Jones Nonwovens‘ recently received a testimonial on the efficacy of its thermally bonded nonwoven fire barriers for the mattress and furniture industries. 

Jones’ fire-barriers are nonwoven construction engineered for maximum thickness and comfort retention. They come in a clean white color for use below ticking. The products can be multi-layered or homogeneous, depending on the customer’s needs for pure-white tops or unique blends of different types of fibers.

Kevin Portch, owner of Loepp Furniture in Grand Coulee, WA, recently had a close call in his warehouse. The company stores its mattresses downtown in an older building that has multiple built-in heaters in the walls close to the floor. The delivery crew had complained of a burning smell in a couple of the rooms where mattresses were stored in their factory plastic bags. Portch had gone into the warehouse on a couple of occasions and also noticed the smell. He tried to locate the origin but had no luck. He decided that with the building’s age, it might be a wiring or lighting problem, but the room still smelled like burnt plastic.

Two days later, a sales associate pulled out a bed to read a label on it and found that the bottom of the bed had been smoldering for what looked like several days. The plastic was melted, and the bed looked like it had all but caught on fire. An employee had inadvertently turned on one of the wall thermostats, which in turn fired up the space heaters. The mattresses should have caught on fire and burned the building to the ground, but thanks to the fire resistant technology inside the mattresses, that did not happen.

“I’m extremely thankful that Therapedic chose to put the flame-resistant barrier from Jones Nonwovens on the sides of their products,” Portch says. “I would be looking at a total loss of not only my building but of our inventory as well.”

“Life safety products have been in the foreground of what Jones Nonwovens is all about for several decades,” says Kenny Oliver, president of Sales. “This testimony demonstrates why we do what we do.”