Establishing Fire Safety of Carpets

As TIC professional whenever I view a product, my mind conjures up images of what all would have gone behind to bring the product to the current state. For most products, it is a complex supply-chain spread across countries and people who have varying definitions of quality and repeatability. Products we see around us often involves several commercial entities, often in more than one country.

Methods and Routes to Compliance to Codes

The Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) world offers 'Conformity Assessments' defined by ISO'S Committee On Conformity Assessment (CASCO) and #ISO 17000 series of standards have set guidelines to help buyers and sellers of products and services to check, verify and validate quality and repeatability with varying levels of rigor. Many products still have a very liberal compliance requirements as compared to other product groups like Electrical Goods, Medical Devices, Chemicals, etc, which are often checked using very stringent certification and listing methods defined by ISO 17065 and ISO 17067.

Carpets, like most of the other Softline Goods usually have a manufacturer who produces the product using one of more designers and sub-contractors and often has one or more layers of traders or distributors to "Sell" the product. These are often spread around the world!

Depending on the country or the region where they are being sold, the properties of Carpets are assessed usually by "Test Reports" only. Hence modifications in design, or raw materials, or method of assembly of the product rarely gets assessed for each supply.

The table here which has been reproduced from ISO 17067 is also in the the UAE Fire and life safety code. It is on page 1199 on this link.

With the help of this table, the code moves the compliance requirements of materials referenced in this code to a very stringent level of compliance.

The code defines "Certification and Listing" using Type 5 System of compliance defined in ISO 17067. This shifts products like Carpets among others from the way other Softlines are treated for compliance testing usually.

We all know how the Fire Loads of occupancies have been rising over the years.

There are scores of Research papers related to increasing Fire loads and their correlation with Combustible Contents of Carpets and Flooring types.

So how do we assess the Fire Behavior of Carpets we are buying?

Compliance Mechanisms for Establishing Fire Safety of Carpets

Carpets are one of the many categories of products which go into Hospitals, Malls, Commercial buildings which are not only custom designed and manufactured but can also increase the Fire Load of a occupancy considerably. If the carpet supplied in the project varies from the carpet sample tested even in one of the few parameters the Fire Behavior can change.

Every-time a Carpet is ordered for a project the following is likely to change

• Fiber (like nylon/ polyester/ polypropylene/ acrylic/ wool, Etc.)
• Loop Pile Options (Berber/ Level/ Multi-Level)
• Cut Pile Options (Saxony/ Textured/ Frieze/ Pattern)
• Colors and Design
• Substrate materials
• Glues
• Joining Methods

Fire Compliance: A Project Based Approach

ASTM E648 or BS EN ISO 9239-1 are the most commonly used methods to test burning behavior of carpets.

It is likely that the Fire Behavior of a carpet sample will change when one of the above parameters changes

So the best approach is a project based approach which can be used for all bespoke supplies on a project which are high risk

This approach rearranges the responsibilities of the stakeholders in the assurance process

In Type 5, ISO 17065 led Certification and Listing process described in the table from ISO 17065, the certification body(CB) takes the ownership of auditing the production processes of manufacturing locations regularly to ensure repeatability of production (and hence the quality).

As the Carpets are usually different for every project, the Lead / Fire consultant keeps a check on the supply by selecting representative sample(s) from the supply of the specific project. These are then sent to accredited labs for testing. A dossier of evidence of sample selection (usually in the form of an Inspection Report with images of signed samples) along with test reports from an Accredited / Recognized Lab forms the conformity assessment documentation.

It is common for such a procedure to be laid out as the acceptance criteria in the commercial agreement between the Contractor and the Carpet Supplier

The Contractor hence is the owner of the Conformity Assessment Documentation which captures independently gathered evidence. This is used for submission to authorities like Civil Defense and also forms a basis for Commercial Clauses of the contracts.

Below is the Information Sheet about the Tests for Fire Behaviour of Carpets and other Flooring Materials.