FireNet Community
FIRE SAFETY => Fire Risk Assessments => Topic started by: wainy1 on January 28, 2015, 01:08:50 PM
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Hi
I was wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction; which document specifies the fire separation required in-between bedrooms (if any) in hotel accommodation?
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Approved Document B, Sleeping Accommodation Guide or BS 9999 if new
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Approved Document B, Sleeping Accommodation Guide or BS 9999 if new
Hi mike thanks for your reply, I have looked at both of these, the walls in question are not load-bearing and from what I have read do not need to be constructed as compartment walls, I can find no reference to the level of fire separation required. The only specific reference to residential bedrooms is ADB (9.7) which details how to treat cavities above partitions. The reason I ask is I have encountered a situation where there is interconnected ducts between rooms, I would like something specific to refer to in my report because rectification of the problem is going to be costly.
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Why is it a problem?
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You're right in what you say, there is no requirement to fire separate individual rooms unlike bedrooms in care homes. However, by their nature the walls will offer a degree of fire resistance because of the need for sound insulation.
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If it is duct work you need to look at ADB 5.46 and 10.9 for a start. However here the issue is duct work which crosses the fire compartmentation barriers.
As far as the fire separation between the bedrooms goes, you expect the guests to evacuate on the fire alarm and the main consideration is travel distance to a place of safety.
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This is one of those old chestnuts.
ADB says that walls between bedrooms should go to structural floor but dont need to be FR.
If you dont take them to the floor then you need cavity barriers instead.
A duct going through a non FR partition doesn't need a damper but one going through a cavity barrier does.
There you go.
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Why is it a problem?
My concern is fire spread throughout the building via the ventilation ducting connecting bedrooms both horizontally and vertically
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Then you should have a protected shaft as every floor is a compartment floor. The problem is not the absence of Fire resistance between rooms, its the lack of a properly protected shaft, and is much more significant but I am afraid all too common. Most student accommodation and many hotels being built today use bathroom pods in which the bathroom pod forms two sides of what should be a protected shaft. If you are lucky it will be as substantial as 18mm plywood - but often it is just GRP. The biggest frustration is that the big AIs dont seem to think it a problem. I have found several cases in timber framed buildings in which to make matters worse there was also an open cavity between the plasterboard ceilings and the timber floor, open to the risers at each floor level. One of these recently had been approved by a local authority BCO as well. The owner spent over ?100K to sort that one out as the buildier had gone bust. In come cases you can seal across the floor at each storey but sometimes all you can do is list it as a risk in the FRA where the recommendations will just gather dust till one day a coroner will have cause to ask relevant questions.