Mr

[Guest James]

Hi all,

Though I have consulted this site many times to clarify various elements of fire safety, this is my first time posting as I haven't found a similar query...

We own/ manage an office block comprising of 4 floors + basement car park. On each floor there are two office suites. Each office suite has an independent business occupant. There is a full building fire alarm system installed & maintained (conventional, not addressable).

One of the businesses have forwarded their recent FRA that has highlighted the below;

It was not ascertained due to no access if there was any fixed automatic detection located in the ventilation/extraction shaft, install additional fixed automatic detection, in line with the guidance in BS 5839-1: Fire Detection and Alarm Systems for Buildings. Code of Practice for System Design, Commissioning and Maintenance. (liaise with landlord)

We recently had a compartmentation survey that confirmed there are fire dampers where the ducting passes through each compartment, but as the installation is approximately 30 years old there are no smoke/ fire detectors within the ducting.

My question is - do we need to retrofit smoke detectors within a ducting installation of this age? My other consideration is that the ducting is not within a ventilation shaft as such, as it is just 4x metal ducts passing through different parts of the building up to their final exit on the roof.

Any guidance would be appreciated!

[AnthonyB]

If the dampers are of the intumescent honeycomb or fusible link shutter type for fire then they are likely to have complied at the time of install. Retrospective provision of duct detection and conversion to duct detector activated smoke & fire dampers is not retrospective (nor is BS5839-1) unless the risk posed by them is intolerable, which would be based in part on where the duct goes and where it's inlets and outlets are.

If your common area FRA doesn't require it then you wouldn't be obliged to undertake this, but you do have to coordinate fire safety with other responsible persons - if they want it but your assessment doesn't require it you could propose to undertake the work on the basis that the tenant pays for it.