How Fireproofing Will Keep Your Facility Safe This Winter

When we think about win­ter, our minds are most­ly fixed on freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, blan­kets of snow, and slick roads — any­thing but fire, real­ly. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Fire Pro­tec­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, how­ev­er, win­ter sees more fires than any oth­er sea­son — this makes sense when you give it some thought. After all, we need fire and oth­er heat­ing ele­ments to stay warm dur­ing the cold months. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these efforts to stay warm can turn on us, result­ing in fires that can do seri­ous dam­age to prop­er­ties and threat­en the lives of those inside them. If you own or man­age a facil­i­ty, you must always take fire safe­ty and pre­ven­tion seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the win­ter. Prop­er fire­proof­ing is an essen­tial com­po­nent of these fire safe­ty pro­to­cols. Here’s how fire­proof­ing will keep your facil­i­ty and peo­ple safe this win­ter and beyond.

How Fire­proof­ing Will Keep Your Facil­i­ty Safe This Winter

Reduce the Risk of Heat­ing-Relat­ed Fire Damage

Facil­i­ty fires can start for many rea­sons. Dur­ing win­ter, the most com­mon caus­es of such fires are relat­ed to elec­tri­cal, heat­ing, and ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems. Out­dat­ed and/​or poor­ly-main­tained HVAC sys­tems can cause com­po­nents to set on fire and spread through­out a facil­i­ty. Space heaters can also over­heat and cause near­by sur­faces to catch fire, such as fur­ni­ture and oth­er flam­ma­ble mate­ri­als. Elec­tri­cal short­ages can also pro­duce sparks and flames, and the dri­er your inter­nal cli­mate, the quick­er these flames will spread. If your facil­i­ty is prop­er­ly fire­proofed, how­ev­er, these flames will have a hard­er time spread­ing and do less dam­age over­all. Intu­mes­cent fire­proof­ing expands when heat­ed past a cer­tain thresh­old, keep­ing flames away from the under­ly­ing sur­faces. Mean­while, cemen­ti­tious fire­proof­ing dimin­ish­es the heat trans­fer that takes place dur­ing a fire, pro­tect­ing sur­faces from severe dam­age. Both types of fire­proof­ing will prove use­ful not only dur­ing win­ter but any season.

Improve Inte­ri­or Insulation

While fire­proof intu­mes­cent paint is pri­mar­i­ly meant to pro­tect your facil­i­ty from fires, it can also help insu­late your build­ing from the cold. More specif­i­cal­ly, ther­mal-acoustic insu­la­tion (sep­a­rate from fire­proof­ing) is designed to reg­u­late both heat and noise inside your facil­i­ty. In doing so, this type of insu­la­tion pro­tects your facil­i­ty from ther­mal shock (i.e., con­tract­ing and expand­ing due to heat trans­fer) and keeps it com­fort­able for every­one inside. Best of all, fiber­glass-based ther­mal acoustic insu­la­tion is com­pat­i­ble with most fire­proof coat­ings, mean­ing con­trac­tors can pro­vide your facil­i­ty with the opti­mal insu­la­tion and fire­proof con­fig­u­ra­tion for its unique needs. While fire­proof­ing alone doesn’t pro­vide all the insu­la­tion your facil­i­ty needs this win­ter, it does pro­vide an addi­tion­al lay­er of insu­la­tion that’s easy to install in tan­dem with ded­i­cat­ed ther­mal acoustic insulation.

Pro­vide Ample Time for Safe Egress

As impor­tant as it is to pro­tect your assets from harm, keep­ing your peo­ple safe is most impor­tant of all. Not only does qual­i­ty fire­proof­ing reduce the harm­ful effects of fire — it also extends the amount of time for peo­ple to safe­ly and calm­ly exit your facil­i­ty and fire­fight­ers to arrive on the scene. Of course, exit­ing a build­ing and stay­ing out­doors until the flames are extin­guished can be chal­leng­ing dur­ing the win­ter. The cold air makes it uncom­fort­able to stay out­side for long stretch­es, while snow and ice can cre­ate trip­ping haz­ards and obstruc­tions. If you wish to ensure the safe­ty of all occu­pants in the event of a fire, then, you must make sure all exits are cleared and safe to walk on, as well as pro­vide tem­po­rary shel­ter in case of extreme cold — all of this in addi­tion to installing fire­proof­ing inside your facility.

Just because win­ter is cold doesn’t mean a fire is out of the ques­tion — in fact, a fire is more like­ly to start in your facil­i­ty dur­ing the win­ter than any oth­er sea­son. Know­ing this, now is a great time to hire a fire­proof­ing con­trac­tor to inspect, patch, and/​or install your facility’s fire­proof­ing. At Kaloutas, we work the way you work, engag­ing in the most effi­cient process­es to pre­vent down­time and improve your operations.

To learn more about us and all that we do, con­tact us online or give us a call at 978−532−1414 today!