A new safety system has been developed by a UAE-based fire protection company to tackle “trapped heat” between cladding panels and the building’s exterior during fires, which is the main reason behind the rapid spread of high-rise infernos, a leading expert said on Sunday.
Khalid Al Khatib, CEO of Naffco, one the world’s biggest suppliers of life safety solutions, said his company has developed a “special” extinguishing system that is inserted between the cladding and building. He added that Naffco is awaiting further instructions from civil defence authorities regarding the system’s implementation.
Al Khatib’s comments came during an interview with Gulf News in Dubai on the sidelines of Intersec 2017, said to be the world’s largest trade fair for security, safety, and fire protection.Some types of cladding — of a flammable plastic-based core sandwiched between two aluminium sheets — have been blamed for helping flames spread rapidly across the outer face of skyscrapers in Dubai and other emirates in the UAE.
A long-awaited new UAE Fire and Life Safety Code was announced at Intersec on Sunday, with an updated chapter on cladding. A Dubai Civil Defence official said new cladding rules aim to reduce cladding flammability to “almost zero”. Details on cladding specifications or the code itself was not available at Intersec, taking place till Tuesday at Dubai World Trade Centre.
However, Al Khatib said, the issue was broader than cladding, explaining that it was the problem of “heat traps” — such as those between panels and the building exterior — that is a main culprit behind the spectacular spread of high-rise blazes.
Just replacing “bad cladding” or using the safer A2 fire-rated cladding is not a comprehensive solution in itself, he added, saying that the “surrendered heat that makes everything go up in flames” also needs urgent attention.
“The matter is the internal heat which is between the building and the cladding. This is when the heat is surrendered there, the temperature rises and makes everything ready to go up in a fire. Because of this, you find that a fire that happened on the 10th floor, suddenly it is on the 20th, and then on the 30th… So, the fire, the heat, is trapped wherever there’s a trapping, and this trapping — whenever the heat is trapped between the building and the cladding — makes the cladding ready to go [up in flames]” Al Khatib said.
“This is what we have also showed to Civil Defence… We have developed also a special kind of extinguishing system which will be inserted between the cladding. It is the only one being developed worldwide, by Naffco, to kill the fires [categorised] A, B, C, or D. And it doesn’t take much water and we can drop the heat that accumulates inside in less than one minute.”
‘Strictest code’
Cladding expert and owner of Alubond panels firm, Shazi Ul Mulk, chairman of parent company Mulk Holdings based in the UAE, said the revised code is the strictest code in the world. Ul Mulk said he helped shaped the updated code by giving viable solutions to remediate fire hazard in the past years.
“They have put a code into place that has the strictest [guidelines] in the world where not only the material core is tested, the [installation] system as a whole is tested, and the product undergoes multiple tests before it is approved and certified by the Civil Defence to be used,” Ul Mulk told Gulf News.
“So what this means is the manufacturers have to make sure that they are producing materials to the standard and the third-party international laboratories are involved to certify the fire-rating of the products. So this is really a very strict code. This will make our country very safe.”
Ul Mulk said the A2 cladding panels that he had proposed have stone cores instead of the petroleum core sandwiched between two aluminium skins that burns within minutes. Dubai Civil Defence, however, did not specify during Intersec if the A2 cladding panels are the new panels to be used.
If this is the case, the new panel cores, which are made of minerals with a far greater capability to keep flames at bay, will prevent the spread of flames across high-rise buildings.
“High-rise buildings will have A2 which has a 90 per cent stone core inside while low-rise buildings will have B claddings. Both are good as B claddings have 70 per cent stone core. Even B won’t burn; it will stop panels from spreading fire.”
The new A2 claddings can spike the construction cost of the façade of any building by 20 to 25 per cent. But the façade only represents around 5 per cent of the whole building cost, Ul Mulk said.
Intersec 2017 is featuring 1,304 exhibitors from 58 countries. The 19th edition of the annual showcase was flagged off by Shaikh Mansour Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who was accompanied by senior government officials, organisers, and high-ranking representatives from the regional security industry.
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