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combination of products, applied to the surface like paint. These coatings are designed to expand to
form an insulating and fire-resistant covering when subject to heat. In a fire, the coating expands to
a thick non-flammable layer of bubbles, offering good insulation protection to the material.

Protection of Openings and Voids
Fire doors are used to ensure that door openings are protected in the event of fire.

However, buildings, and the fire compartments that they are made up of, will inevitably
have numerous voids and openings running through them, such as lift shafts, service
conduits, air-handling ducts, voids between floors, roof voids, etc. and all of these need to
be protected to ensure that smoke and flames cannot easily travel from one compartment
to another. This protection can be done in many different ways (e.g. a self-closing shutter
held open by a fusible link (a piece of soft metal that melts at a very low temperature,
releasing the shutter)). It is important that any new openings made in fire break walls are
reinstated or protected in some way (e.g. when cables are run through a hole in a wall, the
hole might be filled with fire-retardant foam).

ENSIGN | Unit IG2 – Element 10 –Fire 18