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FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Fire Safety => Topic started by: Redone on October 24, 2007, 01:05:45 PM
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General question, would anyone accept inner/inner rooms for the following...
Stock processing room off sales floor, Staff room of stock processing room. Afd throughout L2 standard, EL satisfactory. Travel distance to final exit about 30m, single direction, all occupants fully mobile.
Old building had these conditions for decades...
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Never say never but 30m is going some for single direction in normal risk shop. Perhaps this is a bigger issue than the double inner room situation?
What do they sell and how much of the travel distance is in staff room, how much in stock room and how far in the shop?
Sounds like it has been wrong for decades but they've been lucky
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I know of one or two who would consider the sales floor, if big enough, to be a circulation space. Doesn't help with your question I know.
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Apparently horses can negotiate inner rooms...look at the new guide, see the post in Q&A section.
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And someone actually got paid for writing this guide. Defies all logic doesn't it?
For the benefit of the author and illustrator of the guide the pointy bit of the horse is the front and horses do not live in stables which are like hotel rooms.
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Page 79. Anyone got any idea how the cows got downstairs to their bedrooms?
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By walking. Some 'orse has vandalised the lift.
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That's the problem with livestock, they're easy to get to the bedroom, but difficult to get them to leave.....
.....I've said too much..
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Apparently horses can negotiate inner rooms...look at the new guide, see the post in Q&A section.
I was wondering why the inner room needs a window. Are they expecting the horse to calmly exit through the access room if it notices a fire developing, or so you can see whether ther's a horse in there?
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No. If you look again at Figure 22 you will see an arrow going through the VP. This is the alternative escape route for the horse because if a human is not present the horse will not be able to turn the door knob. Bit difficult with hooves on you see.
The AFD point is, as you can all plainly see, fixed up with a sky hook. What happens if it breaks off?
The other problem I can see is that the exit sign is in English. What if the horse was an Arab, a connemara pony, a Austrian Halflinger, an Irish Draught, a Welsh Cob, a Spanish Andalucian et al? And apart from that it only allows running men to use the escape door.
What about poor Dobbin - sob?
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I'd like to see any person try to leave a room with a horse, with a fire alarm sounder going off in the vicinity, and be free of injury
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Ahh, but they have conquered that, the doors have to be 1.2 metres wide and 2 metres high so no problem.
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I'd like to see any person try to leave a room with a horse, with a fire alarm sounder going off in the vicinity, and be free of injury...
If you foresee this as a potential problem, go for the gap between wall and ceiling and think Gymkana...
Shop cd's/dvds. Line of sight on the sales floor is tip top. In the real world I'd be happy WITH it's current use/condition/management.
I recall working at a heritage site with a 60m dead end, should we knock the castle down, fit a few more doors... This is where I get worked up with the guides, hey it's just a guide, and, and, and they don't consider animals, shocking, RSPCA should be told!
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CDs and dvds are a significant fire loading not easy to ignite but promote rapid fire growth if involved in fire.....if the shop is always supervised and free of ignition sources this is unlikely....if shop is always staffed whenever the rest room is occupied and staff are trained this would be a big advantage.
On the other hand 30m is a big step from 18m, whilst it only amounts to 18 seconds travel time once personnel have resonded to the alarm of fire, if the premises have benchmark manual system then it would be no good but if we had a decent standard of AFD with good coverage in both shop and access room this would knock not 18 seconds but several minutes off the time to detect the fire.
Duty is as far as is reasonably practicable, and we should go for the best solution as first choice not the most convenient, if its not practicable to reduce travel distance, can the rest room and stock area be switched, if not is supervision and detection the solution?
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Redone
Whats the travel distance from the furthest point in the inner/inner room to the shop floor ?
Conqueror
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Inner/inner to shop floor about 12m. Not possible to swop Staff/Stock processing. Could remove staff room door, technically no longer inner/inner. AFD coverage is throughout , except WC's.
Management not as tight as WILL BE, ie alarm tests/drills/training not being performed.
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Redone
Whats the travel distance from the furthest point in the inner/inner room to the shop floor ?
Conqueror
33 & 1/3rd clip clops (horse)
78 (pony)
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The taboo status of the inner inner room comes from an era when few premises had any automatic detection in the building and even manual alarms were not universal. An occupant of an inner inner room was generally just too remote from everyone else in the building.
If a sweep of the building was part of the evacuation procedure, for example, some one would have to go into that inner inner room to check that the occupant had saved their email or finished their telephone conversation and left. This still holds true.
Remember that travel distance in itself is of limited importance but it is a reasonably good measure of the amount of risk that a person is exposed to. But in being used to assess risk exposure, it is important to also consider visibility. Inner inner rooms do not tend to lend themselves to situations where visibility is good.
Standards are there for a good reason and should not be discarded just because they have been "getting away with it" for a number of years.
At the end of the day, there is just one question that has to be satisfactorily answered: with the current layout could any fire in the building compromise the means of escape of any person in the building (including an occupant of the inner inner and any person conducting a sweep of that area)?
Stu