Room Integrity Testing
A Beginner’s Guide to Room Integrity Testing
Room Integrity Testing – A Beginner’s Guide to Room Integrity Testing
What is Fire Suppression Room Integrity Testing?
Also called a Fan Test, Room Integrity Testing (RIT) is related to Gas Fire Suppression systems, and in particular the capability of a room to hold a Suppressant Gas that is discharged inside it. In basic terms it is a way of calculating a leakage rate for a particular room (or enclosure).
The way it works is that the room doorway is blocked off using an adaptable frame and the room is pressurised and de-pressurised using a fan mounted in this frame. Software on a laptop and fan mounted pressure sensors then provide multiple readings measured in air flow and pascals. Once the room volume and gas quantity are added to the software, it can calculate the density of the suppressant gas, and in turn can accurately model room leakage and calculate the Hold Time.
What is the Hold Time?
The Hold Time of a room is the time that the software in the paragraph above calculates that the Suppressant Gas will be held in the room after discharge. By regulation this should be a minimum of 10 mins for most rooms.
Room Integrity Testing Standards
The main standard that recommends Room Integrity Testing on commissioning of a system and the annual re-testing of an enclosure in the UK is BSEN15004. This UK standard provides guidance on how to carry out the test and the frequency of re-testing.
If you are operating a Gas Fire Suppression System, then you MUST test on commissioning of the system when installed and retest at least annually.
Why is the Integrity of my Room Important?
The ability of any Gas Suppression System to suppress fires for any period of time depends heavily on the room (or enclosure) that the gas discharges into. Suppressant Gas can only work if it is allowed to affect the “Fire Triangle” by either reducing the available Oxygen for combustion or by removing the heat from the source. This can only happen when the gas is in contact with the source of the fire.
Your room’s “Hold Time” will give you peace of mind that the suppressant gas will be in contact with the fire source for at least that amount of time, thus continuing to suppress the fire.
Room Integrity Testing Equipment
There are a few companies that manufacture RIT Test Equipment, the most notable being Retrotec. Here at Sovereign Extinguishing, we have a Retrotec kit to do all of our testing.
All of our testing is completed in-house by our own trained and qualified engineers. Dependent upon the number of rooms required on a site, the test normally takes around half a day.
Failed your RIT? Poor Hold Times? Sovereign Extinguishing Can Help
If you have had your RIT carried out, and have failed due to a poor hold time, there are a couple of ways that this can be tackled:
- The easiest way to attack this problem is by sealing the holes in the room. Leakage most commonly occurs:
- Around room penetrations – maybe cable trays/conduit or aircon pipework. This is quite common where a cable tray/conduit/pipe has been installed, breaching the room’s boundary, and not being properly sealed afterwards. Remember that these could be in the floor voids / ceiling voids / cupboards in the room so they may not be obvious at first glance.
- Poorly fitting doors/frames – normally addressed with sealing materials – brush strips etc.
- The junction between the walls and floor/ceiling – sometimes there are long cracks on the joins which can cause leakage – it doesn’t look much, but there may be a lot of it!
- Air exchange in the room – if there is air introduced or extracted from outside of the room (for cooling or ventilation purposes perhaps) – these should always be dampened with the dampers closed automatically before the Gas Suppression discharges.
- Metal Windows – these are notoriously bad at sealing, especially when getting old or when they’ve been painted numerous times.
- Porous Walls (more prevalent in newly constructed rooms and shouldn’t be underestimated). Porous building materials can allow the suppressant gas to seep through them. Normally PVA sealing and then a couple of coats of paint can fix this issue.
- You may have the wrong Suppressant Gas in the room –
- If tackling the points above is not feasible, then it could well be that changing the Suppressant Gas type may help. Hold Times are dependent upon the density of the Suppressant Gas that is used – so for example, if you have a chemical agent Suppressant Gas such as HFC227ea (FM200), then this is much denser than an Inert Gas blend such as IG55 (Argonite).
- A room that may fail to reach its Hold Time on a chemical agent may achieve it by changing to an inert gas.
- Sovereign Extinguishing’s trained engineers have the ability to model what the Hold Time would be using different gases in a room following an initial RIT fail and advise accordingly.
Room Integrity Testing with Sovereign Extinguishing
If you have issues around your Room Integrity Testing or Hold Times, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team here at Sovereign Extinguishing today. We are the UK’s leading experts in fire extinguishing servicing and have years of experience in room integrity testing.
Contact us today for an informal chat on your options and to find out how we could help your Gas Fire Suppression become more effective and gain compliance.
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