Fire Rating Summary

The safety and comfort of a building’s occupants should always get the highest priority on a construction project, especially on high rise buildings. To this end, both versions of the standard require mandatory fire testing by an approved 3rd party be carried out on the system. All tests carried out for this purpose must be in accordance with BS EN13501, EN1716 and BS EN13823

Material Fire ratings are based on a European classification system dependent upon the ignitability of the material, rate of smoke generation and likelihood of burning droplets or particles being released.

It is important to note that based upon this classification system, Cast Iron has an Al fire rating, meaning that it is non-combustible and will not contribute at any stage to the fire. For descriptions of the fire rating definitions, please see Section 2.2 of this document.

Halifax Soil – A1

As a development on the previous version of the standard, BS EN 877:2021 includes provision for all possible fire classifications including Al. In recent re-testing of the Halifax Soil system by SGS, a Classification of Al was attained indicating that there is no contribution to fire.

Halifax Drain – A2-S1, d0

The requirements for below ground products to have increased resistance to chemical attack means that the Halifax Drain products have thicker coatings than those in the Halifax Soil range. This increased paint thickness means that the coating forms a larger proportion of the whole product which results in it being a more significant contribution to a fire but remains ‘low risk’. As a result of the increased coatings, the Halifax Drain products have a rating of A2-Sl, dO.

Steel Couplings

Our Stainless-Steel couplings have been independently fire tested by MPA NRW in Dortmund, Germany. The results of these tests showed that, when used to join Cast Iron pipes conforming to EN877, they achieved a rating of F90. This is a German rating and is not related to the ratings in Section 2.2. This rating means that the product will survive in a fire for 90 minutes before it fails.