Fire stopping in brief
Fire stopping restores the fire resistance of a compartment line where services pass through it, using systems fire-tested for the specific combination of service, aperture and construction. A compliant seal is not a product — it is a tested configuration: the right material, at the right depth, installed the right way, in the construction it was tested in. Step outside any of those parameters and the certificate no longer applies.
What's involved
System selection
Each penetration is matched to a manufacturer-tested detail covering the service type — plastic pipe, steel pipe, cables, trays, ductwork — the aperture size, the seal depth and the substrate, whether masonry, drywall or slab. The supporting construction matters as much as the seal: a detail tested in one wall build-up is only transferable to another within the limits ASFP guidance sets out. Outside that tested scope, the certificate means nothing.
The right material for the job
Fire batt, intumescent mastic, pipe collars and wraps, fire pillows and mortar each exist because services behave differently in fire: a plastic pipe must be crushed closed as it softens, while a steel pipe conducts heat and needs insulating. Product choice follows the tested detail — never habit, and never whatever happens to be on the van.
Installation to the tested detail
Depth of fill, friction fit, fixings, annular gaps, bead dimensions — the tested detail specifies them all, and the installed seal must match it. This is where quality lives or dies, and why our installers work to the manufacturer's approved schedule rather than from memory.
Records before concealment
Every seal is photographed, located and logged against its tested system reference before ceilings close and risers are boarded. Once concealed, an unrecorded seal is unverifiable — and to an auditor, unverifiable reads as non-compliant.
Where fire stopping fails
Survey after survey, the same failures appear:
Missing seals
Services installed after the fire-stopping package was signed off — data cabling is the classic — punch fresh holes through compartment lines that nobody seals, because nobody was told.
The wrong product
Mastic where a collar was needed; batt bridging an aperture wider than its tested span; expanding foam — rarely tested for fire performance in these applications — used as a universal filler.
Right product, wrong installation
Insufficient depth, missing fixings, gaps behind services where the batt was never dressed — or service supports set outside the centres in the test evidence, and seal products incompatible with the pipe material they close around, both failure modes the ASFP has issued advisory notes on. Invisible from floor level; obvious the moment a surveyor lifts a ceiling tile.
No records
A seal without documentation cannot be traced to a tested system. Under the Fire Safety Order and the Building Safety Act's evidence regime, that is a finding — not a technicality.
What you receive
A penetration-by-penetration installation record: photographs before concealment, the tested system reference for every seal, and test certificates with product data compiled into a handover evidence pack that ties each seal in the building to a tested detail — for the life of the building.
Installed by specialists, evidenced as standard
Passive fire protection is all GoldThread does. Every installer works to tested details as a matter of course, every seal is recorded before it disappears from view, and the evidence pack is assembled as the work proceeds — not reconstructed after the event.
Every penetration sealed, proven and traceable.
Tell us about the building and we'll take it from there.
Contact us