Making selecting Firestop easier with our firestop selector

Selecting the right products and solutions for all the firestop applications in mechanical and electrical installations is a cumbersome process for many trade contractors.

In particular, architects, specifiers, engineers and designers often find this task takes more time than is normally available. It is not an easy task to study all the approval documents to be able to specify the correct and compliant solution and to give guidance on which products to use and how to install them properly.

The new Hilti Firestop ETA Selector now provides a great solution to these challenges, helping significantly reduce time and costs and ensure compliance. It is not only a product selector: it goes one step further and functions as a solution selector. Planners and engineers can define specific cable or pipe applications for a project and the software will dynamically suggest approved solutions for fire-rated walls or floors. In addition, the new Hilti Firestop ETA Selector comes with a project dashboard showing all selected solutions at a glance.

Pic. 1: the new ETA Firestop Selector

 How does this software work?
 
Engineers involved in the planning and pre-design of passive firestop need more than just the ability to select a firestop product.
 
Traditional available product selection software typically focusses solely on providing firestop product solution, not reflecting necessary project/application conditions like conformity for specified pipe material, necessity of specific fire resistance rating, pipe diameter, opening sizes, wall material or insulation. This might result in additional engineering effort.
 
The new Hilti Firestop ETA Selector now offers this missing link: planners can select all relevant parameters and then dynamically created solutions will appear. The software will display all the suitable products and, for each solution, offer a technical typical that can be used for all specification purposes. Each typical is summarized as a technical leaflet, considering all relevant information out of the respective ETA, including a technical drawing. Additionally, the software provides links to the ETA and DoP (Declaration of Performance) documents and mentions the key features of the highlighted products. Specifiers can also choose and add specific parameters in their documentation through the “custom made” typical option.
 
To recap, mechanical and electrical engineers can select specific applications and consider all known relevant parameters: fire resistance rating, pipe types, pipe diameters, cable configurations, opening size and shape, pipe insulation, cable diameters etc. If, in the specification, a special pipe brand or pipe type is mentioned, the selector can also search for all available firestop solutions for this exact pipe. The same applies for insulated pipes, non-standard composite pipes, all cable configurations like cable bundles or cables on a cable tray, and much more. The typical also considers topics such as minimum distances around approved pipes and cables.
 
As a result, the new Hilti Firestop ETA Selector enables engineers to comprehensively consider firestop in the early planning with proper supporting documents for contractors during installation of the products. In addition, mechanical and electrical specifiers, architects, in-house specifiers or trade contractors can store the relevant application typicals in their project documentation, print them out individually or reuse them for further specifications or project tenders.
 
 Benefits for architects, planners and engineers
 
·       Enabling the ability to be fast and efficient in finding adequate approved firestop solutions
·       The typical can be used as specification document and can also be attached to the relevant fire-rated wall or floor in floorplans and other project documents
·       Solutions can be easily collected and documented in a file for every single project
·       Better and earlier planning of provision for voids and their respective pipe and cable installations. This enables more efficient firestop coordination and provides much better transparency from the early beginning of a project
·       All typicals contain technical drawings which can be downloaded as a dwg file
·       With a direct search function, engineers can quickly find all available single applications for a specific product or ETA approval
·       The software gives a very good initial overview of all tested and approved products, helping specifiers to inform themselves about all available product innovations or consider additional product features or owner requirements
 
 
Step-by-step selection of firestop applications
 
Picture 2, below, shows the user interface of the Firestop ETA Selector. It is very intuitive and easy to use. The relevant parameters can be selected from left to right. More detailed selections are shown for each parameter in scroll-down menus. When a new selection is made, all relevant products are shown and all solutions appear dynamically per product. You then simply choose the product and select the solution. Of course, the more parameters that you input, the more solutions are filtered out.
 Pic. 2: user interface of the new ETA Firestop Selector
 
 
As a next step you can click “preview” to go to more information on the product and to get all links to the generated documents. Or you can directly click on “typical” to generate the solution typical, shown in picture 3. The typical also contains all installation relevant information, like definitions of the penetrants, minimum distances, approved pipe insulation types and materials, details on the fire-rated wall or floor with approved maximum opening sizes, additional required secondary products and much more.

Pic. 3: the typical, showing all relevant information of the selected solution out of the ETA approval on just 2-4 pages

 
The new Hilti Firestop ETA Selector software
 
After intense development that included the creation of a new dynamic firestop database, Hilti is able now to offer efficient software that will save time for all planners and engineers. If you have struggled in the past to select an adequate tested and approved firestop product with relevant information out of all available European Technical Assessments, this day-to-day challenge has now been solved.
 
The ETA Selector offers significant flexibility: planners can just get a general overview of tested and approved products and systems, or based on project requirements, select additional relevant parameters of pipes, cables, walls and floors, ratings and insulations and get very customized and specific solutions with all information on one document, the typical.
Looking ahead, this software will enable engineers to be much more precise in their specifications and to solve common installation and coordination problems much earlier in the planning process.
 
The software has already been launched in several countries throughout Europe and will be launched in others soon. Contact your local Hilti customer service representative or field engineer and ask them to provide you with more information on the software's availability in your region and instructions for use. Or learn more here Firestop Selector - Hilti Great Britain

We also recently ran a webinar on the topic you can watch it here now.

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