There are quite bad situation in Latvia with fire protection of wood constructions. The main reason of it is missing of fire safety building regulations in accordance with
European harmonised standards and construction products directive (CPD). Old national regulations LBN 201-96 is not usable nowadays and requires wrong information and calculations. There are only few fire retardant chemical producers and importers in Latvia. Main reason of it is regulations that wood is classified as combustible material (worst that can be) and it’s usage in construction is limited. Fire retarded treated (FRT) wood products are very good solution to ensure necessary fire safety class of building where it is necessary.
This work was done to summarize information about different type fire retardants and evaluate local legislation and standardization in field of fire safety.
Experimental work was done to evaluate efficiency of local producer’s fire retardant chemicals for wood in accordance with European standard method EN 13823 (test in single burning item SBI)
Paper shows that results of SBI test method could be usable for testing fire retardant chemicals and national standard method is not good enough for these purposes.
Keywords: Fire retardant treated (FRT) wood, European standards and harmonization, SBI test method (EN 13823)
Authors
Edgars Buksans
Forest and wood products R&D institute, Latvia Agriculture University, Jelgava, LATVIA
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