First fire-resistance tests

With the progression we were making, we needed to get more grip on the quality of the brick and the material. One of the questions we were getting was on the danger of fire. People imagined plastic being a material which relatively easy catches fire. This doesn’t mix well with the goal to use it as construction material for affordable housing.

At the facilities of Efectis in Blijswijk, close to our workshop in Rotterdam, we did standard fire tests on two sets of plastic blocks; one made of “pure” PP and one made of a mix of PP and PE “fished” form the river Maas. This so called Maas-plastic was the closest we got to the plastic sand mixture we planning for the actual unibricks. As a benchmark that would do…

The result was that it would burn, but had the tendency to self extinguish. This was mainly due to the mass, normally plastic is thin-walled, but now we used massive blocks which reduced the amount of air and heat reaching the plastic. The fire class would be comparable with wood. The expert did tell us that adding sand to it would make a big difference. And obviously, that was exactly what we wanted to hear!