Radiant Barriers: Good=Energy ... Bad=Fire Safety

[Nolan Kienitz]

Happened across this study from an engineering firm in the Houston, TX area concerning Reflective Radiant Barriers and concerns about same regarding fire safety.

URL for: McDowell-Owens ... Integrated Forensic Engineering

Download Attachment: Reflective-Radiant-Barriers-Article-II.pdf

838.42 KB

[Tom Raymond]

... this material would ?arc and spark? rather violently and would frequently catch fire and sustain flame...

I have some radiant barrier material. I may just have to go and light some up.[:-dev3]

[Marc]

That comes to me in the nick of time. Been planning on buying a couple rolls of that stuff from the big orange box to staple onto the underside of my rafters. It's cheaper than upgrading the tonnage on my ac.

Marc

[Rob Amaral]

Great article and thanks for passing that along! I just heard a story on the radio recently about some testing of houses near Long Island NY for fire-suppression purposes. They burned some modern-era houses down that had modern stuff in them and modern insulation details.

They are finding that modern houses (being so 'tight') are now having far-higher interior 'fire temperatures' during a fire that is causing a lot of problems for fire-fighters..

I can see this radiant stuff making it worse for the firefighters as well.