COMMISSION DECISION of 3 July 1998 concerning the test of the Single Burning Item (SBI) referred to in Decision 94/611/EC implementing Article 20 of Council Directive 89/106/EEC on construction products (notified under document number C(1998) 1743) (Text with EEA relevance) (98/457/EC)
THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,
Having regard to Council Directive 89/106/EEC of 21 December 1988 on the approximation of laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to construction products (1), as amended by Directive 93/68/EEC (2), and in particular Article 20 thereof,
Whereas differences in test methods and classification systems for reaction to fire between Member States mean that harmonisation can take place only through the adoption of a single system for classification, based on agreed test methods, to be used throughout the Community;
Whereas Article 3(2) of Directive 89/106/EEC states that, in order to take account of different levels of protection for the construction works, each essential requirement may give rise to the establishment of classes;
Whereas point 4.3.1.1 of interpretative document No 2 attached to the Commission communication with regard to the interpretative documents of Council Directive 89/106/EEC (3) specifies that to enable the reaction-to-fire performance of products to be evaluated on a common basis, a harmonised solution will be developed which may utilise full or bench scale tests that are correlated to relevant real fire scenarios;
Whereas this harmonised solution lies in a system of classes as adopted in Commission Decision 94/611/EC (4);
Whereas Decision 94/611/EC refers in Table 1 of its Annex to the 'Single Burning Item` (SBI) test which is required for the testing of products for walls and ceilings including their surface coverings, building elements, products incorporated within building elements, pipes and duct components and products for façades/external walls in classes B, C or D;
Whereas differences in the apparatus used for reaction-to-fire testing may lead to differences in test results; whereas therefore, to ensure that test results are the same throughout the Community, it is necessary to define a single configuration of the SBI apparatus;
Whereas the basis for the definition of a single configuration of the SBI test apparatus comes from the study undertaken on behalf of the Commission by the Official Laboratories Group, which examined the ability of different SBI configurations to satisfy the requirements for reaction-to-fire testing set out in Decision 94/611/EC and which recommended the most suitable configuration;
Whereas the preferred SBI configuration has been subject to an inter-laboratory ('round robin`) testing programme covering a wide range of construction materials;
Whereas the measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the Standing Committee for Construction,
The test of a Single Burning Item (SBI) in a room, as referred to in Table 1 of the Annex to Decision 94/611/EC, shall, for the purpose of classifying construction products in relation to their reaction to fire, conform to the configuration specified in the Annex to this Decision.
This Decision is addressed to the Member States.