Former shirt mill

[AnthonyB]

I've recently visited a mill site in Notts that is now in multi-occupancy but in it's former life for over 100 years was a shirt manufacturers.

It is a nightmare of a site with lots of compartment wall & floor holes, original wooden flooring & joists and unprotected steel beams. Original fire doors are rebated with asbestolux or similar panels screwed on 7 the new ones are not rebated, but have either no seal and gaps or one centre seal

The fire alarm is in standard twin & earth cable except for some of the sounder circuits and there is no AFD except to  one floor of a separate panel and on most floors sprinklers are out of use (still fitted though above false ceiling).

The new owner has inherited this state of affairs.

Now the main question is - did shirt manufacture use any flammable oils or lacquers that over the decades will have soaked into the floor making it even more hazardous than it already is???

BTW - these aren't intumescent seals are they - they look like cushion strips to stop the door slamming?



All call points are wired like this as are some bells. Electronic sounders are fire cabling albeit old.



This is the fire alarm(s), old remote link & sprinklers link to fire service - new panel (8 zone IP with 1 zone used) in fire cabling,  old panel (24 zone, 15 used) and its three battery boxes all wires in twin & earth (except 3 sounder circuits)

[Chris Houston]

Unlucky!

I'll bet the insurance surveyor will have a field day if he ever visits that one!!

[AnthonyB]

I guess no-one knows about the shirt manufacturing process circa late 1800's to late 1900's then?

There is probably build ups of fluff & dust from the old days, but its anything soaked into the flooring I'm worried about

[kurnal]

Anthony its rather difficult to say- generally it depends how much manufacturing they actually did - whether they knitted and wove, dyed or bleached or whether they just fabricated from fabric manufacturerd elsewhere. You can expect shaft driven power systems with main drives grease lubricated but light machine oil used for most other machinery. And yes you can expect timber floors to be oil soaked in the vicinity of the machines- but they often used very thick and fairy hard woods for the floors which are much in demand and in vogue in all sorts of places now. the floor boards in one mill I have recently looked at were 4 inches thick.

The harder question is what would you do about it if the boards were oil soaked? I suggest depending what the building is used for it may be just a case of applying  a high risk evacuation time and extra vigilance on ignition sources?

[Mike Buckley]

My general experience from a city with a lot of hosiery factories was the floors tended to be well soaked with oil and if they went up they were generally burn outs.

I would suggest the best course of action would be to look at reinstating the sprinkler system.

[Midland Retty]

Walsall Mill, in the West Midlands went up last year. Biggest fire that West Midlands Fire Service had dealt with in years

Twenty plus pump attendance if I remember

It was due to be redeveloped in the same way as the building you describe AnthonyB and it was the oil impregnated floors which added to fire spread. Im afraid the building was lost.

It was empty at the time of the fire,and I would hate to think how much bigger the fire loading would have been if it had been occupied, let alone the risk to life.

So how do you deal with oil impregnated floors? I must admit Im not sure, as Kurnal says I dont think there is much you can do physically to the flooring and instead you will have to look at maximum early warning, and a very quick evacuation strategy perhaps.

Stating the obvious but control of ignition sources and combustible is an absolute must I would suggest!