Building Bulletin 100, Design For Fire Safety In Schools

Building Bulletin 100: Design for fire safety in schools

BB100 is a comprehensive document targeted at fire safety in schools with a key highlighted area including the boiler room.

Although written for school premises several key points can be considered for application within boiler rooms on non-educational sites with particular attention to auto resetting of the gas supply.

It is not common practice today to always have an operative (caretaker or facilities team) onsite, therefore available to reset the boilers after a power cut, so the following section from the document is intended to overcome potential issues such as preventing pipes freezing.

It also aims to minimise closures because the building has cooled after a power cut, perhaps the night before.

In section 3.1.8 boiler/plant rooms are covered by the following:

School boiler/plant rooms are considered as areas of high fire risk. For this reason, the following fire safety precautions are required for new schools and where an existing boiler/plant room is upgraded or refurbished:

• A means of automatically shutting off the fuel supply in the event of a fire. This should include an emergency shut-off push-button at the entrance to the boiler room. The system should shut off the electrical power to the plant. In the event of a genuine alarm, the system should require manual resetting, but if it is purely a power failure and appropriate self-proving devices are in place, then automatic resetting is appropriate to prevent the risk of pipe freezing during weekends or holiday periods.

• In addition, a carbon monoxide system is often required in boiler/plant rooms for all fuel types, particularly where a boiler/plant room forms part of the school building itself.

For gas fired boilers it is recommended that the detection system is combined with an unburned gas detection system that is appropriately located within the boiler/plant room depending on the fuel type (natural gas at high level and Liquefied Petroleum Gas at low level).

The detection system should both raise an alarm and isolate the fuel supply.”

A Medem SEC-B which features combined gas pressure proving and gas detection would help meet these design requirements and allow for automatic resetting of the gas supply following a power cut and fire alarm reset.

If you require any additional information on our systems to help meet these design standards or wish to discuss the standards further, please don’t hesitate to contact us.us.