BS5839-1 or Building Regs App Doc B

[Pottius]

What areas would be deemed as high risk in regards to the siting of breakglass units as consultants have said that plant areas are low risk unless there is oil in the machinery according to Building regs AD B so therefore no additional breakglass units are required. As far as I can see ADB only deals with horizontal evacuation and doesn't mention callpoints. Is this a case of consultants saving money!!!
Does Building regs App Doc B over-ride BS5839-1?

[Chris Houston]

I didn't think you tended to need call points in plant rooms, but if they have external exits then there ought to be one simply because all final exits should have one.  My understanding of high risk for fire alarms would be processes involving heat are taking place (cooking, welding etc).

Not designed a fire alarm for a few years, so might be prudent to get some other opinions than mine!

[terry martin]

In ADB there is a definition for 'places of special fire hazard' - look in definitions page 143

i know it's different terminology but it may have relevance for you.

[CivvyFSO]

Someone is making a very tenuous link between the 'places of special fire hazard' (ADB) and 'high fire hazard level' (BS5839)

Some common sense is required: Somewhere of 'high fire hazard level' is quite possibly not compartmented, and as BS5839 suggests has a risk of rapid fire spread. As such a call point should be very near as you want to warn other people asap. A 'place of special fire hazard' should be compartmented off from the rest of the building, so there is little risk of it affecting anyone else quickly. We should have already applied shorter travel distances to assist the person in the plant/boiler/whatever room to escape.

... Which is why as Chris points out, there is no particular need for call points in plant rooms. So while their reasoning is wrong, the end result is correct.

[terry martin]

your right, kinda rushed reading through the question.