Alarm levels in a care home...

[David Rooney]

A new small residential home to care for autistic children being created from a two storey five bedroom former family house.

The owner has said staff levels will be one to one during the day, and at least one staff to two of a night time.

His RA and evacuation policy (for night time) was that it would be managed by the staff who would provide a wakeful watch. Therefore alarm sounders would be provided throughout to achieve "65db" everywhere and 75db would not therefore be required at the bedhead of the patients.

This seems reasonable particularly when there is concern that the alarms suddenly going off in the middle of the night could cause huge distress to the patients and possibly "hinder" the managed escape.

The local fire officer has said he wants an L2 system. When questioned regarding alarm levels at the bedhead he said "L2 means 75db at the bed head".... to paraphrase the email.

Any comments please?

[Phoenix]

Hi David,

You know as well as I do that there is quite a lot wrong with the fire officer's statement.  I would be disinclined to listen to a single word he utters from this point forward.  The audibility of the alarm (or, more precisely, the means for conveying the evacuation signal) has to co-incide with the evacuation strategy for the building. 

If they wanted the residents to evacuate themselves then they should provide the level of audibility required to rouse them (75dBA at the bed head).  But they have staff to manage evacuations and, provided that the staff procedures are adequate to rouse and evacuate residents as required in an evacuation, then the stated 'RA and evacuation policy' is perfectly adequate.  Important proviso.

L2? - audibility?!  He's somewhat undermined his credibility here.

Stu

[David Rooney]

Thanks Stu

The problem is the client tends to believe the "not for profit" Fire Officer rather than the "obviously in it for the money no nothing fire contractor".

Although in this case I've probably just saved the man a couple of thousand quid installing unnecessary sounders so he's a happy bunny.

If this goes ahead and is documented etc has the fire officer got any "come back" if he has a real problem with this strategy or is this where we get into issuing improvement notices and going to court etc.?

[FSO]

I should not be concerned in the slightest.

If the evacuation is managed, then clearly the FA is provided to alert the staff. Bearing in mind that the Resi care CLG guide is happy for you to drop the audibility down to 45dB(A).

Seems entirely reasonable, providing it is addressed in the FRA and emergency plan.

Well, thats the view I would take if the strategy was presented to me, so obviously this is my opinion only.

[David Rooney]

I should not be concerned in the slightest.

If the evacuation is managed, then clearly the FA is provided to alert the staff. Bearing in mind that the Resi care CLG guide is happy for you to drop the audibility down to 45dB(A).

Seems entirely reasonable, providing it is addressed in the FRA and emergency plan.

Well, thats the view I would take if the strategy was presented to me, so obviously this is my opinion only.

Top man.... have to admit I got so wrapped up in 5839 I hadn't even consulted the guide ....... the 45db(A) part is a very good call, thanks.

[colin todd]

The 45 dB(A) that they quote comes from the hospital HTM via HTM 84. It is not suitable for a res care home. It was considered at the time of drafting BS 5839-1:2002 and rejected.  If it all goes wrong, the judge will have to decide whether a national committee of fire alarm specialists along with regulators and enforcing authorities were right, or whether the deluded souls who thought that care home sub compartments should be evacuated in 2.5 minutes were right. For comparison moderate rainfall will give you 50dB(A), while 45dB(A) is the maximum environmental noise THAT WILL NOT DISTURB RESIDENTS IN A RESIDENTIAL AREA. Birds twittering at 15 m radius have been measured as producing a higher sound level.

But I imagine the CLG got it right nevertheless, because they have driven fire engines or pushed paper in other civil service jobs.  I heard that they are about to lose 900 employees. What about just keeping WEE B and getting rid of the rest too?

[David Rooney]

Thanks Colin, so why is the figure included in the guide?

Shouldn't it be amended to something more suitable ??

[colin todd]

It is included in the guide because the people writing the guide to which you refer did not know what they are doing. They wrote that a sub compartment should be evacuated in 2.5 minutes, which has been widely held up to ridicule. The guides are a hot potch of bits and pieces written by all and sundry and messed around with goodness knows how much after drafting, with the intention of getting them out in a hurry without any public consultation.

The Scottish guide on care homes adopts the recommendations of BS 5839-1. It of course benefitted from full public consultation, having been written by people who knew what they were doing in the first place.

It is not amended because they probably dont know its wrong, and have no one to fix it anyway. Soon they just wont have anyone, at which time I will stop being an agnostic and believe there is a God.

[kurnal]

BS5839 part 1 is the benchmark standard from which we should work. No argument. But it needs to be applied with some intelligence.

