enclosed car park fires.....

[Danb1203]

Hi everyone - i'm doing a thesis on the installation of spirnkler systems into enclosed car parks..

i will be looking at the current legislation and trying to understand why sprinklers arent mandatory with enclosed carparks...... is it just cost that prevents sprinklers from being installed??

anyway i'm going off my point - what i'm really after is any pictures? or casestudies of enclosed car park fires which people might have to prove the spread or fires from car to car.? ? ?

i'm struggling to find any pictures or many casestudies - so if anybody has any information - would you be so kind as to reply or email me??

thanks

danbassett1203@hotmail.com

[John Webb]

Dan,
Car parks have been discussed in several topics - use the Forum search engine to bring these up.

There is work going on (or may have been completed by now) by my former colleagues at Building Research - try www.bre.co.uk If it is finished then the Communities and Local Government website (www.clg.gov.uk I think) may have the information.

[wee brian]

John's right - but its not published yet.

The basis of current guidance comes from a mixture of experience and some experiments carried out in Australia (in the 1980s I think).

They burnt some cars and fire didn't spread from one to another. This was representative of what was happening in real fires so there was little point in fitting sprinklers.

Howver people are getting worried that changes in car design and technology may result in a need to change policy.

[Danb1203]

hi, thanks for the reply.

i've been in contact with martin shipp technical director of fire research at the bre concerning their research into enclosed car parks. Most of their research is confidential. The research is to be published in 2009.

i've sived through the content on here an have found some very usuful discussions.

what i was really after was if anybody had any pictures of knew of any casestudies of carpark fires???

[AM]

There was an article written on a fire in Bristol that was in an edition of the IFE journal a few months back.

[kurnal]

You also need to consider local enactments - in many local authorities there are acts that require sprinklers in car parks- eg The Derbyshire Act 1981. These acts are local in application and lead to widely differing standards across the uK. Why on earth these local acts were intoduced is getting lost in the mists of time- but most of them were NOT repealed by the Fire safety Order

[Danb1203]

AM - will look at the past issues and see.... (is that the fire that was under a retirement home?)

Kurnal - didnt know about these enactments.... will have to look into them....

thanks guys... my jigsaw is slowly coming together - peice by peice.

[Crusader]

Dan

Take a look at a Masters Thesis by Y.Li on "Assessment of Vehicle Fires in NZ Parking Buildings"

see  www.civil.canterbury.ac.nz/fire/fe_resrch_reps.shtml#2004    

The Literature Review in this thesis comprehensively details experimental work done on car fires worldwide, including fires in enclosed car parks (also includes pictures which you can reference).

There have been two Journal papers produced from this work which may be of interest:

Li, Y., Spearpoint, M. J., Cost-benefit analysis of sprinklers for property protection in New Zealand parking buildings, Journal of Applied Fire Science, v12no3, 2006:223-243

Li, Y., Spearpoint, M. J., Analysis of Vehicle Fire Statistics in New Zealand Parking Buildings, Fire Technology,Vol 43, No 2, 2007:93-106

[Danb1203]

Fantastic effort guys... The cost benefit analysis of sprinklers will especially be an interesting read....

i appreciate all your help with me in this area of research. thanks.