Fire Protection Design in Commercial Buildings
A building’s fire protection system consists of different technical tools designed to detect fire, determine its source, prevent it from spreading, and extinguish it. The fire protection system seeks to lessen the effects of a fire by preventing injuries and financial loss in a building.
One type of building fire safety system is passive fire protection, which is integrated into a building’s design and construction. Strategically designing a building’s floors, ceilings, and walls can help prevent smoke and fire from moving quickly.
A typical compartmentation system involves fire-rated commercial doors and walls to keep a fire contained in one place. Fire-rated walls are designed to help stop the fire from spreading horizontally. Meanwhile, doors can help prevent the passage of fire from one area to another.
Fire rating is the duration for which a component can withstand fire exposure on either or both sides, which can range from 20 minutes to four hours. A door’s fire rating is often lower than a wall’s fire rating as the building’s furnishings and fixtures that can fuel a fire are usually not located in front of the door. As a result, a building’s entrance can be less vulnerable to fire than its walls.
A fire-resistant-rated floor and ceiling assembly is another type of compartmentation that forms a horizontal barrier to prevent the fire from spreading from one floor to the next. This assembly could include a fire-rated ceiling system and a concrete or protected steel floor slab.
Building laws and regulations allow for wide openings between levels, like a stairway, if it has additional fire protection that has undergone a property condition assessment NJ. Supplementary fire protection may include installing closely-spaced automatic sprinklers with a vertical and non-combustible smoke barrier surrounding the entrance.
Evaluating the condition of a building with a commercial building inspector NJ is important to verify the proper construction of a building’s fire protection system and attain complete compliance with regulations. It is important to have a routine inspection of the fire protection system as it can be compromised by different aspects like electric or plumbing modifications.
For more information about fire protection design in commercial buildings, here is an infographic by Lockatong Engineering.