Tightened fire regulations officially effective from August 20

As of 20 August 2024, the tightened European fire regulations will officially come into effect retroactively. The CWFT table will no longer be used to automatically declare wooden cladding as compliant with fire reaction class D. This means that almost all treated or coloured wood types will require their own fire certificate from August onwards. So, goodbye to the CWFT table – almost at least. In this blogpost, we’ll dive into the details and the consequences of these changes.

CWFT

Until recently, there were two options for complying with fire legislation for wooden cladding: by means of in-house fire certificates or using the CWFT table. CWFT stands for Classified Without Further Testing: a standardised solution for declaring wooden facade cladding conforms to fire reaction class D under certain conditions. It stated that facade cladding met the standards of fire reaction class D if it had a closed facade system, with a minimum thickness of 18 mm and where the density of the wood was at least 390kg/m³.

Gradually, however, it turned out that this standard is often interpreted differently than originally intended. "Timber" is too broad a term, which cannot guarantee optimal fire safety. For that reason, Europe decided to make that term more specific in the legislation. The switch from "wood" to "untreated wood" changes practically everything: with the exception of kiln-dried wood, no treated or coloured wood will be able to fall back on the CWFT table. This means that proprietary fire certificates will be necessary.

There was some uncertainty about when these new regulations would come into effect. However, it is now confirmed that this will be the case from 20 August 2024. Furthermore, the stricter regulations will have retroactive effect. This means that all cladding installations scheduled for after August 20 will no longer be able to rely on the CWFT table.

DURIFLAME®

As a solution to this problem, Woodstoxx developed a patented fire treatment: Duriflame®. We applied this treatment to our own profiling and colouring in the fast-growing wood species Abechi. In combination with our self-developed facade construction, we subjected it all to a series of fire tests. The results showed that our cladding conforms to fire reaction class B s2 d0, which even exceeds the lower class D in the old CWFT table.

As a result, Woodstoxx can now offer cladding that not only fully complies with the new fire legislation, but also meets the highest quality and aesthetic requirements. Whether colour retention or ageing is chosen, Abechi is guaranteed to age evenly. It is optimally protected thanks to brushing and coating and is extremely easy to maintain. In addition, our self-developed facade construction no longer requires the use of a K210 board, making the cladding faster and easier to install.