Press Releases
Reward concrete wall achieves four-hour fire rating
Released: July 01, 1999
Reward concrete wall achieves four-hour fire rating
Omaha, Nebraska July, 1999—Officials at Reward Wall Systems, Inc. recently announced that a concrete wall constructed using Reward insulating concrete forms achieved a four-hour fire rating when tested June 30 at Omega Point Laboratories, Inc. in Elmendorf, Texas.
The 10' x 10' test wall was constructed with Reward 11" forms and tested to ASTM E-119 standards to obtain the fire resistance rating. According to Michael E. Dey, Fire Test Technologist at Omega Point, the wall was mounted into a load bearing test frame and placed against the laboratory's vertical test furnace. Then a force of 5,000 pounds per foot was applied, and the furnace was fired according to the ASTM E 119-98 time/temperature curve for a period of four hours. The temperature of the unexposed surface of the wall remained well below the allowable limits during the fire exposure, after which the wall withstood the standard five-minute hose stream test without allowing passage of water through the wall.
"It is important to note that the Reward wall was tested bare," said Kelvin Doerr, Director of Engineering and Technical Services at Reward. "When building with the Reward 11" form, it will not matter what finish is attached to the inside or outside of the wall or how it is attached—the concrete and expanded polystyrene forms alone achieved the four-hour rating."
The Reward 11" form consists of two pieces of expanded polystyrene (EPS) held together with plastic ties. The foam blocks are stacked, aligned, braced, strengthened with steel reinforcement bar and filled with concrete. This results in a solid continuous airtight steel-reinforced concrete wall surrounded by several inches of insulating EPS.
"Reward structures are widely known for their safety in tornadoes and hurricanes," said Doerr. "Of equal importance is safety in case of fire, and now Reward walls can offer unprecedented fire safety." This four-hour rating for the Reward 11" form follows a review in March of the three-hour fire rating of the 9 1/4" Reward form, in which Omega Point Laboratories issued a further rating of two hours without use of metal fire straps.
According to the official report dated March 19, 1999, from Omega Point Laboratories:
"...it is our opinion and belief that the absence of the metal strips from the tested design will not yield a fire resistance rating less than 2 h. We require attachment of the 5/8" thick Type X gypsum wallboard to the plastic ties. A minimum of 50% of the fasteners must be attached to ties for integrity."
The Reward Wall System achieved a three-hour fire rating with the use of metal fire straps on the six-inch form during a test at Omega Point in June of 1997. A copy of all three reports is available through the Engineering and Technical Services Department at Reward.
"Although certain types of buildings can require a fire resistance rating of four hours, it is rare," said Doerr. "Most buildings require only a one- or two-hour rating. That means that Reward walls easily meet or exceed the fire resistance ratings for any type of building."