Overcoming Fire Protection Challenges with Cross-Laminated Timber Construction
Promat Australia assists in providing solutions for fire protection on the award-winning Otago Polytechnic Student Village CLT Construction
The Otago Polytechnic’s $21 million student accommodation village was designed to meet the needs of the schools increase in accommodation requirements. The 231 room, five-storey facility was designed with sustainability at the forefront whilst incorporating some unique design and safety features.
Designed by Mason and Wales Architects of Dunedin, project managed by Logic Group and constructed by Naylor Love. The main structure of the new student accommodation facility comprises XLam cross-laminated timber (CLT). The largest CLT construction undertaken by XLam to date in New Zealand.
“XLam CLT is sustainable … XLam out-performs conventional framed construction in air-tightness, thermal insulation, internal moisture management, acoustic insulation and fire resistance.” 1
Whilst sustainability is a big consideration in building design it comes with a number of construction challenges, one of them being fire protection. Promat supported XLam as they conducted several fire tests with independent research and testing organisation BRANZ. The New Zealand Building Code required a Fire Resistance Level (FRL) of -/30/30 for this construction and Promat were able to provide penetration systems which easily met these requirements.
This project is a great example of the extensive use of Promat’s fire protection products within a cross-laminated timber construction with Promat providing the majority of wall and ceiling penetration systems. Promat fire protection products used on the project included more than 600 Promat fire collars consisting of PROMASEAL® Conduit Collar, PROMASEAL ® Retrofit Collar (FC), and PROMASEAL ® Retrofit Collar (FCS), whilst PROMASEAL ® -A Acrylic Sealant and PROMASEAL® FlexiWrap was installed to protect the insulated copper pipe penetrations.
“The village recently won an Award of Excellence, the Resene Green Building Property Award, and an Award of Merit, the Arrow Multi-Unit Residential Property Award. These annual awards were won at the Property Council New Zealand Rider Levett Bucknall Property Industry Awards 2018 and were recently announced at a gala dinner in Auckland.”2
Awards: NZ Wood Awards 2018 Finalist -Engineering Innovation -Multi-storey Timber Buildings Property Council NZ, Rider Levett Bucknall Property Industry Awards 2018 Finalist Resene Green Building Property Award
