What Do Smoke Ventilation Systems Do?
The main purpose of smoke ventilation systems is to ensure the safety of occupants during a fire incident. These systems are designed to remove smoke and heat from the building, creating a clear escape route for occupants and allowing firefighters to access the fire source.
Legislation and design guidance are in place to ensure that smoke ventilation systems are installed, operated, and maintained properly. This legislation defines the standards and requirements that must be followed to ensure the effectiveness of these systems.
When specifying a smoke ventilation system, it is crucial to consider and adhere to these regulations and design guidance. This includes factors such as the size and layout of the building, the number of occupants, the location of escape routes, and the capacity of the system to effectively remove smoke and heat.
By adhering to the legislation and design guidance, the smoke ventilation system can provide the necessary life safety measures during a fire incident, allowing occupants to safely evacuate the building and enabling firefighters to control and extinguish the fire at its early stages.
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Mechanical Smoke Ventilation
Mechanical smoke ventilation or smoke control uses high temperature smoke extract fans, this is the perfect solution to complex or large layouts where a code compliant to Approved Document B cannot be achieved, this is an engineered solution to provide the necessary smoke ventilation to the building for both Means of Escape and Fire Fighting mode where necessary. With this method you must provide calculations for the system, this utilizes high tech Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modelling to prove that the proposed design will provide the desired performance. This is great for extended travel distances and the tricky/cramped layouts of a building that do not allow for an Approved Document B compliant system.
Natural Shaft
Natural smoke shaft ventilation is an approved method in the building regulations, Approved Document B (ADB) that utilizes a rising shaft within the fabric of the building to remove smoke from the building to protect the staircase from smoke ingress. This relies on the natural thermal buoyancy of the hot smoke to withdraw the smoke from the building. The hot gases create the stack effect like your domestic chimney which draws the smoke out of the building.
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Natural Window
Smoke ventilation by windows is an approved method to the building regulations, Approved Document B method ADB, this method utilises Automatic Opening Vents (AOVs) on the exterior of the building, these AOVs open when smoke is detected in the communal areas or when a manual control point has been activated by the fire brigade. Once these vents are opened any smoke that is in the corridor will escape through these AOVs and will maintain the staircase free from smoke.
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Car Park Ventilation
Smoke ventilation in a car park is mostly used for a post fire operations to clear smoke from a car park after a car fire has been extinguished by the fire brigade, however there are some instances where the car park system is required to achieve other design performance such as maintaining an escape stair free from smoke. These systems are an engineered solution to a code compliant Approved Document B system this enables the car park to be fully enclosed. All mechanical smoke ventilation systems must calculation/evidence that the design proposal is going to work, this is achieved by using high tech Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modelling to prove that the proposed design will provide the desired performance. These systems also provide daily ventilation to disperse/clear CO emissions from vehicles. The CFD modelling also proves that there will be no stagnant areas of CO. Car park ventilation systems use high temperature extract fans and ceiling mounted thrust or induction fans.