Rigorous System Testing

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Why use the NFPA 285 Test?

The major problem we are addressing is the fast burning, hard to fight high rise buildings clad in Aluminium Composite Panels (ACP). Grenfell and other high rise building fires have spread so fast due to the cladding igniting and travelling quickly to other floors. A contributing factor is the chimney effect, where fire gets into the air gap behind the cladding, and can travel quickly upwards. The fire at the Address Hotel in Dubai started at the bottom of the tower and spread within 4 minutes to the top of the tower due to the cladding being on fire. The scope of our fire suppression system is to stop the spread of fire until the firefighters can attend the scene.

We stopped the spread of the fire by cooling the cladding down with water and a super cooling agent, the test was set up to simulate what happens in a real fire with ACP cladding, and how effective our system was at suppressing it.

Currently there is no BRE standard test that can offer the same level of simulation, we chose to test against NFPA 285, as this is a Globally recognised standard and is the most similar to BS - 8414 which the Grenfell test was conducted under. They are both a large-scale assembly test, representing a high-rise building, measuring fire spread. It replicates a fire starting inside a room, breaking out through a window and exposing the external façade to fire. 

We also chose to use the NFPA 285 as the ignition was gas, when we were R&D testing with wood, our system would extinguish the wood fuel almost immediately and we would therefore not be able to register a test result on BS 8414.

Our system is designed to be used only to suppress, not fight the fire. It is designed to give valuable pin point detection, and then pin point cooling to suppress the fire before it gets hold.