A building’s fire protection system is designed to help safeguard people’s lives and assets. It is a collection of technical tools designed to detect fire, determine the source, prevent its spread, and extinguish it.
Passive fire protection is one type of building fire safety system that is integrated into the building’s design and construction. Strategically designing a building’s floors, ceilings, and walls can prevent the rapid spread of smoke and fire.
Passive fire protection system often uses connected fire-rated doors and walls to contain a fire. Fire-rated walls are made to stop the fire from spreading horizontally in a building. A wall’s fire rating can be calculated for fire exposure on one or both sides, ranging from 20 minutes to four hours.
Fire-rated doors can also help prevent the fire from passing to another area in a building. Fire ratings for a building’s doors are often lower than the wall’s fire rating because the building’s furnishings and fixtures that can fuel the fire are typically not located in front of the door.
A floor-and-ceiling assembly is another strategy in a passive fire protection system. This type of compartmentation forms a horizontal barrier to prevent a fire from spreading to another floor in a building. It can include a fire-rated ceiling system, a concrete or protected steel floor slab, or a combination.
Assessing the overall condition of a building with a commercial building inspector NJ is important to check if the fire protection system is constructed correctly. It also assesses complete compliance with building codes and regulations.
Conducting a property condition assessment New Jersey is significant as it helps identify potentially dangerous structures that be a hindrance to the efficient operation of a building’s fire protection system.
For more information about fire protection design in commercial buildings, here is an infographic by Lockatong Engineering.
