Australia’s towns, cities and rural areas are at increasing bushfire risk. Therefore, it’s imperative for homes and business owners to heed the warnings and take risk prevention measures. Regardless of the nature of a fire, it poses a threat to our home’s, businesses, family and friends, and we should do whatever possible to ensure their impact is reduced.
Thankfully, Australia has stringent building codes designed to enforce minimum safety standards to help reduce the threat of blazes and impacts. For example, bushfire attack levels (BAL) and fire attenuation are used for high standard security screens to minimise these threats.
Let’s find out more about these standards below:
Fire attenuation
The best fire resistant screen doors will have the ability to reduce the spread of flames through minimising the radiant heat that a blaze produces. baL, conversely, are the ratings attributed to the ability of a security screen to resist a blaze.
Designs with a standard of attenuation attributes will diminish the heat being transferred to other properties or parts of the home and can minimise the impact’s intensity until authorities can control the blaze. The main aim is to reduce the exposure of potentially-flammable items found within the home or commercial property.
Who needs it?
Attenuation requirements are important regardless of your location or what type of building you’re occupying or operating. BAL, conversely, is relevant to bushfire-susceptible regions.
Attenuation is in regard to a property’s proximity to other buildings, and the Building Code of Australia (BCA) details where they are required. The BCA states that any openings (i.e. windows) which are located within 3m of a flammable source must have particular safety standards. Any openings located within 6m of another building on the same property must have particular safety standards, too.
How can you reach this standard for your property?
Door and window screening designs play an imperative part in attenuation and often come with different features to ensure that they can reduce the risk of a blaze or impact on the property. If your property is at extreme risk of bushfire threat then you should definitely look into purchasing both security doors and windows to reduce this threat.
There are a range of high quality attenuation doors available in both fire attenuation and security screen designs. What’s more, they can possibly come with a range of other fantastic features that not only reduce the risk of danger in a blaze, but can also protect the home from other impacts, such as intruders trying to break through the door.
Other possible features include:
- Designed for strength: These designs are made to withstand a range of impacts not only related to bushfires, making them highly-resistant to a range of natural disasters and human-made impacts.
- They are weather resistant: Not only are they strong when it comes to natural disasters, this obviously makes them stronger when standing up to inclement weather, ensuring your home is protected from any debris that may fly around in the event of high winds and storms.
- They are stylish: Moving on to their aesthetics, these doors are also incredibly stylish, adding an elegant aesthetic to your home that you will simply love.
- They add value to your home: Because of the heightened safety features and stylish design you can trust that these products increase your home’s resale value should you ever decide to move.
As you can see, these designs are imperative for homes in both bushfire-susceptible regions and even those that are less affected by such disasters.