Who needs to be alerted by a fire alarm?
Who may be visiting the building or working in the building apart from the staff and residents?
Do all areas of the building need to be evacuated and alerted at the same time?
Do sleeping people, dependent on others for assistance in an emergency, who are in areas remote from a fire in a building with full compartmentation need to be alerted for every event?
Would 75 db at the bedhead wake everybody in a care home?
Would 75 db at the bedhead cause distress to those who are entirely dependent on others for their safe evacuation? A few staff cannot be everywhere, inevitably they will focus on those most at risk- closest to the fire.
Should the alarm be silenced as soon as all staff and visitors have been accounted for to enhance communication and reduce distress or, should it be left operating for the benefit of alerting and awaking everybody?
Is every resident dependent on the staff for their safe evacuation in an emergency?
Do peoples needs change?
Are residents likely to understand the  principle of PHE? Or may the ambulant residents leave the building and be exposed to danger?
If ambulant, alert and aware residents are awakened and evacuate themselves by their own efforts unaided might they stray into a danger area? 
Should nursing homes, care homes, childrens homes, remand homes all be treated the same?

The old green guide published in 1983 was a joint effort by the Home Office and the Scottish Home and Health Department and contained the following advice : " The fire warning signal should be audible or perceptible throughout the premises by persons who are awake and not dependent on the assistance of staff to escape, it should also be capable of rousing sleeping staff".

However it did not make any suggestions as to how this should be implemented and simply referred to the current BS.
 

[colin todd]

Ah Kurnal, as always if you as quick to do your homework as you were to type, you would be languishing in luxury on the pension of a CFO.
1. BS 5839-1 does not call for 75dB(A) at the bedhead in care homes if the alarm is not to rouse them from sleep.

2. If you had done some training in acoustics, you would realise that at 45dB(A), a member of staff looking after an old dearie in the room listening to the Mrs Dale's Diary (you do remember Mrs Dale I expect) will not hear the alarm and so will not respond.

3. Silencing procedure has got sweet fa to do with the sound pressure levels.

4. You do realise that you are unlikely to have PHE in a 5 bedroom house unless it is the house of a fire-fighter with 20 moonlighting salaries and so is an acre per bedroom.

5. Autistic children probably do not understand PHE , but then they need to know about it as much as they do advanced high energy particle physics, a subject on which no doubt you write advice on nuclearnet.

6. Yes, a wee kiddie probably does rely on staff.

All these points you raise as the voice of common sense as you no doubt see it, have got nowt to do with the fact that when the fire alarm operates it is quite good if people can hear it, espcially those that need to.

[kurnal]

Thank you Colin and I fully agree with all of that. Even if you seem to read into my answer things I did not type.

Its nice to see my posting prompted some practical discussion of the underlying issues rather than a ping pong of "is it BS5839 or HTM 84" without exploring the practicalities behind it. I wouldn't mind betting that most fire alarm designers do not consider these practicalities. But apologies to Dave for going rather off the specific topic and away from the case in point.

Actually last time I encountered 45dBA was when trying to design a fire control room and the ambient needed to be 40-45 to meet the Home Office criteria. Trouble was as soon as the air conditioning was in use it jumped to 65. I am curious to know why this level was used in HTM 84?

Oh Colin you know me so well.  My hair trigger has caused me difficulties in so many other spheres as well.  But I dont think it limited my ultimate pension. I think there just might have been a number of other reasons for that.

[colin todd]

Kurnal, just 2 questions:

1. did the control room have the stables for the horses attached, or was that a detached building.

2. Since you agree with all I wrote, you DO write for nuclearnet, giving nuclear physicists the benefit of your common sense about wave particle duality. Or did you go for the keyboard without reading my post properly?

[David Rooney]

Its nice to see my posting prompted some practical discussion of the underlying issues rather than a ping pong of "is it BS5839 or HTM 84" without exploring the practicalities behind it. I wouldn't mind betting that most fire alarm designers do not consider these practicalities. But apologies to Dave for going rather off the specific topic and away from the case in point.

I just thank the lord (that's God not Colin.... well not yet anyway.... to have been able to prompt such candor on an otherwise quite grey day.

And have to say without the interaction and sometimes the stating of the blindingly obvious by the likes of your goodselves which I can understand must on occasion be quite frustrating, humble little designers like myself would be left blissfully ignorant and less enlightened as to the whys and wherefores.

And I for one am grateful for all your input to aid my attempts at moderately intelligent design.....

[FSO]

The 45 dB(A) that they quote comes from the hospital HTM via HTM 84. It is not suitable for a res care home. It was considered at the time of drafting BS 5839-1:2002 and rejected.  If it all goes wrong, the judge will have to decide whether a national committee of fire alarm specialists along with regulators and enforcing authorities were right, or whether the deluded souls who thought that care home sub compartments should be evacuated in 2.5 minutes were right. For comparison moderate rainfall will give you 50dB(A), while 45dB(A) is the maximum environmental noise THAT WILL NOT DISTURB RESIDENTS IN A RESIDENTIAL AREA. Birds twittering at 15 m radius have been measured as producing a higher sound level.

But I imagine the CLG got it right nevertheless, because they have driven fire engines or pushed paper in other civil service jobs.  I heard that they are about to lose 900 employees. What about just keeping WEE B and getting rid of the rest too?

Thank you for the insight Colin.

I will certainly bear that in mind in the future.

Jim