Intumescent Paint

Intumescent paint comes in three different types: steel, timber and plaster.

Steel: Intumescent steel paint is designed to increase the time period that a structural load bearing steel within a building will last during a fire. The paint works by intumescing or expanding to create an insulation barrier on the steel and increasing the time period to 60, 90 or 120 minutes. During a fire it can just take a few minutes for the temperature of unprotected steel work to reach 550 deg C, at this point steelwork loses its structural load bearing capacity and can buckle causing a building to potentially collapse.

Timber: Intumescent paint and Intumescent varnish for timber is designed to increase the fire performance of the timber substrate in two different ways, firstly it decreases the surface spread of flame to a British Class 0 and also a Euro Class B and secondly on substrates of a minimum thickness we can increase the fire performance to 30 minutes or in some cases 60 minutes.

Plaster: Intumescent paint for plaster is designed to increase the fire performance of a lath and plaster or plasterboard wall/ceiling. Standard lath and plaster walls or ceilings are generally assumed to have a fire performance of around 20min if in good condition, our intumescent paint is designed and tested to increase the fire performance up to 60 minutes with a thickness of paint applied of just 0.25mm or ¼ of a mm.