What is the difference between passive and active fire protection?
Put simply, active fire solutions act to either detect, extinguish or aid in escaping a fire whilst passive fire solutions form part of the building structure and helps contain the fire. Active and passive fire protection solutions play important and complementary roles as part of a building fire strategy.
What is Passive Fire Protection?
Passive fire protection helps to maintain building compartmentation in the event of a fire, either fully containing or slowing the spread of smoke and flame. This can allow more time for occupants to evacuate, provides safer access routes for emergency services, and can help to minimise asset damage before a fire is put out.
Passive fire protection products do not require power to function. These include:
• coated batts;
• ventilated cavity barriers;
• sealants; and
• mastics for fire protection in walls and floors.
Depending on the product and application, these solutions may perform in different ways. For example, Kingspan K-Stop Firescreen Sealant and Kingspan K-Stop Pressure Exerting Graphite Mastic are both mastics for fire stopping but have different applications. K-Stop Pressure Exerting Graphite Mastic will intumesce to close a gap left when combustible pipes melt whereas the K-Stop Firescreen Sealant does not expand and is used to seal mainly around non-combustible service penetrations and linear gap seals.
What is Active Fire Protection?
Active fire protection aims to detect, extinguish and aid in escaping a fire. Active solutions include:
· smoke and fire alarms;
· water sprinklers;
· escape lighting
All of these require an action for the product to begin to work. This can be manual or automatic (e.g automatic sprinklers or manually setting off a fire extinguisher). They also typically require power to function.
