Single-family houses and the P 118 fire safety standard: distances, fire brigade access, stairs and insulation

Romania's P 118 standard sets the fire safety requirements for new buildings and for work on existing ones (art. 1.1.4). For a single-family house, the designer applies them to the placement, access, stairs and façade insulation. Below are the rules a homeowner most often cares about. The building's fire stability level is set in the design, based on art. 2.1.3.2 and Table 2, so the figures do not replace the design.

Distance from neighbouring buildings

Buildings are placed at the minimum safety distances in Table 4 or separated by fire walls (art. 2.2.1.2). The distance depends on the fire stability level of your building and of the neighbouring one:

Attached buildings and reductions

Buildings grouped into a single fire compartment have no prescribed distances between them, but the sum of their built-up areas must stay within the limits allowed for the fire compartment (art. 2.2.1.1 para. 2). The distance between buildings can be reduced by at most 25% if one of them has a sprinkler system throughout (Table 4, note b).

Fire brigade access

• houses and groups of individual homes with a height of at most 8 m (the level of the highest accessible floor above the reference level) must have access and intervention for fire engines on at least one side and on at least 15% of the perimeter of the external walls (art. 3.2.1.13 para. 1);
• the roadway for fire engines has a clear width of at least 3.50 m for one lane, for buildings (including groups of single-family homes) up to 15 m high and with an accessible roadway length or depth of up to 30 m; above these values, the minimum width is 7.00 m (art. 2.6.2).

If the access road to the house is longer than 30 m, the width requirement increases, so it is worth checking from the sketch stage.

Stairs and escape

• escape stairs to the upper floor and attic in single-family houses (and in duplex or triplex apartments) can be made of materials with reaction-to-fire class C or D and need not be enclosed in a stairwell (art. 3.2.1.11 para. 1);
• if the stair continues to the basement, the openings into the basement rooms are protected, depending on the risk of the rooms, with fire-resistant and smoke-tight doors, at least EI2 15-C5Sa (para. 2);
• escape doors at ground level may open inwards (para. 3).

Façade insulation

• for single-family houses of at most ground floor and upper floor or ground floor and attic, with fire-resistant external walls, the external thermal insulation or the composite thermal insulation system must have at least reaction-to-fire class D-s3,d0 (art. 2.3.6.1.8 and Table 16);
• for houses at most 8 m high, there are no mandatory measures to delay the spread of fire between floors, on the façade and inside (art. 2.3.6.1.7).

If it is an existing house

For renovations, extensions and changes of use of buildings that predate the standard, chapter 9 and annex 10 apply. Details in the article on existing buildings.