Kurnal
Building them in this way alleviates quite a portion of the responsibility of the RP. Now anything beyond the firefighting lobby door can be accepted as domestic, so the RP has no real responsibility for the conditions found beyond that point. That only leaves the lobbies and staircase under the true control of the RP as far as tthe RRFSO is concerned.
I have seen many variations of the fire alarm system in these sorts of premises;
You can go down the code compliant route of self contained apartments, and the only detection required in the common areas would be to operate any automatic smoke vent.
You can up the ante a little and connect the "smoke vent" detector to a concierge/security/monitoring station.
You can go even further, stick a heat detector in the corridor common to the bedrooms, and have that inform the concierge/security so there is pre-warning and time for investigation prior to losing the lobby.
You can go EVEN FURTHER, and have it a little like a hotel, i.e. L2 system, with HD in each common corridor and the kitchen as above. (Just in in hotel bedrooms) Clusters still have their own part 6 system, with no contact to anywhere else to cut down on false alarms, but the HD activation initiates an evac of that floor or the entire building. (Quite unnecessary IMO)
What we should be doing in my opinion is; Pushing the sprinkler angle and getting trade offs for it. i.e. Part 6 system within the cluster, residential sprinkler system, reduce FR to structure. Activation of sprinkler system alerts concierge/security/monitoring station. (Doing away with any need for a part 1 system) I think some of the owners are missing a good angle here, if you were paying for your loved ones to stay in a building with hundreds of other students, would you be willing to pay a few extra quid to have them in a sprinklered building?
