Fire blanket in the new RIPCI revision
The Fire Blanket as an Active Fire Protection Element
The latest version, Revision: 23 (10/04/2015), of the Royal Decree of the Fire Protection Installers Regulation (RIPCI), available since April 2015, is awaiting the opinion of the European Commission before 10 August 2015, although it will have to wait for its entry into force six months after its publication in the BOE (Official State Gazette).
One of the new features of this latest version of the RIPCI regulation is that for the first time fire blankets are considered as an element of Active Fire Protection and the specific regulations and standards that must be met in terms of design, approval, use, installation and maintenance of fire blankets are established, which characteristics must be met, specifying in detail in its final table annex the number of the normative document according to which it must be complied with (UNE - EN 1869/1997).
In the new RIPCI, article 10. Scope of action of installation companies.
It specifies that fire blankets must be installed by fire protection system installation companies, fire blanket maintenance companies or by the manufacturer itself. When the surface area of the establishment does not exceed 100 m², or it is a single-family dwelling, they may also be installed by the user.
On the other hand, in ANNEX I, CHARACTERISTICS AND INSTALLATION OF FIRE PROTECTION EQUIPMENT AND SYSTEMS SECTION, fire blankets are included in the ACTIVE FIRE PROTECTION section, defining them as sheets of flexible material intended to extinguish small fires by suffocation. It also specifies the requirements of standards to be taken into account before their manufacture or import, in order to justify compliance with the provisions of the UNE-EN 1869 standard, as well as maintenance, installation and signalling.
Undoubtedly, the incorporation of the fire blanket in a legal document on safety that regulates the entire sector of Fire Protection Installations is a great step forward to give, from our point of view, the importance that this article of rapid action against fire deserves.
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