Beautiful and warm wooden buildings can easily be turned into the smoking ruins due to an accidentally thrown cigarette butt, a fallen candle or sheaf of sparks from a poorly functioning stove. Fires are the greatest enemy of living trees in the forest and timber (as part of any architectural structures). Fire retardants for wood.
Unfortunately, wood is a highly flammable material. Its flammability decreases after the fire retardant treatment of the wooden structures. A weak fire will not receive powerful reinforcement, and the parts will smolder a bit without igniting. It is difficult to stop a strong fire, but beams and logs impregnated with flame retardant compounds will allow fire vehicles to arrive on time, saving people’s homes or lives (often both).
Preparation of wooden structures for future force majeure circumstances should be carried out at the stage of turnkey construction of the building. In this case, fire retardants will work like an emergency break – clearly, timely and flawlessly.
Types of fire retardants
There are two groups of fire retardants for wood that have different compositions:
Salt-based
Their method of fighting the fire lies in salt crystals, which prevent the fire from spreading over the wood at the initial stage of the fire.
Clean building materials, pre-dried and prepared for use in housing construction but sprayed with water are thoroughly impregnated with a salt-based composition (brush or roller) in multiple layers. Each subsequent layer is applied to the previous protective layer dried at a temperature of +50°С.
“Salt-based” benefits: high efficiency, low price and consumption of mixture (500 ml*1m2). Its advantages are as follows: after a few years, crystals form on the surface of wooden parts, which reduces the fire resistance of the building.
Based on organic phosphorus compounds
Chemicals from impregnating compounds bind to the wood cells at the molecular level, forming the strongest “coupling”, which is not washed out by jets of water and has an unlimited period of action. When a flame appears, fire retardants start to work actively, destroying the fire source under a “foam coke coat”. Phosphorus impregnation provides a total victory over fire.
“Chemical” benefits: absolute reliability, application of the mixture to the icy wooden parts at a room temperature (you can fully dip the logs into the solution) and low consumption of the composition – 300 ml * 1m2. Wood without an ice crust is greased with a mixture at a temperature of -10-15°С.
Several rules for the safe handling of fire retardant solutions
This type of activity is entrusted only to the professionals who have obtained a license (admission) for such work. Treatment should start with compliance with the rules of sanitary safety, careful reading of the instructions for the use of fire-fighting mixtures (which differ in composition and processing methods) and verification of certificates for compliance with standards and the presence of test marks.
The rooms where the impregnation is performed are equipped with ventilation and climate control devices, as the humidity must not exceed 15%. It is allowed to impregnate wooden structures under pressure in equipped workshops. Personal protective equipment is required.
Wood doesn’t require additional treatment, since the components fighting mold, fungi, microbes, and bacteria are included in the fire retardants.
