Strategic Fire Protection in

Historic Buildings
Richard Forrest
The introduction of conventional fire doors and partitions can have a disastrous affect on a
building's character and historic interest. Risk assessment and the development of a strategic
approach to fire safety measures can lead to more sympathetic solutions.

While modern buildings are designed from the outset to allow the occupants to leave quickly
and easily in the event of a fire, adapting an historic building is more difficult. Two primary
factors must be considered: the protection of persons either living, working or visiting the
premises; and the protection of the building fabric and its contents. If the building concerned is
also open to the visiting public, the requirement for life safety measures is even greater.

The relative priorities for life safety and property protection will be viewed differently by those
involved in the specification or definition of requirements. The fire authorities or the local fire
brigade will be primarily concerned with ensuring that optimum standards are achieved for the
provision of means of escape and for the inclusion of means for fighting fire. Conservationists
on the other hand are primarily concerned with preserving the building fabric without the
intrusive effects and loss of fabric that are the inevitable consequences of most standard fire
precaution measures.

The building owner or occupier is therefore left in somewhat of a dilemma. What are the legal
requirements? What life safety standards should be considered for the current and future usage
and occupancy? What provisions should be made to protect the building and its contents
against the ravages of fire? What are the risks?

These questions cannot be easily answered. The only requirement in law concerns the
provision for life safety and adequate means for escape, not the protection of property.
Furthermore, current legislation under the Fire Precautions Act 1971 relates only to those
buildings put to a designated use and unless the building incorporates office, shop, factory or
hotel use, it is unlikely that the Act and the associated fire certification process will apply.
Guides to fire safety standards do exist. These however are based upon prescriptive standards
that are founded on generally deemed to satisfy criteria applied to the main factors of design for
life safety, such as the provision of exits, protected routes and maximum travel distances. These
standards have no real scientific basis, but rather have evolved over time and are considered
appropriate for most building types and occupancy.

Fire safety design standards advocated by the current Building Regulations primarily apply to
building work only. However they can affect existing buildings where 'material alterations' are
proposed that will effectively downgrade existing provisions covered by the regulations, such as
means of escape, fire spread and access by the fire services. They also apply where there is a
'material change of use' including conversions to form an hotel, a public building or a dwelling,
and the subdivision of a building to form a flat. The Regulations are a relatively recent
development responding to modern building techniques and materials. Older buildings may
have been constructed with provision for very different methods of transferring air, heat and light
around a structure, often in the form of ducts and shafts. With the introduction of more modern
building services, the original structure may well have been built over or adapted, creating voids.
Recent tragic history has shown, as with the fires at Hampton Court Palace and Windsor
Palace, that such voids can contribute to the propagation and rapid spread of fire.

Recent years have seen rapid developments in our understanding of the nature and science of
fire. As with any other facet of building development, the specifier no longer needs to rely solely
on the prescribed standards for design: a specific tailored solution can be derived to take full
advantage of existing features.

Fire precaution issues can be broadly broken down into two very specific categories: 'passive'
protection measures which rely on physical barriers to restrict the development or spread of fire;
and 'active' fire protection measures including, for example, fire detector and extinguisher
systems.

PASSIVE VERSUS ACTIVE MEASURES

Current prescriptive fire safety standards rely very heavily on passive protection, usually
involving the enclosure of staircases and corridors leading to final escape points and the
provision of fire doors across passageways. In addition to the intrusion that the additional doors
and partitions can cause in an historic interior, upgrading original historic features such as
doors, walls, floors and ceilings to standards of fire resistance intended for more modern
buildings is less than ideal. The usual requirement is to ensure that all elements of a defined fire
compartment can resist the passage of fire and smoke for a minimum period of thirty minutes. If
the main elements of the construction are masonry or similar then this standard can be
achieved relatively easily, with only nominal enhancement to breaches in their integrity caused
by pipe runs or cracks for example. However, the main weak spots are the door openings:
original doors are rarely able to satisfy the half-hour requirement. In some cases it may be
possible to upgrade their resistance using linings and seals with limited affect on their character
and interest, but this may not be acceptable where particularly fine work is concerned; in other
cases there may be no alternative to their complete replacement if a passive approach to fire
protection is to be employed.

Active fire protection measures provide the fire engineer with the potential to offset some of the
more onerous passive measures by trading off certain elements of the design process.

RISK ASSESSMENTS AND TRADE-OFFS

The key to a successful solution is the risk assessment, which is carried out as part of a
comprehensive fire safety review of the building, to identify the degree of risk to both life and
property. The assessment also needs to consider any occupier requirements that may have an
effect on fire strategy. For example, where a stately home or a museum is concerned the need
to salvage artefacts could well represent an important factor in the final definition of the fire plan
for the premises. Having identified and quantified fire risk, the basis of fire safety design must be
defined, always taking into account the requirement to satisfy life safety issues, and to balance
property protection issues against physical intrusion.

