Fire Safety in Insulation

Kingspan's Commitment to Insulation Fire Safety and Performance

Kingspan is the world's largest manufacturer of insulated building products, offering a full spectrum of insulation cores from traditional mineral fibre to advanced technologies, providing solutions to meet all regulatory requirements.

Committed to delivering high-performance, innovative building solutions that are underpinned by extensive fire testing, including large-scale system testing, Kingspan has carried out over 2,000 fire tests, to national, international and insurance industry standards, across its full range of insulated panel, rainscreen facade and insulation board products and systems.

As part of an ongoing commitment to fire safety and product development, Kingspan has invested in a state-of-the-art global facility dedicated to fire engineering research. Offering a comprehensive resource of fire science equipment and expertise, its mission is to advance knowledge and understanding of how building materials, products and complete systems perform when subjected to fire. Based in North Wales, the centre will be open to visitors and will welcome research partnerships and collaboration from across industry and academia.

  

Kingspan Insulation Fire Testing

Kingspan's high-performance PIR, QuadCore® and Kooltherm® insulated building products undergo multiple tests to determine their fire performance. These tests fall into two key categories: reaction to fire and fire resistance, which align with the stages of fire development.

This video explains these core concepts and why a high level of performance across both elements is important for assessing fire safety in building products and cladding applications.

Understanding Fire Development and Fire Performance in Insulation

Reaction to fire graphic

What is Reaction to Fire?

Reaction to fire is important during the early stages of a fire, determining how much energy a building product contributes to fire growth.

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What is Fire Spread?

It’s important to understand the burning behaviour of building materials and systems and to what extent, once exposed to fire, they will contribute to fire propagation.
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What is Flashover?

Once a fire has enough energy to sustain growth, a flashover can occur, turning a fire in a room to a room on fire. At this point, compartmentation is crucial.
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What is Fire Resistance?

Once a fire has reached flashover and transitioned to a fully developed blaze it's important that building elements are able to resist and contain fire spread.

Kingspan Fire Performance CPDs

We believe large-scale system tests are the most appropriate way to assess the performance of complete systems in real fires. Kingspan offers a suite of solutions that have met the rigorous requirements of BR 135 in large-scale BS 8414 tests. See the full list of Kingspan BS 8414 tested systems here.

In addition, Kingspan's PIR and QuadCore® insulated panel systems are approved to insurance industry standards, underpinned by large-scale fire tests, and are proven to protect against fire spread in independently-researched real fire case studies.

Register for one of the below CPDs to learn more about the fire performance of our insulation board products and insulated panel systems and the rigorous testing regimes that underpin them. 

Kingspan Fire and Facades in England CPD

Fire & Facades in England

Covering the updates to Part B of the Building Regulations for fire safety in England, and how this affects the compliance of differing insulation materials with regard to the building height, use and boundary. It also discusses the question of scale for fire testing and the merits of large-scale system testing.

Kingspan Reducing Risk CPD

Reducing Risk with
Kingspan Insulated Panels

This CPD, developed specifically for property insurance and risk management professionals, provides an understanding of how the use of Kingspan insurer-approved panels mitigates the risk of fire spread and impact on maximum foreseeable loss.
Kingspan Fire Performance of Insulated Panels CPD

Fire Performance of
Insulated Panel Systems

This CPD covers the Euroclass system and the difference between reaction and resistance, the importance of large-scale system testing and insurance industry standards, and the proven performance of Kingspan insulated panels in real fires.

Installation of Kingspan Insulated Panels

Insulated Panel Systems

Kingspan LPCB and FM Approved insulated panels are subjected to rigorous insurance industry large-scale fire tests and associated ongoing audits. In addition, they can offer high levels of fire resistance and are proven not to propagate fire in numerous independently-investigated real fire case studies.

Visit our insulated panels fire performance area
Installation of Kingspan Kooltherm Insulation Board

Insulation Boards

LPCB and FM approved built-up systems including Kingspan’s insulation boards are subjected to rigorous insurance industry large-scale system fire tests and associated audits. In addition, systems incorporating Kingspan Kooltherm® insulation boards, in specific configurations, have met the requirements of BR 135 in a series of BS 8414 large-scale system tests.

Visit our insulation board fire performance area
Line Drawing of Various Building Types

Fire Safety Regulations

An overview of the recent amendments to Building Regulations in England, Scotland and Wales and how this affects the specification of cladding systems.

Find out what has changed

Contact our technical experts
to discuss project specific requirements

Mail

fireinfo@kingspan.com