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When and where to retro fit fire clips if at all

Daniel S Robinson

Hi every one, I have a question relating to fire clipping in trunking, conduit and any other cable management systems.

Following the release of the new best practice guide 4 in March 2025, I see the C3 option has been removed for cables not supported against premature collapse, now there is only a C2 option. 

Just wondering what other people are doing here, we have about 37,000 property's a large number of those will have trunking or conduit.

In communal areas we have started to fire clip cabling but in the property's themselves currently we are not. This follows an NICEIC inspection a few years ago where I was told communal area yes C2, flat probably C3.

I appreciate you only have to fire clip where it could cause entrapment, but some of the trunking is that old and brittle it would break if you remove the lid.

Another point of contention is using the fire screws. Some posts you read red plugs are fine but if you look at the proper tests it says they are not.

I'm thinking for retrofitting leave the red plugs, for new work install the fire screws.

This is backed up by the electrical safety councils comment.

Does any one have any thoughts on either of these matters please.

Thank You

Daniel

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    The relevant regulation was introduced in BS 7671:2011+A3:2015 (IET Wiring Regulations Seventeenth Edition), which was published In January 2015 and came into effect on 1 July 2015.

    It is now ten years since fire clips in escape routes became a BS7671 requirement, at that time I was preparing EICRs for a housing association contractor with instructions to carry out repairs and upgrades as required when preparing an EICR as part of void maintenance, so the housing association always received a satisfactory EICR, allowing them to move new tenants in immediately, as is common practice.

    When the housing association houses and flats I worked in were built they had electric ducted warm air heating from a central unit, these had been  replaced with storage heaters supplied using cables in plastic minitrunking run along the tops of the walls over doorways, including the front doors.

    I have just checked my emails and I had this discussion about fire clips with the HA contractor ten years ago and started retrofitting the fire clips during void maintenance immediately, in September 2015 the housing association asked the question should the lack of fire clips be a C2 or C3 for cables run in plastic trunking within the houses and flats, after a discussion it was agreed that it would be a C2 and we continued to install the fire clips.

    electrical.theiet.org/.../escape-routes.pdf

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  • 0

    The relevant regulation was introduced in BS 7671:2011+A3:2015 (IET Wiring Regulations Seventeenth Edition), which was published In January 2015 and came into effect on 1 July 2015.

    It is now ten years since fire clips in escape routes became a BS7671 requirement, at that time I was preparing EICRs for a housing association contractor with instructions to carry out repairs and upgrades as required when preparing an EICR as part of void maintenance, so the housing association always received a satisfactory EICR, allowing them to move new tenants in immediately, as is common practice.

    When the housing association houses and flats I worked in were built they had electric ducted warm air heating from a central unit, these had been  replaced with storage heaters supplied using cables in plastic minitrunking run along the tops of the walls over doorways, including the front doors.

    I have just checked my emails and I had this discussion about fire clips with the HA contractor ten years ago and started retrofitting the fire clips during void maintenance immediately, in September 2015 the housing association asked the question should the lack of fire clips be a C2 or C3 for cables run in plastic trunking within the houses and flats, after a discussion it was agreed that it would be a C2 and we continued to install the fire clips.

    electrical.theiet.org/.../escape-routes.pdf

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