Full Function Fire Testing & Certification
Essential services compliance is not just a tick in the box, it is your protection against litigation whilst ensuring the safety of the building occupants.
Australian legislation require the building owner to provide annual proof of compliance for essential safety measure to operate in an emergency by ensuring the performance of the annual system interface testing.
As people are escaping a fire, and open the doors to get into the stairways, smoke would naturally billow from a fire floor into the stairwell. A pressurisation system is intended to prevent smoke leaking through closed doors into stairs by injecting clean air into the stairwell. The intent is to have the highest pressure in the stairwell and a reducing pressure in the accommodation area to facilitate pedestrian escape route and firefighting access.
Engineered fire protection systems are a vital factor in the reduction of potential large fire losses at all properties. Statistical evidence of suppression by properly designed and maintained fire protection systems has proven to be effective.
A system must be installed which is capable of automatically and safely supplying the two air flows. At the same time, excessive air flow to the staircase must be prevented so that children or less able occupants can open the access door to the staircase during an evacuation. There are several types of systems for controlling excess pressurisation of the staircase, but most of them are based on a fan controlled by a frequency inverter, which takes signals from a differential pressure sensor that measures the pressure difference between the pressurised evacuation route and the non-pressurised area. This maintains the desired pressure, and subsequently controls the pressure during situations where the doors in the evacuation route are closed. In the case where a door is opened, the pressure in the staircase drastically decreases and so the fan speed increases to regulate the pressure. The fan then supplies the maximum design airflow for the installation when an evacuation route door is open or when the exit door to the outside is open.
A stairwell pressurisation system must be tested in accordance with “AS/NZS 1668.1:1998 The use of ventilation and air-conditioning in buildings”.
