AnthonyB
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Posts posted by AnthonyB
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You are required to carry out a fire risk assessment, which because you are going to be licensed, has to be recorded regardless of any employee numbers.
This will determine your requirements on all fire safety matters.
Also your work is subject to the Building Regulations and requires Building Control sign off and Local Authority Building Control or your privately contracted Approved Inspector will advise on requirements.
You will usually, as a minimum, need to protect your stair with self closing fire doors.
You will not normally need a second fire escape if you protect the existing one unless there are excessive travel distances.
You will need a fire detection and warning system of a suitable category using commercial fire alarm equipment not domestic battery or mains smoke alarms and emergency lighting
If you are boarding the ceiling to 30 minutes FR with Fireline plasterboard this would usually suffice in a building of this size.
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Simple answer - yes!
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This is the guide referred to by Tom
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If it's specialised housing there should have been person centred FRAs & PEEPs and the building's fire precautions and procedures adapted to deal with situations where residents will not leave.
Normally the alarm is left running until everyone is out, if it's been 10 minutes or so you have to give up, record the drill & issues and importantly escalate the problems.
You can do fire drills single handed in smaller premises.
It sounds like you haven't been given adequate training for all aspects of your role - this needs written escalation to your employer
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They must be as a minimum CE marked and noted as compliant with BS EN 1154 with a 6 digit classification number for the product, the important one being the 4th digit which needs to be a 1 to indicate it's fire tested.
eBay is full of counterfeit, illegal, defective and non conforming Far East imports that are usually are priced too good to be true (fire blankets being another example) and claim all sorts of compliance, but I wouldn't trust most of them.
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No, a common areas only fire alarm system is useless as you will loose too much sound pressure (30db through the front fire door and wall, plus loss over distance) from the common areas so sleeping residents will not be roused (nor someone in the living room with the telly turned up).
The flat hall sounders are there to give 85dB outside the bedroom doorway, the absolute minimum likely to rouse.
As far as maintenance goes, in respect of individual devices they only need to have been checked once in a 12 month period over a minimum of 2 service visits not exceeding 6 months
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With respect to the fire alarm existing school standards only require a manual fire alarm system (i.e. call points) for life safety (but are advised to have it for property protection which is not a legal requirement) unless they are used in part for extra curricular activities or have areas with a high risk layout where detection is sometimes required.
An exception is schools of CLASP construction, which have an acknowledged high risk of rapid & hidden fire spread and it's usual to provide full detection to these.
Domestic detectors are unsuitable and of little use in this environment and don't comply with workplace legislation for fire warning systems if battery only in any case, plus only provide a very localised warning - detection should be part of the main fire alarm system.
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If a risk assessor is just ticking the boxes they would be correct, but a true risk assessment that is, like the law, non prescriptive and based on the risk, can quite correctly dispense with parts of BS7273-4 (which itself allows for situations where an element such as a green break glass double pole isolator can be omitted) where other risks higher from having them.
I've assessed specialised housing and children's homes where it's been agreed the risk to residents from escape is higher than from fire and the green break glass units can be omitted and all parties including the fire authority have accepted this.
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Depends on what your lease say as to who is liable for walls between flats, etc. Ducting is usually common.
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If the understore store has the gaps suitably firestopped and has a fire door, then being concrete it could be used as a store, although there could be an issue if that is an active distribution board, also is it a metal or plastic board?
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If the separation is to 60 minutes the shop doesn't need to be linked to the flats and that is why Building Control didn't require it.
The shop can then be assessed in isolation & if a small unit where a fire is going to be readily detected by the staff and small enough for a simple alarm of a shout, whistle, horn or gong to be heard throughout the unit, then it doesn't require a fire alarm system.
If it's larger then a commercial fire alarm system to BS5839-1 (the flats have a residential system to BS5839-6) would be required with the legal minimum for a shop being called Category M consisting of manual call points ('break glasses'). Whether detection is required is based on layout and use or whether early warning for property protection (not a legal requirement, purely a business & insurance decision) is desired.
