Fire-resistance rating

This can be quantified simply as a measure of time, or it may entail other criteria, involving evidence of functionality or fitness for purpose.

Canada's Institute for Research in Construction (a part of the National Research Council and publisher of Canada's model building code – NBC) requires a special test regime for firestops for plastic pipe penetrants.

Fire endurance tests for this application must be run under 50Pa positive furnace pressure in order to adequately simulate the effect of potential temperature differences between indoor and outdoor temperatures in Canada's winters.

Special hoods are applied here to provide suction on the top side of a test assembly in order to reach the 50Pa pressure differential.

Outdoor spray fireproofing methods that must be qualified to the hydrocarbon curve may be required to pass a host of environmental tests before any burn takes place, to minimize the likelihood of ordinary operational environments rendering a vital system component useless before it ever encounters a fire.

[2] This rating is the requirement in data safes and vault structures for protecting digital information on magnetic media or hard drives.

This is the rating required to protect microfilm, microfiche, and other film-based information storage media.

Instead, the fire is confined to a narrow tube, where pressure and heat build up and spread rapidly, with little room for escape and little chance of compartmentalization.