Following the terribly tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in London, all at Viritopia wish their sincere condolences to the families and those affected by the fire. Our thoughts and prayers are with all that have been involved in this disaster.
In the wake of this tragedy we have had a number of customers (and rightly so) question the fire safety implications of our living wall system as a rain screen cladding system. This post is intended to go some way towards explaining how living walls fit into the rain screen cladding industry in terms of fire safety.
As a manufacturer of a living wall cladding system we are committed to testing and ensuring its safety. We are the first manufacturer (and to our knowledge the only to date) to have invested in a fire safety test on our system. We first tested our living wall system for fire safety in 2009 before using the system on Digby Road project and at the same time had it tested for wind speed up to 140 mph. We renewed the test and received a successful result in January 2016. Our living wall system was awarded first class classification for BS 476: Part 7: 1997 ‘Method for Classification of the Surface Spread of Flame of Products’.
Read our previous article at the time of the fire test result.
We are committed to ensuring the safety of our products and are able to offer assurance to our clients. We also welcome the opportunity to work with fire alarm systems which could turn the irrigation system of our living wall into a sprinkler system with some development.
