hippy said:
bugger, that is bad news indeed. i've done this in a warehouse before and am about to do it in my home. the warehouse never burned down, but you make me rather nervous so i'm gonna need to ask you some dumb questions!
Ok - 1st off - understand that you can do anything you want to do........ and even get away with it.
However - that just makes you lucky............
Using anything for a wall covering (or in this case, your own design of a hanging wall) that isn't certified and designed for that use - puts you into a position where your insurance company can abandon you if there was in fact a fire - and where you could possibly even be criminally proscecuted in the event that (God forbid) someone should die in that fire.
On to your questions (and they aren't dumb by the way):
why is it that carpet should burn if air is allowed to flow on both sides of it?
Carpet will burn regardless of where it is installed - I have seen (and worked on) a lot of fire jobs over the years - and have never seen any carpet make it out that didn't burn......
The issue isn't the carpet burning - it is the speed which the burning progessses at.
Take a piece of paper - 8x12 - lay it flat on top of a surface - set a corner of the paper on fire......... time how long it takes to completely burn.....
Take an indentical piece of paper - hold it up in the air by it's corner - light the lower corner on fire - time how long it takes to completely burn............
Amazing how much faster the fire developes in that 2nd scenerio.......
And THAT - exactly that - is the issue - the time of spread and the developed smoke in that time period.
surely this could be prevented if you trap the air completely by sealing the whole thing off...
1st off - even assuming you could do that - seal the air off (impossible due to the fact that the carpet breathes freely through the body of the weave) - but let's assume (for just a moment) that you had some magic fairy dust - and once installed - you could sprinkle it over the carpet and create a complete air seal........... WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE FIRE BREAKS THROUGH THE SIDE WALL AND SUDDENLY THE SEAL IS GONE?
You need to take a few moments and think about things here.......
The reason very few carpets are even approved for installation on a wall - and by that I mean glued directly to sheetrock.......... is because the fire spreads too rapidly..........
The carpets that ARE approved - the berber carpets - the act of gluing them to the wall stops the very thing we have been discussing from being able to happen......... when the fire finally breakes through the outer face of the wall - it still does not give you air at the back of the carpet - the air is then inside of the wall cavity - so the fire does not accelerate.
Now let's just get back to the sealing off question - and the fact that this assembly will not work for creating isolation to any extent worth mentioning....
In order to seal off speaces - you need 2 things - you need mass and you need an air seal.
If you have all the mass in the world - but cut a hole through it - it does you no good.........
So please explain to me how you take this mass you suggest using - and create the air seal you would need (let's just talk pretending that the life safety issue didn't exist for a moment).
Rod