New science lab designed to burn at high temperatures

RNZ News

18-06-2025

A new research lab in Porirua has been built to be set on fire, so it can simulate the way a blaze can spread through a multi-storey building.
The Building Research Association (BRANZ)'s new $40 million-dollar facility will provide some of the most advanced fire testing capabilities in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 2310-square metre warehouse, with a ceiling height of 22.5m, features climate-controlled testing spaces, large-scale furnaces, and an air filtration system to prevent carbon getting into the atmosphere.
Inside the new facility.
Photo:
RNZ / Mark Papalii
Fire testing team leader Peter Whiting said the largest furnace - measuring four by four metres - could reach temperatures up to 1200 degrees celsius.
The lab's three furnaces provided for two types of tests.
"One is called a fire resistance test, and that is where we are looking at a fire barrier between you and the fire," he said.
The second was the "reaction-to-fire test", where materials or objects were set on fire inside the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) room, to see how they behaved.
An open burn area would allow them test on complete multi-storey structures, with a giant, movable extraction hood able to suck fumes out of the space and then send the air through the "wet scrubber system".
"While the gas fuel that we use is going to be clean burning, a lot of the products that we're testing will not be," Whiting said. "And so we need to extract that, and the wet scrubber system is going to take out a lot of that particulate that we see in smoke, so what really gets up the chimney and into the environment is literally steam."
The importance of this kind of facility was growing, BRANZ said. Building materials were advancing, housing developments were becoming denser, and the climate was heating up.
Photo:
RNZ / Mark Papalii
Recent catastrophic fires like Loafers Lodge and the Port Hills show the importance of being prepared, said chief executive Claire Falck.
The lab has been in the works for more than a decade.
"So the old building had been here for about 40 years, and it wasn't able to do the things at-scale that we're able to do now," Falck said.
"What this facility provides is also, it's climate controlled, so for example, our facade testing we could only do outside, so Wellington and its weather conditions didn't always provide for the test."
The build had cost them a total of $40 million, paid for by the Building Research Levy.
That levy is set at 0.1 percent, and is applied to all building consents where the work is valued at more than $20,000. For every $1000 over this threshold, BRANZ receives $1, which it invests into research projects.
On the same site are facilities which simulate earthquakes and extreme weather.
A structural engineering lab opened in 2023, which meant BRANZ could assess entire building systems for structural performance, weathertightness and durability.
Other tests were done on-location around the country, often in highly exposed places, testing for climatic performance in wind and UV.
Falck said it was not just New Zealand which would benefit from the research done in the new fire lab.
Cross-country collaboration already existed, with international brands able to use BRANZ' facilities to test products against their own fire safety standards.
The fire lab was officially opened in front of a crowd on Tuesday by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Shane Reti.
It is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year.
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