Sprinkler installations in High rise buildings:
The staircases in high rise buildings need extra protection against fire. It can take a long time for everyone to descend the stairs to ground level so it is very important that the staircases can be guaranteed for extended periods of time during a fire.
The staircases may have extra doors to protect them or they may have a pressurisation system to give them the required protection. In addition to this extra protection to the stairs it is necessary that all floors are compartment floors. The potential for fire to travel up the building through the floors must be stopped and the compartment floors do this.
There is some recent experience of fires travelling up the outside faces of buildings and this can be countered by ensuring that cladding materials are incombustible.
Sprinkler installations are essential in these buildings to severely restrict the effects of a fire and to reduce the possibility of flashover inside the room of fire origin.
There will normally be a command centre that is staffed at all times when the buildings occupied.
The staff in this command centre have equipment to monitor the sprinklers, any smoke control facilities such as pressurisation or atrium ventilation, the lift locations, the fire alarm system, the generator status and the fire pumps. The command centre itself is normally protected from fire elsewhere in the building. If there is a fire in or affecting the command centre then contingency measures should be in place to allow emergency operations to be controlled safely.