Dorgard (Again?)

[David Rooney]

Thanks for that Dave.
Look the point I was trying to make - clearly unsuccessfully- was that on one side of the door there is a corridor and on the other side of the door there is a staircase. Currently there are no smoke detectors anywhere. If a dorgard is  to be used then there needs to be smoke detectors  covering either side of the door.  However I did not set out to offer design guidance for the OP and did not suggest that the detectors should be part of a system installed in accordance with BS7273-4 or  BS5839 Lx or point detectors within xmetres of the door for that matter as per the original or modified CFOA guidance.  

it was just a simple point simply made. I accept that perhaps I did not make the best choice of words. Perhaps I could learn a lot from Wee B who made the same point but more briefly. Perhaps I should have said detection not detectors. Oh well.

Starting to think this forum has had its day. How do you keep fire engineers so positive?  

I wasn't responding to you specifically K ... you're still my hero !

I was rather generalising that authority figures that tend to be accepting of anything they can get rather than telling owners that plead poverty how it should be, and leave us lowly FA designers in the lurch when we tell the client their "£400" compromise is a waste of money ..... except it gets the Fire Officer off their back so maybe it's not ....

We have a 50 bed (2 Star) hotel in Folkestone with virtually no AFD or sounders where allegedly the FO has said he doesn't need 75db at the bed head according to the owner. 

The "poor" owner has just sold his other hotel (that's in a similar condition) down the road for a couple of million and returned from 3 months in Egypt...... it's a hard life  .......

[kurnal]

Thanks Dave no I was not getting at you either. I am grateful to all contributors for positive contributions, I just dislike personal attacks that don't contribute anything to the debate.

I also can see where these compromises are founded, as an enforcement officer coming into a building for the first time and finding a can of worms that has been passed by your predecessors as satisfactory there is huge pressure to minimise the impact of what needs to be done on the client but to make it safer than it currently is.

Many enforcement officers will not be sufficiently confident to bite the bullet and will take what they see as a practical, functional approach to paper over the cracks often overlooking obvious flaws. 

But it happens to me too, a recent example was in an 18 storey single staircase tower block in which someone had cut a 600mm square hole in a fire door in the staircase lobby and in my fire risk assessment I said the door must be replaced. The assessment coincided with a fire service audit visit. The Enforcement Officer took a different view and said it would be ok provided they did not store more than five mattresses in the store! All I can say to the client is if they don't put it in writing its not worth a light!

[kurnal]

How was your recent trip K? Hope you behaved?

Hi NT it was good thanks for asking. Find the legislation in Eire and particularly Dublin a bit baffling! Seems to be mega prescriptive when it comes to the approvals for new build and the issue of a fire certificate and in particular the regulation of architects and building surveyors and very much laissez faire when it comes to management of fire safety in occupied buildings and enforcement.  As Dotty would say though there seems to be no bodies on the streets. Makes you wonder whether we really need the regime we have in UK and how it all fits in with the EU directives.

[colin todd]

Big Al, Always keen to help an old station officer, I can explain the Irish legislation to you, if you want to put 4 pennies in the phone box in Bathmat Lock High Street (like when you sent the fireflash mesages).  Also, you will find that fire risk assessment and some of the management issues are dealt with under HEALTH AND SAFETY legislation. Further, their fire certificate is issued at the design stage, not like when you began doing the hotels over in 1972.  You are right there aren't too many bodies on the street, but then all their fire officers are qualified engineers. We wouldn't have had truck with all these clever clogs in the Bathmat Lock fire service eh?  What is it we used to say when you and I were on white watch playing snooker against each other all night- you can shake a degree all day at a fire but it wont go out.