WARNING. MAJOR FIRE DAMPER SUPPLIER EXPOSED!!
WARNING. MAJOR FIRE DAMPER SUPPLIER EXPOSED!!
As a strong advocate of fire safety/protection in the Irish/UK markets we would strongly advise all contractors/consultants/specifiers to revisit their fire damper technical submittals to ensure compliance.
A major fire damper supplier has been required to correct their long-standing Declaration of Performance (DOP) which had previously stated multi directional testing and were found to be single directional only. To put this into context, these products cannot guarantee the outcome in any fire scenario in both directions.
The single directional testing of fire dampers has been rejected as inadequate and incomplete in Ireland since CE marking came into play in 2014, yet these dampers are sold and installed throughout Ireland on hospitals, office blocks and data center’s.
This occurred as a result of due diligence carried out by one the UK’s largest building contractors on a major global vaccine supplier project, which led to the removal and replacement of all non-confirming fire dampers. The UK based manufacturer has since corrected their declarations to reflect single directional testing, which will no doubt have a major impact on its UK projects, however, if this is not addressed or made public in Ireland it may remain dormant.
The immediate concern of course is live projects currently in play which many have relied upon the old declarations where it stated multi-directional. The historic legacy will no doubt have to be revisited at a future point. The concern for the mechanical contractor and installer alike is the cost involved in replacing these unpredictable dampers and reinstalling approved multi-directional compliant dampers.
Given the error in the declaration it is unclear whether P.I Insurance (Professional Indemnity Insurance) will cover such a discrepancy.
AMS provide a wide array of multi-directional tested dampers, for all applications, in both square and round, multiple assembly, minimal distances from slab and another damper. We also specialize in smoke control dampers to EN1366-10 for duct and shaft/wall installation. Contact us today on [email protected]