Good afternoon, I’m looking for some expert advice and couldn’t think of a better place than the IOSH Forums.

The question I have is if you have a beverage preparation area (Kitchen) that has all utilities such as microwave, toaster, fridge, sink, etc. with the only appliance missing being the cooker.

The bev prep area opens directly onto one of two main fire escape routes, this causes me concern because if there was a fire the smoke would bellow out into the escape route and could also very quickly fill the main office area with up to 50 persons in at any one time.

In addition to this to reduce the risk of false alarms taking place from the toaster a heat detector has been installed instead of a smoke detector but in my opinion with the room being open the fire would have to have really taken hold before the temperature would have changed to cause the heat detector to activate.

In my opinion the bev prep area should have fire compartmentation to protect the fire escape route.

What would you opinion be on this?

Difficult one as some people can't do without their toast although well done toast does set off the smoke alarm?

Sensible decision to replace the smoke detactor with heat, probably a rate of rise detector which will allow a slow build up of heat but will sound the alarm on a rapid rise of heat, more likely to be caused by a fire.

My recommendation would be to remove the toaster rather than install a fire door because you would still have the problem but out of sight until the flames break through the door :-(

Remove the hazard and there should be no further issues ?

It is almost impossible to say whether a fire door would be 'required' on this snack area in terms of protecting the escape route with more info

Taking into account the appliances involved, a fire in this area would most likely not be a hugely rapidly developing one. I accept smoke from a toaster would spread rapidly, but is it a problem really? How many of us have burnt toast? How many of us felt threatened or were put in harms way by the smoke?

Plus in this example, there's a second means of escape is available which may well be able to suitably accommodate the 50 staff if they cant get past the smoke caused by a couple of slices of overheated Hovis.

Anyway, why all this talk of banning toast?

I know I am being a bit flippant, but if banning something was all that was required to make a safe workplace, why do any of us need any form of competence as a trained monkey could do the job!?

Surely the skill is to keep things running normally as far as possible whilst making the workplace safe. I work with an aim of reducing the risk and only ever eliminating the origin if absolutely necessary. Therefore I worry when H&S professions start out with "ban this" and "remove that", even before the full details of the situation are known.

I guess some more information may be needed here to gain a better understanding, for example is the premises constantly occupied, how many false alarms have bee caused by the toaster in the past, is this premises sleeping accommodation, are there venerable people on site, how many floors in the building, are their trained fire wardens, the fire loading of the premises, etc...

If there is no other sensible place to re-locate the toaster then a fire door gets my thumbs up, if it leads onto a fire escape route.

dont pick on the toaster
i had 6 fires last year that were down to microwaves
only 2 that were toasters
however i had 17 unwanted fire signals caused by toasters
and only 2 caused by microwaves

so i would ban all cooking and only allow bread and tripe

I suppose we could be asking who services all this equipment as if cleaned out regularly and set correctly a toaster is no worse than any other cooking appliance but a dirty microwave could be a killer.