Do it safely and in a good way
The risks are often underestimated. A fire place is a repeated 900°C heat source in your house! Therefore don’t compromise on these products because of a seemingly limited budget. The cost of these materials, spread over 40 years are neglectable per annum and worth every penny for your safety.
Building a fire place is a trade. If you have no experience, do take contact with a professional consultant.
Would you like to bear the responsibility of a possible serious incident?
Fire protection
Within the fire building industry there are a lot of misunderstandings. Widespread; “fire protection”. Fire protection is applicable when speaking about an ambient temperature of 20°C and in an exceptional (one off) case, an outbreak of fire. This fire needs to be controlled for a prespecified number of minutes within this controlled area (depending on local legislation). The applied materials are certified to a number of minutes withstanding the heat and flames. Exceeding the time limit the construction is allowed to collapse. Even without collapsing, after extinguishing all materials will need to be replaced at all times.
Fire resistant or fire retardant?
Another misunderstanding. Fire resistant materials are inflammable. Fire retardant materials don’t need to be. It will only delay a break through for a short period. Even a cardboard box is fire retardant (although for a very short period)! Paper covered plaster board are also fire retardant but certainly not fire resistant! We only supply non-flammable fire resistant materials. Please note that even a lot of “professionals” supply fire retardant materials, hence are not suitable for this application!
High Temperature Insulation
A burning fire place is a continuous heat source. Hence the project should be seen as a case of high temperature insulation and not as fire protection. For this application you need non-flammable fire resistant building materials to insulate the heat source. The package we offer is designed for this approach.
How should you build your fire place?
There is no standard answer for this question. It depends on your specific situation and your personal preferences. To avoid problems here are some general tips:
- Use high temperature resistant materials such as Promafour and/or Promasil 1000L. Read the specifications carefully.
- Use stiffeners in the corners, preferably strips cut from Promafour board. Metal strips will expand because of the heat and may cause cracks in your construction. Although tempting because of ease of installation; Do not use wooden studs!
- When cutting the “window” for your fire place in the front, do not follow the size of the fireplace to tight. Leave a minimum of 5 mm all around to allow the fire place to expand when getting hot. If you do not, the board may crack, in particular in the corners.
- Do not fix your insulation board against for instance a wooden wall, using screws. The heat will be transferred through the screw, most likely causing a fire after all! Even when using just one screw!
- Don’t push insulation blankets into gaps and holes to fill up voids. The insulation is achieved by the trapped air in the blanket. When pushing, the air is pushed out, and the blanket will no longer have it’s insulating properties causing a hazardous situation after all!
Don’t use metal strengthening bars horizontally above your fire place. Because of heat expansion the board may crack.