Recent reports commissioned by the Government to enquire into major fires in historic premises
have placed strong emphasis on the requirement and importance of structural
compartmentation. The fire plan design philosophy should reflect this emphasis by identifying a
solution that utilises existing building features. Any existing features which may also be
beneficial such as large room volumes and high ceilings should also be identified and
incorporated into the plan. The risk analysis should be used to provide fire safety management
recommendations aimed to reduce the probability of the outbreak of fire and to minimise the
potential effects of fire by reducing or managing the fire load.

The acceptability of design solutions which make full use of the existing fabric with the minimum
alteration will ultimately depend on the length of time taken to evacuate the building safely,
under fire conditions, and assuming worst case occupation conditions.

In some small historic buildings which contain a staircase within one single space, with all
rooms opening directly off it, further compartmentalisation may be unnecessary. Upgrading the
doors and walls to provide half hour fire protection can be avoided by introducing an air
pressurisation system. In the event of a fire occurring in one of the rooms, the system is
activated, rapidly pressurising the escape route and forcing smoke to leave the building through
vents introduced in the rooms. However the system has limited application as it can only be
used where the staircase is self contained, and due to the problems associated with
accommodating the large amount of plant required.
Property protection issues may rely on automatic fire suppression, but where a suitable system
cannot be installed perhaps due to the appearance of sprinklers, the time interval between fire
initiation and detection becomes very important. It must be recognised that all large fires start in
a small way and if detected and subsequently tackled in the incipient stages can be prevented
from developing. Where there is no staff in permanent, 24-hour attendance who are trained to
deal with an emergency and equipped with first aid fire fighting facilities at the building, early
detection will at least ensure the earliest attendance by the fire brigade.

The most effective automatic means to provide fire protection to any premises is to introduce a
fire suppression system. The major benefit of a suppression installation is that not only does it
detect a fire, it tackles it at a very early stage. The most common form of fire suppression
system is the water sprinkler. Recent environmental issues have restricted the use of
alternatives due to effects of certain suppression gases on the ozone layer. Water suppression
research has developed rapidly and has given rise to a selection of sprinkler and water spray
systems that can be configured to provide ultimate protection against fire growth and spread
and also against accidental activation. It is perhaps worthwhile considering that only the
sprinkler heads in the immediate vicinity of a fire would activate and then would apply only a
fraction of the water that an attending fire service would apply to a developing fire.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN AFD

Should fire suppression systems be considered inappropriate, the installation of Automatic Fire
Detection (AFD) can provide the vital design definition of time interval between fire initiation and
detection. AFD systems which are incorporated with a fire alarm system have been developed
such that a variety of options exist as to operation, appearance and potential for concealment.
Traditional yoghurt pot ionisation point detectors are now giving away to low profile optical
single point units. These tend to be less obvious and can be coloured by the manufacturer to
match surroundings. Optical beam detectors can be installed with effect to large ceiling areas
where a proliferation of point detectors is undesirable. The units placed with a beam source and
receiver at either end of a room potentially concealed at high level can provide adequate
protection with nominal intrusion.

Where such detection devices are to be avoided at all costs and where risk or the design
strategy dictates a requirement for AFD, aspirating or air sampling systems may prove a viable
option that can be concealed. An aspirating system consists of a series of small diameter
flexible pipes with holes along its length. A sampling unit, positioned remotely draws air from the
room space into the sampling unit chamber, the unit detects the presence of smoke particles
and the alarm is raised. The pipework can be concealed behind the ceiling structure, perhaps
installed from above and only very small penetrations in the ceiling fabric need be made at
intervals to allow the air to be drawn and sampled. This technique has been used extensively in
buildings having very fine decorations and where the requirement for AFD is proved.

In the design and installation of AFD systems for historic and listed buildings, the identification
of the best cable routes is as important (if not more so) as the installation of the unit itself.
Where it is not possible to use existing cableways a strategy for chasing and concealment
should be agreed, which takes into account the need to minimise damage to fine finishes, not
least because repairs by a specialist craftsman can be expensive. An alternative is to avoid hard
wiring between units by specifying a radio linked system, in which each unit transmits data by
radio frequency to a receiver. However, in the author's experience with such installations, the
benefits of reduced wiring can be offset by larger, more intrusive units required to incorporate
radio equipment; by the cost of maintaining the system and replacing batteries; and by the
effectiveness and reliability of signal integrity.

In summary, as part of the development of a fire plan strategy for any historic or listed building,
the definition of risk, occupiers' priorities and conservation issues are paramount. The fire
strategy consists of various contributory elements including the natural or existing building
features and the degree to which more onerous passive upgrading can be offset by the
introduction of active protection measures. The ultimate active protection measure must be the
introduction of comprehensive fire suppression. This represents the only measure to actually
tackle the growth and development of a fire. In respecting the potential difficulty in achieving fire
suppression installation, the introduction of AFD enables full advantage to be taken in design to
meet the assessed risk and to minimise passive protection measures. Furthermore, any
alterations to the original fabric which are unavoidable should be reversible, allowing the
element affected to be returned to its original condition. Other than shallow chasing to
accommodate wiring circuits, no structural or fabric intrusion need necessarily be made.

Finally, in quantifying and qualifying fire risk, the building owner should never lose sight of the
difference between risk andhazard. In other words, if in the unlikely event the worst should
happen, what would be the consequences?