Imagine you could defend your home against fire damage simply by painting it. Intumescent paint has made this possible for large architectural and commercial buildings since the 1940s, but it’s been an expensive, complex, specialist option impractical for homeowners.
Now, thanks to FIRECOAT, this fire protection technology is accessible, affordable and effective, making it perfect for anyone’s fire defence strategy.
Intumescent paint is a specially designed coating that reacts to high temperatures by expanding to form an insulating char layer. The spongy barrier protects the underlying surface from fire damage, slows the spread of flames and inhibits ignition – allowing more time for evacuation and emergency response.
As fire protection goes, intumescent paint has been a comparatively expensive and time-consuming option. Only trained professionals could apply it. Projects needed certifications to be signed off. There were also environmental concerns about some of the available, commercially derived products. And many weren’t tested for effective fire protection in bushfire conditions.
But now there’s FIRECOAT. And FIRECOAT is different.
Where most intumescent paints have been based on solvents, FIRECOAT is water-based. It’s free from PFAS and halogenated fire retardants, so there are no environmental or safety concerns about its use. It gives long-lasting fire protection for up to 10 years, is affordably priced, and can be bought at hardware stores across Australia.
FIRECOAT is also easy to apply with conventional brushes, sprays and rollers. No expensive equipment or specialist tradies are needed – unlike existing intumescent paints, which could only be applied by trained personnel with appropriate equipment.
To top off this list of differences, FIRECOAT has been independently tested and proven effective in bushfire conditions. FM Global certification standard 4975 recently joined its impressive collection of certifications and standards, and FIRECOAT Exterior undercoat is the only paint in the world with a BAL-40 rating for fire resistance. See full list of certifications here.
As a fire engineer at FIRECOAT, Ben Hughes-Brown has seen the difference firsthand.
“FIRECOAT has broken through the complexity barrier to deliver the same technology as other intumescent paints, but at an accessible rate,” he says. “And it’s been tested and proven for the bushfire arena – that makes it more applicable to the market than any other fire-resistant products.”
Developed at UNSW Sydney, FIRECOAT realises its founders’ long-held vision of making affordable and effective fire protection accessible for all property owners, both residential and commercial. Diligent research and rigorous testing resulted in a new polymer technology that launched FIRECOAT Exterior and Interior paints, the first in a range of affordable, effective, safe fire-resistant products for property owners.
UNSW’s Professor Guan Yeoh, who was involved in developing the paint, says “it uses a non-toxic compound to create an insulating barrier, which is like a layer of charcoal, effectively deflecting the heat from a bushfire. A big advantage is the paint doesn’t need to be applied with special equipment.”
And if the FIRECOAT difference needed any further confirmation, 2 recent industry awards will testify. In August, the FIRECOAT team were joint winners in the Research Commercialisation category at The Australian Financial Review Higher Education Awards 2024. Next was the Best Industry–Research Collaboration award at the Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia’s 2024 Australasian Research Commercialisation Awards in October.
See the FIRECOAT difference for yourself here.
