I've never seen a flaming tent, but a flaming tent can at least vent heat to the outside. As I understand it, in foam buildings the heat simply reflects internally until the whole thing is ablaze very quickly.
The open-air fire test you did would be useful for most materials, but not for foam. The foam is such a good insulator that it makes a huge difference whether heat can escape from the face (vs. being reflected back by more foam). Firefighters nowadays call it "solid gasoline." Chris On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Spiral Syzygy <[email protected]> wrote: > The current hexayurt design with foam is cool, for numerous reasons, > fire safety is not one of them. I can't imagine it being too much > worse than being in a flaming tent, except for maybe a false sense of > security with internal fires. It is hard to ignite the foam with a > flame and it doesn't spread much, but I only performed open-air fire > tests. If what Chris says is true, we should consider other materials > if possible or do as we have done in the past and maintaned a strick > to smoking/open flame rule in the hexayurt. > > Spiral > > On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Chris Phoenix <[email protected]> wrote: >> The fire risk of foam is not so much from flame sources outside the >> hexayurt, as from flame in an enclosed foam-faced space. Apparently the foam >> is such a good insulator that the space will "flash over" in just a few >> seconds. >> >> Open-air tests of foam flammability do not show what will happen in an >> enclosed foam-faced space. They used to think foam was fireproof. Then they >> lost a few buildings. >> >> Foil-faced foam shouldn't have quite the same problem, though I'd still >> worry about the reflected heat accelerating the combustion of any flammable >> stuff inside. >> >> Chris >> >> On Jun 15, 2010 9:23 AM, "Spiral Syzygy" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Yay, I Iove when people build hexayurts in my back yard, and I don't >> have to do anything but watch and heckle. It looks great guys. I can't >> wait to see it on the ranch. >> >> Spiral >> >> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Kathleen Ellis <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> We've just prefabbed a S... >> >> -- >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "hexayurt" group. >> To post ... >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "hexayurt" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "hexayurt" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt?hl=en. > > -- Chris Phoenix [email protected] 650-776-5195 Founder, http://OnePercentGlobal.org Executive Coach Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, http://CRNano.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt?hl=en.
