Once again, my CSI membership and attendance at Construct over the years has paid for itself. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve posted anything, so I figured I should pick up where I left off.
This afternoon, I was having a conversation with a local plan review official and the topic of fire safety entered the conversation. The bulk of what I brought to the conversation I learned at the 1992 CSI Convention in Atlanta.
Prior to that convention, I was a big believer in compartmentalizing buildings with rated assemblies to prevent the spread of fire in lieu of installing a sprinkler system. As I learned at that convention, it is virtually impossible to do this perfectly, and the result of such imperfections is rapid spread of fire through narrow openings where a firestop may have been missed during construction. Where there is a small orifice (perhaps a ¾” hole drilled for a wire that was subsequently deemed unnecessary) a virtual blowtorch is created resulting in flashover of the adjacent space in a surprisingly short span of time.
My professional firefighter friends have taught me a thing or two about the behavior of fire in a building and how to fight it as well. This has led me to advise clients to add a layer of gypsum board to the underside of the joists spanning an unfinished basement to buy a little time for firefighters to rescue building occupants.
Even though this allows a few extra minutes of structural soundness, there is no substitute for fully sprinklering a building. If the fire is extinguished (or at least knocked down) there is far less smoke generated; and therefore, the occupants have a chance to escape the potential for a smoke related fatality.
Moral of the story is this: if we sprinkler and protect the building, in so doing, we protect the occupants. Life safety is what it’s all about. As far as I am aware, only one of the buildings coming out of this firm has ever burned, and there were no injuries. My understanding of fire started because of my participation in CSI and the predecessor of Construct.
Later this month, many of us will return to Construct where we will catch up on the latest in building technology, pick up a years worth of HSW requirements, and who knows, we might just save a life as a result.
Charlottesville Architect 
Leave a Reply