Where are the fire separations in an apartment building?

  • Dwelling-separating walls and floors. Penetrations of drains, water pipes and cables between dwellings.
  • Shafts and service ducts. Vertical pipes through all floors; sealed per floor or over the whole shaft, depending on the fire safety concept.
  • Meter cupboards. Cables and pipes from the meter cupboard to the dwelling and to the shaft.
  • Front doors and stairwells. Door, frame and hardware together must achieve the required fire resistance, and where required also the smoke resistance.
  • Storage rooms, plant rooms and underground car park. Often the place with the most installations and the heaviest requirements, sometimes with steel that needs fire protection.

Which requirements apply?

For new construction, the starting point between fire compartments is a WBDBO of at least 60 minutes (article 4.53, paragraph 1 Bbl). For a residential function this can be 30 minutes under conditions: if the permanent fire load does not exceed 500 MJ/m² and no floor of a habitable area is higher than 7 metres (article 4.53, paragraph 3). The route with the lowest resistance is decisive, so the penetrations, doors and junctions must also achieve that value.

Which value applies where is set out in the project's fire safety concept. Read the full explanation, including existing buildings and renovation, in the WBDBO requirement explained.

Standardise the detail before it is repeated

In housing, the first dwelling is the most expensive mistake. A wrongly chosen system in a shaft penetration or a forgotten junction above a dwelling-separating wall will otherwise recur in every dwelling. We therefore recommend agreeing a fixed detail per type of penetration with the site manager and the installers, and assessing it together in the first dwelling or building section before it is repeated.

That detail describes the pipe material and diameter, the opening size, the system and the position in the wall or floor. If an installer comes with a different material or a larger opening, it is immediately clear that the detail must be reassessed.

Converting offices into housing

In a conversion, existing floors and walls become dwelling separations, and new shafts and pipes pass through a structure that was not designed for them. The renovation rules apply to the altered parts. The fire safety consultant determines which level applies per separation; we assess whether the existing structure with the new penetrations achieves that value, and what is needed if it does not.

Handover per dwelling, with a file that lasts

We prefer to work per stairwell or building section and record per dwelling what has been sealed, with location, system, date and photo. You deliver that file in your own format to the client. The owners' association or housing corporation that manages the building afterwards then starts with a complete overview instead of a search. On request we convert the file into a digital logbook.