Passive Fire Stopping
Sentinel Projects seals the gaps and penetrations that let fire and smoke spread between compartments, across schools, hospitals and commercial buildings in Northampton, Cambridge, Oxford, London and the rest of the UK. A compliant fire door in a breached wall still fails. We make sure the whole compartment holds. We are FireQual-qualified and BlueSky-certified.
The door is only as good as the wall around it
A fire door is one part of a fire-resisting compartment. If the wall it sits in has an unsealed cable tray, a pipe penetration or a gap above the ceiling, fire and smoke pass through the gap and the door has done nothing.
Passive fire stopping seals those routes so the compartment performs as a whole. It is one of the most common failures in older buildings, and one of the least visible, because most breaches sit above ceilings and inside risers where nobody looks until a fire risk assessment flags them.
What we seal
Service penetrations, including pipes, cables and ducts
Gaps and voids around fire door frames
Cable trays and busbars passing through compartment lines
Linear gaps between walls, floors and ceilings
Riser and ceiling void breaches
We use tested and certified fire stopping systems, matched to the substrate and the fire rating the compartment needs to hold.
Why compartmentation matters
Building fire strategies rely on compartmentation to contain a fire long enough for people to leave and for the fire service to respond. In hospitals, that principle underpins progressive horizontal evacuation, where patients move to the next compartment rather than out of the building.
A single unsealed penetration can defeat the whole strategy. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the Responsible Person to keep general fire precautions, including compartmentation, in effective order.
Hospitals and healthcare.
Sealing works in live wards, supporting compartment-based evacuation.
See healthcare
How it works
Book a fire stopping surveySurvey
We inspect compartment lines, risers and voids for breaches.
Report
You get a breach schedule and a quote.
Works
We seal with certified systems, around your schedule.
Certification
You get documentation for each sealed penetration.
Common questions
Book a fire stopping survey
Make sure the whole compartment holds, not just the door.
Free guide, no email required
Installation and Remediation of Fire Doors
What BS 8214:2026 requires, and how to tell whether an installation has been done correctly. The same guide applies whichever part of the country your building is in.