An HVAC system provides more than proper ventilation and airflow to your home or office space. While comfort and air quality are essential, fire safety is critical. Educating yourself on HVAC dampers will ensure your comfort, health, safety, and energy efficiency. Whether you own a home or business, take a moment to review the importance of fire safety and a properly functioning HVAC system.
3 Components of Fire Safety
There are three critical components of fire protection you should familiarize yourself with:
- Passive fire protection: Installing firewalls, fire dampers, smoke dampers, and backdraft dampers are all essential to passive fire protection. These HVAC components help suppress the spread of smoke, high temperatures, and flames in the event a fire should occur.
- Active fire protection: This component includes water sprinklers, manual smoke alarms, and firefighters.
- Education: Knowledge of fire protection is crucial. The educational element of fire safety and protection involves understanding how fire and backdraft dampers work, what you should do in the event of a fire, and additional plans and protective methods to keep people safe.
HVAC Dampers: What are They?
A damper is an essential equipment piece attached to your HVAC unit, duct, or similar control apparatus that regulates airflow. HVAC dampers help maintain your space’s comfort while ensuring its safety and keeping your system from working harder and longer.
HVAC dampers play an essential role in your home and office space, as they control the air which flows in and out of the building. HVAC dampers are vital to safeguarding employees’ health against dangerous fumes, gases, and other hazardous materials.
Regulating internal temperature is another way HVAC dampers help maintain proper airflow throughout each area. Proper insulation helps by keeping your space comfortable while keeping costs down. This is particularly helpful in areas such as attics. As warm air accumulates from your roof’s heat absorption, it infiltrates your home or office, resulting in rising temperatures and electric bills.
Types of HVAC Dampers
While there are a variety of HVAC dampers, we’ll examine the most commonly sought-after dampers that are critical to fire safety:
- Fire Dampers
- Smoke Dampers
- Backdraft Dampers
- Corridor Smoke and Fire Damper Combo
Fire and Smoke Dampers
Fire dampers and smoke dampers play instrumental roles in your passive fire protection system. They work together to protect your home or office building from smoke and fire damage. Within your HVAC system, they work to stop the spread of smoke, heat, and flames throughout your space.
What is a Fire Damper?
Fire dampers play a crucial role in your HVAC system, including:
- Detecting excessive heat
- Preventing air distribution and oxygen supply
- Trapping smoke
- Preventing the spread of flames
- Providing additional time to evacuate
Fire dampers are pieces of equipment installed in your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. They help prevent the spread of flames throughout your home or workspace. Fire dampers create a complete protective barrier between spaces and prevent a fire from accessing the HVAC system and utilizing its air ducts to spread more rapidly.
How Do Fire Dampers Work?
Fire dampers are installed within your HVAC system’s air ducts at the points where two fire-rated barriers meet. Fire-rated barriers assist in an emergency by slowing the fire to contain spreading. By installing these HVAC dampers at the intersection of each barrier, fire dampers help control and stop other flames and heat from circulating inside your air vents.
A fire can trigger a fire damper in two ways:
- A heat fuse link is triggered by the presence of heat around the damper when a room’s temperature exceeds 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the temperature rises to this temperature, the attached fusible link on the fire damper melts. The melting triggers the damper to close, cutting off air distribution and preventing oxygen from fueling the flames.
- In electrical charges, the fire damper uses an actuator to ensure it closes when triggered by a smoke or fire alarm. An electrical fire damper actuator controls the movement of the damper blades or curtains.
Three Types of Fire Dampers
Your HVAC system should be equipped with three main types of fire dampers:
- Static fire dampers
- Dynamic fire dampers
- Combination dampers
Static Fire Dampers
A static fire damper works like a protective curtain. These HVAC dampers are designed to halt airflow as soon as a fire is detected. When your home or building’s fire system detects a fire, it triggers the HVAC system to shut off instantly. Once your HVAC system shuts down, the internal fan will stop, triggering the static fire damper to close from lack of air pressure. This automatic shut-off prevents air and flames from spreading through the HVAC system ducts.
Dynamic Fire Dampers
Dynamic fire dampers are spring-loaded devices. The spring design allows them to close, blocking airflow and flames from spreading throughout the HVAC system. The dynamic damper differs from the static fire damper in that it is installed in HVAC units that don’t have automatic shut off features built-in. Although this allows air to continue circulating within the HVAC system, once the dynamic fire damper detects extreme heat, its built-in fan activates, forcing the spring-loaded system to close.
Combination Fire Dampers
Combination HVAC fire dampers combine several functions into a single unit. The combination of a smoke and fire damper detects extreme heat and automatically closes. Combination dampers contain their own smoke detection systems and trigger the damper to close. A combination damper operates independently from the HVAC system but similarly to the dynamic fire dampers.
What Are Smoke Dampers?
Since the first sign of fire is typically the smell or sight of smoke, smoke dampers are an essential part of a passive fire protection product. Smoke dampers help reduce the spread of smoke and gas from one space to another during a fire. HVAC experts can install physical smoke barriers, including walls or ceilings, or install smoke dampers into your air conditioning and ventilation ductwork.
