Wood has many excellent natural properties
Wood is nature's most versatile building material. It is renewable, sustainable, energy efficient to harvest and convert to a usable component, easily workable, has minimal environmental pollution, warm in use, aesthetically pleasing and has a range of excellent physical and mechanical properties.
Why fire retardants?
Use of wood can be restricted by safety requirements and regulations concerned with its ignitability and fire spreading characteristics.
The careful selection of the correct type of fire retardant formulation can overcome this concern and allow a wide range of fire retardant wood based products to comply with even the most stringent regulations, thus extending the market use of this most natural of building materials.
High performance under fire conditions
Fire retardant treatment of wood can firstly delay the ignition for a meaningful time and secondly lower the heat release rate after ignition. Both of these effects together do strongly affect the potential for spreading fire beyond the location of original ignition. In a room fire test (ISO 9705) this is seen in following way: Untreated wood goes to flashover in about 3 minutes, but FR wood may prevent flashover even 20 minutes or more.
Applications
Fire retardant treated wood (FRTW) is used world-wide in a range of end use applications. Technological advances with low hygroscopic and leach resistant formulations, and improvements in intumescent coatings now allow wood based panel products to be used safely in both interior, including humid conditions, and exterior situations.
The most typical end uses for FRTW are:-
· Internal wall and ceiling linings
· external cladding/facades
· roof constructions
· roofing shingles
· transportation - railway carriages, buses, maritime
· wooden scaffolding for both offshore and onshore
· pallets for the chemical industry
· military, e.g. packing cases
· exhibition stands
· TV and theatre scenery
Service classes for different end use applications
A new system with service classes for different end use applications is underway. It covers short term use, interior use in buildings and exterior use in buildings.
