescent coatings as the preferred technology for fire protection of steelwork by ensuring that:
– Tested and assessed products conform to European standards and are certified by an independent third party
– Products are installed by certified third party applicators
– Installations are subject to independent inspection of completed works, as appropriate.
Action points
To advance this, the Forum has taken a number of specific actions to ensure that standards of quality and reliability of intumescent products are maintained at the highest level.
A position paper has been agreed relating to the fire testing and assessment of intumescent steel protection. Currently, there is no British Standard test and assessment method for this purpose and the ‘standard’ for the industry has been set by the Yellow Book, the ASFP publication Fire protection for structural steel in buildings. The process described in the Yellow Book, however, has been conservative in terms of the evaluation of performance of intumescent steel protection. It also relates to a time when there were fewer products on the market at more significant thicknesses, and when the testing and assessment process was basically carried out only by two laboratories working together to ensure consistency of practices. The situation today is very different with many more products, tested in different ways and assessed by others as well. The predictive capability has improved through more refined, but competitive and different mathematical or physical models. To standardise the situation, the industry has developed, and has agreed to voluntarily adopt a new protocol as a basis for formulating suppliers’ claims. By agreeing to this protocol, they are setting requirements that will impose new rigours and procedures on the laboratories and others involved in the process.
The industry protocol will be the basis of future recommendations in the Yellow Book, which the ASFP has agreed to amend. It will also reflect the new requirements for European Technical Approvals and CE marking of products. The agreed code of practice is to be published jointly by ASFP and the BCF.
Like with like
The industry has agreed the methodology to be used for determining and presenting volume solids data. This will be a routine measurement made by the test laboratories and included in the test report, so that volume solids will be presented in data sheets by manufacturers in a consistent manner. This eliminates any potential variations or confusion associated with the translation of the dry film thicknesses required for a given contract, to quantities of paint in liquid form.
The most significant initiative coming out of Stratford, however, has been an agreement with warringtonfire and BRE Fire and Security to undertake independent ‘market sampled’ product testing of water-based intumescent products.
Warringtonfire sampled a total of 15 different water-based intumescent products, available on the UK market. These were each applied to a common dimensioned short beam at a thickness specified by the manufacturer for providing the beam with 60 minutes’ fire protection. This was given as the time for the beam to reach the specified temperature used as the basis for the assessment of the product (typically 620 degrees C). The manufacturers were able to carry out or witness the application process to ensure that it was to their satisfaction’ but the whole process was under the control of the laboratories.
The results of this testing provide a snapshot of the state of the industry. The achieved level of performance was compared with the manufacturer’s claim in relation to both the assessment and data sheets that are supplied to the market place. It needs to be appreciated that such a single test result does not provide a reliable indicator of a product’s overall performance across its range of thicknesses and steel section factors. Biases are possible from one end of the range to the other. So where the result from the single beam suggested a deficiency in providing less than 90% of the claimed performance (this value was agreed to allow for variability associated with testing), a more detailed test evaluation was completed, involving reviewing the product performance across the range of steel section factors.
After completion of the agreed test programme and some further supplementary testing, only one product at one level of Section Factor (HpA) gave results less than 90% of the claimed performance, but still gave a mean performance in excess of 100%. A modification of the assessment table has been agreed with the manufacturer of this product.
The results of this exercise have lead to another initiative by the industry. All manufacturers and suppliers have voluntarily agreed that all assessments used in support of their water-based and solvent-based products should be reviewed by Warringtonfire and BRE Fire and Security against an agreed set of ‘acceptability criteria’. This will ensure that all current product assessments provide the same level of confidence in the product performance, based upon the available test data.
The ASFP/BCF Intumescent Coatings Forum continues to make steps towards its vision for the industry in 2010. New initiatives to address better support for the installers of products, and to validate applied thicknesses, are planned. The first significant milestone, however, is the commitment to embrace the European requirements and work only with product performance claims to the new European standards by
mid-2008.
The provisions for intumescent coatings of structural steelwork in the The Yellow Book can be found at: http://asfp.associationhouse.org.uk/default.php?cmd=210&doc_category=27
Participants in the ASFP-BCF Intumescent Coatings Forum
Ameron International BV
J W Bollom & Co Ltd
Cafco International
Coatmaster Ltd
Dupont Performance Coatings GmbH
Environmental Seals Ltd
Firetherm Ltd
International Paint Ltd
Italvis Protect Srl
Jotun Paints (Europe) Ltd
Leighs Paints
Nullifire Ltd
Promat UK Ltd
Protega Coatings Ltd (formally Tikkurila)
Quelfire
Rutgers Organics GmbH
E Wood Ltd
Yung Chi Ltd
ASFP
BCF
BRE
warringtonfire
