Safety First: Fire Protection Systems
Building designs are subject to many laws that a regular person is not even aware of. Architects and engineers understand these regulations and laws as they dictate what can be built on what land, how it can be built and what precautionary measures need to be installed. Generally, apartment complexes have many protection plans including active fire protection such as fire and smoke detectors, exit passages, etc. Office or commercial buildings have different fire protection plans and they are more thorough than residential plans. The reason is that residential property is privately owned and safety measures depend on the people who own it. Office buildings and commercial land is subject is state regulations and certain measures need to be installed in order to protect employees.
This brings us to the subject of fire protection. Fire protection refers to systems installed in buildings that aim to alarm people about fires, explosions, minimize and contain the damage and allow successful evacuation of people from the building. The best fire protection plan would be to combine both active and passive fire protection. Active fire protection only aims to warn and minimize the damage after the event has occurred. This is important but passive fire protection plans work better in the way that they are designed. They aim to reduce smoke, fire and fumes from spreading from one unit to another. They are aimed at containing any damage that could occur through spreading, and hence saving the whole building from blowing up. Passive fire protection includes the installation of fire dampers in air ducts and ventilation systems; a more advanced option is to install a fire smoke dampers.
A smoke damper is designed to resist the passage of air and smoke in air ducts and is controlled automatically by a smoke detector. A fire smoke dampers combines both kinds of dampers, abiding by the UL safety standards for both smoke and fire dampers, and they function on the detection of both heat and smoke. Upon this detection, they seal themselves using an electric heat release device. These devices can be reset and they close in a controlled way so that there are no air pressure problems in the air ducts and the HVAC system. However, the problem doesn’t just end at installing these measures. These dampers and systems require that they be installed, used and maintained properly to get the best results.