An open approach

Fire safety guidance is a significant factor in the internal arrangement of apartments in the UK. In general, either the distance from the furthest point in the apartment to the entrance door is kept very short, or a protected entrance hall connects all rooms to the apartment entrance. In recent yea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBuilding Surveying Journal pp. 10 - 12
Main Author Ballantyne, Andy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors 01.10.2018
Subjects
Apartments
Bedrooms
Building codes
Cover plates
Design
Entrances
Fire alarms
Fire protection
Fire safety
Jurisdiction
Kitchens
Residential buildings
Response time
Safety management
Sprinkler systems
Studies
United Kingdom > UK
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Summary:Fire safety guidance is a significant factor in the internal arrangement of apartments in the UK. In general, either the distance from the furthest point in the apartment to the entrance door is kept very short, or a protected entrance hall connects all rooms to the apartment entrance. In recent years an open-plan approach has become desirable, with bedrooms being accessed directly from a combined living and kitchen space. To support this, BS 9991: 2011 Fire safety in the design, management and use of residential buildings--Code of practice, included guidance for open-plan apartments. A further variation was also considered, with concealed sprinkler heads introduced and modelled using an increased response time index (RTI) to reflect delayed activation due to the presence of a cover plate. The RTI values of the standard pendant test used in the BRE experiments were not documented, so a conservative estimate for the base RTI value was used to calculate that of a concealed head.
ISSN:1750-1032
1759-3387