Home Fire performance

Reaction to fire

The New Zealand Building Code also contains provisions designed to ensure that products used on interior walls and ceilings, floors and on external walls do not promote rapid surface spread of fire when exposed to growing fires.

These provisions are intended to allow more time for the safe evacuation of occupants or for fire-fighting interventions.

Wood is a combustible material and large areas of exposed timber surfaces may pose a fire spread hazard.

Design features to mitigate the risk may include use of:

  • fire sprinklers to control or suppress the fire;
  • fire separations to subdivide spaces;
  • fire retardant treatments and coatings to improve the fire properties of wood, and/or
  • area limits on the total exposed surfaces of wood products, especially for ceilings.