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Building regulations, the fire safety guides and the relevant British Standard BS7273-4:2015 all support your tenant's fire risk assessors standpoint in that doors used for escape with access control works should
- fail to open on power failure
- have a double pole isolator to the lock supply for emergency release (the green break glass)
- interface with the fire alarm system
As you should have a fire risk assessment for your common areas your competent assessor would be best placed to advise if you can deviate and putting the justification in your FRA. You shouldn't have false alarms either out of hours, this would indicate an improperly maintained system or poorly designed one or poor management allowing an environmental trigger to occur.
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Was this a training provider that told you this?
The law hasn't changed at all and the relevant Government Guidance currently doesn't set this frequency either - it does state that the frequency is determined by the risk assessment so it is possible that in some premises it may well be appropriate for quarterly training, but it certainly isn't law nor advised either as a standard frequency.
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Possible breach of article 13 of the Fire Safety Order (relating to escape routes including their protection by fire doors) which is a criminal offence. The employer would be liable, plus any staff with control over an issue could be liable as well depending on the circumstances.
If you are getting nowhere then the fire service would be your next port of call assuming you don't have a union to involve first.
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All it sounds like they are doing is creating an inner room, which if travel distances were OK before will remain acceptable. There would need to be one of the following:
- Vision panel between inner room & access room; or
- Automatic Detection (smoke) to the access room; or
- The partition between the inner and access rooms stopping at least 500mm below the ceiling
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If it's a H&S concern it would be the environmental health department of the London Borough in which the hotel is located.
If a fire safety one it's London Fire Brigade's Enforcement Teams, contact your local borough for more info https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/community/your-borough/
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It's not a regulation, but the latest edition of the signage standards (ISO 7010) do say exit signs should include text unless in buildings where only staff would need to understand the signage. It's not retrospective unless a risk assessment deems it so (which any sensible one is unlikely to do so except in certainly specific cases).
Of course it's impossible to comply with where you need internally illuminated exit signs - they are still making these with obsolete arrows and symbols on so you won't see text legends for a long time yet!
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Your answer is here (including the requirements of older standards and when they can stand and when they don't):
https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/fire-safety-purpose-built-04b.pdf
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Water mist is preferred as foam cannot be used on two of the key causes of domestic fire - Cooking oils & electrical equipment. The smallest 1.4l water mist wold be sufficient
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Change your contractor - they are trying to fleece you by scare tactics by saying it's the law. Firstly it's not and secondly it's been in the guidance for a lot longer than 6 months!
Common sense and a risk based approach dictates that smaller areas, especially if only one exit, would be more than amply covered by a single unit. You will never get prosecuted for this, the only time you might have to accept the overkill is if your insurer insists.
The Standards are influenced by those who make and sell extinguishers or represent their trade and are not as objectively independent as they should be.
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I'd double check Scottish Technical Standards as they are increasingly different from England & Wales in may aspects.
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Do bear in mind that as a Care Home it should be operating progressive horizontal evacuation and you may not be putting 60 through the route at once, so you may be able to justify the existing configuration.
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PAS 79:2012 Fire Risk Assessment. Guidance and a recommended methodology
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Your internal doors are likely to have been fire doors, the standard at the time (CP3 chapter lV part 1: 1971 referenced in The Building Regulations 1985 - assuming the conversion was Building Regulation compliant) was to have all doors as self closing fire doors other than bathrooms and toilets.
These would have been solid doors with 25mm stops and internal chain type closers.
You can't make anything worse than the original standard at the time of install so you would need fire doors (but only FD20 20 minute standard, although in practice they can be difficult to find so a FD30 blank is often used) which wouldn't need intumescent seals just the stop.
You don't need the self closer any more though - current standards don't require them any more except to the front door.
Final Fire Exit Door new legislation
in Fire Exits
Posted
If it's a final exit to the outside it often doesn't even need to be a fire resisting door wither.