How Do Smoke Dampers Work?
At the moment smoke is detected, smoke dampers trigger the fire prevention system installed in your building. Once the smoke detection system senses smoke, it sends a signal to the smoke dampers to close. An electric or pneumatic actuator, also known as a mover, then closes the smoke dampers. Once closed, the smoke dampers prevent the harmful air from circulating throughout your home or office building by trapping the smoke. As with fire dampers and barriers, smoke dampers are installed at the intersection of smoke barriers.
What is a Backdraft Damper?
A backdraft damper is essential to your ventilation system and helps ensure your unit works properly. They help regulate airflow throughout your home or building, providing your space with clean air. Backdraft dampers remove contaminated air and prevent it from recycling back inside.
Backdraft dampers eliminate stale air and undesirable odors that may linger throughout your rooms. They also eliminate dangerous fumes and vapors to protect your workers from potentially harmful air quality. Backdraft dampers are also helpful in ridding unwelcome warm air from various heating sources and preventing cold backdrafts.
How Do Backdraft Dampers Work?
Like a fire damper, a backdraft damper features blades within a frame, but the purpose of these blades is different. Backdraft dampers allow the air to flow in and out of an area in one direction, preventing a return flow. When there is a pressure differential strong enough to lift the blades, backdraft dampers are activated. The backdraft dampers then allow air to flow into the lower pressure zone.
Additional Fire Safety Equipment
In addition to dampers, installing additional fire safety devices in your home and office buildings is critical to creating a comprehensive fire safety plan. Protecting your area with backdraft dampers, smoke dampers, and additional fire safety equipment can be lifesaving. We highly recommend installing additional fire safety equipment to create an effective active and passive fire protection plan, including:
- fire extinguishers
- smoke alarms
- sprinklers
Fire-Rated Walls
The use of fire-rated walls is an excellent way to be proactive against emergencies. If your work industry handles chemicals or other dangerous substances with a high combustion risk, fire-rated walls are essential. Fire-rated walls are designed and built to withstand exposure to flames up to a specific amount of time. If your business works with hazardous materials, containing designated spaces within fire-rated walls can help prevent the spread of fire and smoke during an emergency.
Fire-rated walls are essential in apartments and townhouses. In the event of a fire, the fire-rated wall will help prevent further damage and spreading.
Scheduling HVAC Damper Maintenance
A vital part of preventative fire safety is keeping up with regular maintenance. Keep your buildings safe by ensuring your products remain properly functioning and up to date on maintenance. It’s essential to know the day, month, and year your HVAC dampers were installed, so we recommend keeping a record of installation, checkup, and repair dates handy. Installation dates are particularly crucial, as you must conduct subsequent tests based upon the installation date.
We recommend keeping pertinent information, including:
- The date of each scheduled maintenance performance
- The name of the technician performing the HVAC maintenance
- The company name and contact information of the technician
- All aspects of the inspection, including which products were inspected and their location
- Any concerns or repairs that must be addressed
- All paperwork documenting the inspection and maintenance
What Specific Fire Damper Regulations Exist Where I Am?
Educate yourself on codes and regulations in your area. Understanding local fire regulations is imperative to ensure you are in compliance. The National Fire Protection Association and your state may require you to perform a fire damper test every two years. However, your county may require that you follow its schedule. In some, this means an updated maintenance record every twelve months.
Before your HVAC fire damper installation, take the time to find a company knowledgeable in your county’s codes and requirements. We also highly recommend contacting your local permit office or local fire department to ensure you’re following all necessary guidelines.
Fire Damper Regulations for Various Industries
Regulations not only vary between areas, but there are also industry-specific regulations. Many industries have requirements for the maintenance and upkeep of safety measures in place. Businesses such as restaurants, dental offices, hospitals, and urgent care clinics should review regulations and ensure their fire protection products are always up to date. If you’re in the health care industry, you’ll find many insurance companies have rigid requirements for inspections and maintenance. These strict regulations ensure HVAC fire products’ safety and efficiency, as it directly impacts patient safety.
Be sure to store these documents in a secure location and make copies in case of an emergency. If your industry or location requires additional testing, schedule these far in advance to avoid missing deadlines; ask any questions you may have.
Routine Business Inspection of Fire Equipment
Maintaining your own consistent and frequent fire inspection schedule for preventative equipment is wise. A routine schedule can help prevent accidents and ensure you are prepared in the case of a fire. The fire dampers and additional fire safety products sold by Lloyd Industries all require specific times periods for inspections, as should all reputable products. Make a note of these guidelines to ensure safety.
As you or your designated fire-safety team member walks through your business, test and examine smoke alarms and fire extinguishers, noting anything that may raise a red flag. Be sure to:
- check the dates on your fire extinguishers regularly
- test all smoke alarm batteries once a month
- change all air filters on your HVAC unit
- hold routine fire drills
- keep fire evacuation maps and plans posted and updated
- keep a well-stocked first aid kit in several locations
Ensure your family and employees’ health and safety by taking fire safety knowledge and preparation steps today.
