How are Marley improving fire safety within the construction sector?

Stuart Nicholson, Roof Systems Director at Marley explains what Marley is doing to prevent fires spreading.

As fire safety continues to be the highest priority for everyone in the construction industry, it is important that specifiers and architects are aware of recent reports about risks concerning roof fire barriers. Fire barriers are an unseen, but very important, product when installing a pitched roof on terraced or semi-detached housing and apartments.

When a roof is compartmentalised, fire stopping is required between the top of the party wall and the roof covering, acting as a seal to prevent spread of flames and smoke between properties in case of fire.

However, there have been some house fires in recent years where the fire has spread across the line of the party wall and caused damage to neighbouring properties. This issue of fire spreading in roof voids was addressed in separate reports from the BRE and BBC Watchdog, which raised concerns that some modern homes could have inadequate, incorrectly installed and, in some cases, no fire barriers at all. In terraced or semi-detached properties, this increases the risk that fire could spread rapidly through roof voids from one home to the next.

Fire stopping is often achieved with a flexible mineral fibre quilt or sock, but a potential fire passage still exists at the line of the roofing battens, above the rafters, which can span across the junction between properties. Fire barrier products are available on the market to close this gap, but feedback suggests that these can be bulky and difficult to install in line with the roof tiles, especially with deep profiled tiles.

Listening to these concerns, Marley has developed a new, easy-to-install, roof fire barrier that overcomes these issues. Marley’s new Roof Defence fire barrier gives specifiers the confidence of full fire protection, from one roof to the next, achieving up to a 60-minute fire rating.

Roof Defence features two strips of intumescent material bonded at 90 degrees, with an inverted T design, that can simply be installed under tiles and between roof battens to close all gaps in the event of fire.  When activated by heat, the inverted T intumescent seal expands, filling the space between roofing battens and sealing all spaces under the tiles, slates, and other roofing elements.