Flame-retardant floor covering

Flame-retardant floor covering

certified fire-resistant floor coverings are among the flame-retardant materials. They meet the high safety requirements for the flammability and burning behaviour of building materials and products. If floor coverings are certified by certain fire protection certificates, then they are approved for use in public areas, at events, in trade fair stand construction, exhibition stand construction, as well as for use in theatres.

Floor coverings are therefore standardised to be flame retardant if they meet the standard DIN 4102-B1 or according to DIN EN 13501-1 with the classification Bfl or Cfl-s1.

Detailed information:
A floor covering with low flammability can be labelled with various fire protection certificates. In Germany, the older, but still valid standard B1 according to DIN 4102 = flame retardant is widely used. For France, for example, the M1 standard applies, which is comparable to the German standard DIN 4102-B1. These exemplary country-specific standards have been replaced since 2002 by a Europe-wide classification system for the assessment of fire behaviour, DIN EN 13501-1 , and supplemented by various new test criteria.

The EU standard thus contains more classes. The testing of floor coverings is described separately in it. ("fl" for flooring). For the first time, the European building materials classification also takes secondary fire phenomena into account. These include, for example, burning droplets ("d" for droplets) or smoke ("s" for smoke).

This means that it is not possible to compare the B1 standard directly with the EN standard. In the European standard for "Classification of construction products by fire performance", the individual building material classes provide more precise information. This was also tested with DIN 4102, but not shown individually.

What does the EN classification "DIN EN 13501-1 Cfl-s1" mean for a floor covering?

• DIN EN 13501 - 1 is the abbreviation for the classification standard. It defines the procedure for classifying the fire behaviour of building products.
• B and C are the classes of the building product ("flame retardant", comparable to B1).
• "fl" is an abbreviation for flooring, the floor covering that is treated separately.
• "s" is the abbreviation for "smoke". If a material is labelled s1, this means that it produces no or hardly any smoke.
• "d" stands for "droplets" and deals with the burning droplets of a building material.