|
|
Buildings and Fire Resistance Ratings
The fire resistance rating of building materials should always be of prime concern when building or remodeling a house. A products fire resistance rating is given by a testing center and tells the consumer how long a material can withstand high heat or fire. This means that a material that has been given a three hour fire rating will be able to withstand the effects of a fire for up to three hours.
All building materials, including structural elements such as beams and columns as well as assemblies, undergo tests and are then given ratings as to how well they can perform under a variety of conditions. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) publishes standards that must be followed during product testing under controlled laboratory tests. Standard E 119 lists the requirements for testing building and construction materials. One requirement for ASTM testing for fire ratings is that full scale configurations of the materials must be used.
Fire resistance ratings do have one catch, however. The rating refers to the products relative performance rather than the actual performance of the material. The fact of the mater is that no laboratory could possibly test for every potential variable that can exist in a fire. This means that there is no guarantee that products will actually perform up to the maximum rating time. You can, however, be fairly sure that products with longer ratings will withstand fire better than products with lower ratings.
The Fire Resistance Rating of Insulated Concrete Forms
There are many new and innovated products, ICFs for example, that have a higher fire resistance rating than traditional wood framing. There is a variance in the rating of materials produced be different ICF manufactures, but some have received an excellent fire resistance rating of three hours. Builders can create homes that have an improved ability to withstand the damaging effect of fire through the use of ICFs, non wood roofing, and well chosen insulation and finishing products. |