The furniture arrived without fire certificates: what now?

In short. There is a route, and it is Article 10 of the Italian decree of 26 June 1984: classification of materials already installed. It is not a type approval, it holds for that one installation and it does not travel to the next contract. And it is no fast lane: the laboratory timescale is the same as for a fresh type approval, because the decree points to the very same stages. What differs between the two routes is not the time, it is what you are left holding at the end.

The fixed point to start from

Reaction to fire is not assessed by looking at a piece of furniture. It is a class that comes out of a laboratory test on a specimen, and type approval — in the decree’s own definition — is the technical and administrative procedure by which the PROTOTYPE of a material is tested, and by which the Ministry authorises the manufacturer to reproduce that prototype.

Two consequences follow, and between them they take half the proposed solutions off the table. First: the professional handling the file cannot attest a class nobody has tested. Second: type approval travels with the product from the factory, because it concerns a tested prototype and an authorised production run; it does not attach itself after the fact to furniture already standing in a bedroom.

The route that does exist: materials already installed

The decree sets out a path separate from type approval, in Article 10, whose purpose is precisely to classify what is already in place. Among the cases it lists is exactly ours: materials already installed. The full list of the five cases, and why a document issued under one of them is not a type approval, is in the guide to reading a fire certificate: what matters here is the procedure.

For installed materials the opening document changes: in place of the product’s technical sheet you file a descriptive sheet with floor plans. Which is consistent: you are not classifying a model about to go into production, you are classifying the furniture of that one hotel.

The calendar is the same as a type approval’s

The procedure follows the stages of Article 8, and the deadlines are written down. The application goes to the fire service’s Centro Studi ed Esperienze or to a recognised laboratory. The Centre has thirty days to request the samples and the fees. From then the applicant has sixty days to send them, and if they do not, the file is closed. Once the samples arrive, the file is registered within fifteen days. The test certificate is issued within ninety days of registration.

Added up, that is a hundred and ninety-five days: about six months. These are maximum terms rather than typical times, and a well-run file sits well inside them; but they are the figures the decree puts in writing, and the only calendar available when someone asks how long it takes.

And here is what dismantles the idea of a shortcut: that calendar is not the price of Article 10, it is the price of any laboratory classification. Article 10 points explicitly to the stages of Article 8.1 — the same ones a product goes through when it is type-approved for the first time. Classifying in place saves not one day: the difference is that type approval adds a ministerial step after the certificate, for which the decree sets no number of days but refers to the general statutory terms. Article 10 stops at the certificate.

So in a property that has to open there is no quick route: six months of laboratory work is a season, and it is the same season whichever door you come in by.

The cost nobody puts in the quotation

Here is the part that always comes as a surprise. Classifying an upholstered item needs a specimen, and the specimen comes out of the item itself: the test method for upholstered furniture and mattresses is UNI 9175, and it applies to specimens, not to an armchair examined in a photograph. On installed materials the sampling is done in the presence of laboratory staff or of a fire-safety professional on the official register, who counter-signs the descriptive sheet and the plans, and sampling by the Centro Studi ed Esperienze carries fees.

In plain terms: somebody comes to the hotel and cuts pieces out of the armchairs you have just bought, on the record. Across fifty seats the bill is not only the laboratory’s fee: it is also whatever is left of the sampled pieces. Which is why this route, designed for one-off cases, makes little sense across a whole supply.

What that certificate is worth, and what it is not

It is worth something for that installation. It authorises no production and cannot be reused: if a second property opens the following year with the same furniture, the file is started again. And it lapses when the material is modified or when a new test or classification rule comes into force — the same mechanism by which a type approval lapses on any modification.

There is one more line in the decree worth keeping in mind, because it closes the door on the idea that waiting solves the problem: installed material remains subject to the fire-prevention rules of the activity it sits in. Time heals nothing here.

The two shortcuts that always get proposed

Coat everything with a fire-retardant paint. On an upholstered item this does not work, and the reason is structural: the classification is made on the tested combination of cover and filling, and anything added on top is a modification, not a classification. On timber the question is more argued, but not open either: on the wooden seats of public entertainment venues the Italian fire service has come down against allowing fire-retardant paints, pointing instead to classification by a dedicated test.

Add up the certificates of the components. The maker hands over the test report for the leather and the one for the foam, and it looks settled. It is not: a product is not classified by summing the properties of its parts, except where all of them are declared non-combustible, which on an armchair does not happen. Why a certified fabric does not make a certified assembly is set out in the guide to class 1 IM.

When replacing beats classifying

Since the laboratory time is the same either way, the question is not which route is quicker but what you are left holding. Article 10 leaves a certificate tied to that installation, and the sampling has consumed some pieces. It makes sense on a few items, on furniture that cannot be replaced, on a valuable one-off.

Across a supply of bedrooms the arithmetic changes completely, because the alternative is not having it approved now: it is buying pieces that are already approved. That is the only route without the six months inside it, because somebody else already spent those six months, earlier, in a factory.

What to ask at order stage, and which documents must arrive with the pieces, is in the guide to the documents.

How we work

We make the upholstery in house, as we do the wood, the marble and the steel, and this is where the difference shows: the approvals sit on our own models, and a project that starts from them has no file to open. When a piece falls outside the models, the route is decided before the drawing rather than after delivery, because that is the only moment when there is still a choice.

In a hotel contract the value that weighs most is time: goods that comply, are certified and arrive on schedule mean an opening that does not slip. The moment all of this gets checked is the mock-up room; the route of a contract is in the Contract section, and the contacts reach whoever follows it.

Frequently asked questions

Can my fire-safety consultant certify the class himself?

No. The class comes from a laboratory test on a specimen. The professional can counter-sign the descriptive sheet and the plans during sampling on installed materials, and that is their role in the procedure, but they cannot stand in for the test certificate.

If I bought the furniture in good faith, is it the seller’s problem?

As between the parties, that depends on what the order and the specification say, and it is not something a single page can settle. In fire-prevention terms the answer is blunt and no comfort: installed material remains subject to the rules of the activity, whatever the history of the purchase.

Does this apply to curtains and mattresses too?

Yes, because Article 10 speaks of materials, not of a category of furniture. What changes is the applicable test method: for upholstered furniture and mattresses the decree points to UNI 9175.

Then should I just have the furniture I already own type-approved?

The laboratory test takes exactly as long, because Article 10 points to the same Article 8.1 stages. But type approval concerns a prototype and an authorised production run — it serves a manufacturer, not someone with fifty armchairs already standing in a hotel. For furniture already installed the route is Article 10.

What does it cost?

We do not put a figure on it, because it depends on the number of specimens, on the laboratory and on who does the sampling, and an invented number here would only do harm. There are three items to have quoted: the test for each specimen, the sampling on site, and the value of the pieces the sampling renders unusable.

Talk to us The contract division

This page cites the Italian decree of 26 June 1984 in its definitions (Art. 2) and in Articles 8, 9 and 10, read in the text of the decree: the thirty, sixty, fifteen and ninety day terms are those written in Art. 8.1 and recalled by Art. 10, and they are maximum terms rather than typical times. UNI 9175 is cited as the test method for upholstered furniture and mattresses, for its subject matter and without reproducing values. The position on the wooden seats of public entertainment venues is that of an Italian fire service note of 4 February 2000, read in a compilation of fire-prevention circulars rather than in the original: verify it before relying on it in a filing. No prices, no response times, no company case histories. Assessing an individual case is for the professional who signs the filing and for the competent fire service command.