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Posted By Brenda H
Sorry, it's a long one!
I have a few, but thought i'd start with fire doors etc.
A small premises I have recently looked at has doors between rooms and it is not apparent whether they are fire doors.
There are no markings on the door, either coloured circles or BS markings and no intumescent strip.
Also, the glass is not wired, but plain, it does have a BS marking in it which begins 62 but I can't read the last two numbers!
The doors have two hinges and there are no self closing devices.
The second part to this is as follows:
The building, which is approximately 30ft long by 20 wide has a small workshop at the back (with fire exit), which houses various paints, sprays (coshh) materials (in a metal cabinet).
In front of the workshop is a small room (it has no door from the workshop so I have considered it part of the workshop). In front of this is another room, which is separated by a sliding door, which leads to the front foyer area.
Although the workshop has various coshh products, there are no processes in this area which generate heat.
Should the door between this area and the front foyer/office area, be separated by a self closing fire door?
The whole building has two fire call points, front and back. Although no heat or smoke detection.
My thoughts with the chemicals would be to store them at the back of the premises outside.
The premises only has about 4-6 employees in it at any one time.
Any advice would be appreicated!
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Posted By garyh
Brenda, I am not being clever here but I must point out that there is no such thing as a COSHH substance. However, substances hazardous to health must have an assessment (of risk).
Look at the paint tins; they should display CHIP labels (Harmful, Irritant, Flammable, whatever). You can then assess the hazards and then the risks. You may need to store some of the paints separate to the others eg if one is "Toxic", you shouldn't store it with one that is "Flammable" and so on. You could be making things worse, not better.
If in doubt ask the supplier / manufacturer for the Safety Data Sheet (sometimes called SDS or MSDS) which will help in the assessment.
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Posted By holmezy
Gary,
why wouldnt you want to store toxics and flammables together?
Oxidising and flammables I can understand.....
Just a query.
holmezy
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Posted By Brenda H
Gary,
You're not missing a point, I apologise if my generalised wording has confused you.
But the products are a mixture of flammables, corrosive etc, so I grouped them as coshh products for ease.
Anyway, it is the other fire issues I am more interested in.
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Posted By John_Webster
I take it the front foyer/office has an external doorway. So it would seem that no part of the premises is more than about 15 ft from an external exit. From a practical standpoint, I can see no benefit to those working there in having FRSC doors - unless there is the possibility of anyone being cut off from an exit by a fire. It would appear from your description that everyone can leave, quickly, by either one or the other exit. Whilst a sliding door is not ideal, provided that it is suitably marked & illuminated so that people can work it properly in an emergency then it should be OK.
What you don't want is for your highly flammables to erupt in a fireball before everyone is safe, so whilst in an ideal world you might want to store them in a purpose built (eg Flammavault or similar) container outside, a proper flammable cupboard inside should be OK provided that it is kept closed, the safe storage quantities are adhered to and ventilation is appropriate.
If in doubt, talk to your insurer and local fire brigade.
Hope this helps
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Posted By garyh
Someone asked why not store flammables and toxics together?
See (among others) HSG 50 (Storage of flammable liquids in containers) also HSG71 (Chemical warehousing), L135 (Storage of Dangerous Substances).
In a nutshell, if you store something toxic next to something flammable, and the flammable container goes up in flames, the toxic container will probably burst, maybe vapourise the contents, with an big increase in exposure risk to persons in the area and also fire fighters.
There is a chart which shows simply what and how to separate. From memory it's in L135.
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Posted By Alan Nicholls
Is it now safe or good practice to store corrosive and flammable chemicals in the same place. I don't think so.
Fire caused by chemical reaction, generating heat, source of ignition. Seen it got the tee shirt.. Risk assessment.
Alan N
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Posted By Ken Taylor
Without seeing the building, it sounds reasonable in terms of means of escape. The FRS are never too keen on sliding doors so, if your fire risk assessment considers the route to the final exit from the workshop to be less than adequate (ie in terms of room layout and content), it would seem worth considering whether a conventional door could be installed to facilitate an alternative exit route. The glass is probably safety glass to BS6262. External secure 'flamstores' can be useful for ensuring that the amount of chemicals within the building can be limited. I take it that you will be including fire extinguishers within the risk assessment.
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Posted By shaun mckeever
The MoE sounds ok to me, unless you deem the area to be of special fire risk in which you may need to separate by FR construction, but it doesn't sound that bad to me.
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Posted By Brenda H
I guess one concern was there is a toilet which goes off the workshop, I guess if someone was in there and a fire started, they wouldn't know until they came out!
What a heat/smoke detector and a good fire door be sufficient for that?
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Posted By Ian P
would they not hear the alarm, even a shout? if anybody had hearing problems that would have to be a consideratiom.
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Posted By Ken Taylor
You've told us that there is a manual call-point at each of the final exits - so people will have been instructed to activate these upon discovering a fire and there will be displayed notices to this effect. With regard to the WC occupant, it should only be a matter of checking that the sounder(s) can be heard there (with any necessary arrangement for notifying some one with a hearing problem). Automatic fire detection is usually only needed for unattended areas (WCs excepted) and premises where persons sleep.
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Posted By Brenda H
There are no heat or smoke detectors, so the alarm being activated is reliant on someone doing this.
The workshop, at the back, is sometimes left unused and unoccupied for lengths of time, which is what worried me about the toilet.
Would it not be as simple of install a detector? Which isn't expensive, and that way if any fire starts, people will be warned quickly.
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Posted By Ken Taylor
It does seem that the WC occupant is the remaining issue, Brenda - in as much as, if the fire starts in the back room, the occupants have a clear exit route out of the front. So you need to consider whether there is a need for automatic notification for the person in the WC - taking into account whether other means of warning can be used and the route they would need to use in order to escape. That said, it would seem quite useful to have automatic fire detection in an unattended workshop area (in the interest of property safety and keeping the business in operation as well as WC occupants). This could be simply adding a detector(s) to the existing system if the existing sounder(s) can be heard in the WC.
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