Steeling steel for fire

The Steel Construction Institute has published new guidance for the booming practice of applying intumescent coatings off site.

It is a relatively recent technique for protecting steel elements from heat in a fire. The intumescent coating chars and swells to many times its original thickness.

Steel manufacturers apply the coating at the plant before shipping them to site. This does away with the hassle of spraying the steel with cementitious slurry on site.

The new guide, Structural Fire Design: Off-site Applied Thin Film Intumescent Coatings, updates SCI P160, introduced in 1996.

The off-site intumescent coating application industry expects to fire protect over 70,000 tonnes of structural steelwork this year.

The guide covers handling, storing and transporting coated steelwork, and contains model specification clauses for use in contracts for applying thin film coatings.