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Bushfire protection with steelframe.
Your choice of building materials when building in a bushfire-prone area is extremely important and can dramatically affect how your house performs in a bushfire event. By building with non-combustible materials you are reducing the risk of ignition.
Steel is an excellent choice when designing and building in a bushfire zone.
Steel provides the following benefits:
Excellent early fire hazard properties. It just does not ignite!
Non-combustibility. Steel does not burn, so does not contribute fuel to a fire.
Quality and durability are not affected over time.
With maximum use of strong, durable and non-combustible steel materials in the building construction, combined with better glazing, door and window screens, effective sub-floor ember screening, and a properly sited and well-prepared building, the probability of ignition, fire spread and house loss is almost eliminated.
This three bedromed steelframe (pictured), steel-clad retreat in WA survived unscathed when eight other nearby buildings were destroyed by the three day bushfire that raged through the area.
The only damage was to electrical cabling and plumbing beneath the house, which were not protected by steel. The owner has since remedied this exposure with additional steel sheeting.
Owner Dale Alcock a leading WA builder said:
Obviously the steel roof and walls were a primary barrier, but but steel wall frames offered additional protection from burning embers.
``Our weekender...survived the fires on its own with no help from anyone. Obviously we were thrilled.``
VICTORIAN Update.
Clearly the recent experience of fires in Victoria involved fires of much greater heat intensity than have been experienced before.
None the less, it seems obvious that timber battens and timber roof structure and timber wall structure would become involved in a fire due to the extreme radiant heat. No house could survive the structural elements catching fire from radiant heat exposure.
It makes complete scientific sense to use only non-combustible material in the construction of dwellings in fire prone areas.
The simple fact is that a steel house structure may well be damaged and distort in extreme heat exposure, but it does not contribute to the fire. That is a major benefit with steelframe construction.
Of course there are also many other attributes to be considered when designing for fire exposure. Elements such as Hebel concrete floors, fire screens for windows and other openings, good housekeeping around the property, personal shelters, fire pumping installations, etc.
When building from scratch, steel is the simplest way to eliminate one major combustible hazard.
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