- Author
- Grimwood, P.
- Title
- Review of Fire-Fighting Flow-Rate in Ventilation Controlled Compartment Fires.
- Report
- 7003/2009, 2009, 12 p.
- Keywords
- compartment fires | fire fighting | ventilation | flow rate | fire fighters | water supply | codes | water flow | fire load | extinguishing | fire hoses | room fires | nozzles | compartments | fire tests | high pressure | room burns | pressure
- Identifiers
- waste-paper bin fire; UK Building Disaster Advisory Group (BDAG)
- Abstract
- Ask a fire fighter to extinguish a fully involved waste-paper bin fire with a small portable hand-held plant sprayer. They won't be able to unless the fire is left to burn some of the fuel load away first! Now give the firefighter the same task but using a 10 litre water extinguisher. The outcome is obvious and the firefighter will most certainly comprehend the reasons why the inadequate flow-rate from the portable plant sprayer was unable to suppress the fire immediately whilst the 10L extinguisher did. So why have fire fighters struggled with the simple flow-rate conundrum at 'real' fires for decades? It's applied flow-rate that suppresses fires. The methods used to calculate fire fighting flow-rate are generally based on engineering principles, and/or empirical research of past fire experience, in order to determine how much water is required to effectively suppress a given estimate of fire load when involved in fire. Ideally, to support safe approaches by fire fighters working on the interior of a building, the quantity of water needed is that which will suppress the involved fire load during its growth or fully developed stages and not that needed to deal with a fire in its decay stages, which is a far lesser amount. The 'potential' fire load is the uninvolved fire load in adjacent areas to the fire and this must also be considered when estimating 'minimum' flow-rates on interior attack hose lines in anticipation that it might further contribute to the heat release whilst fire fighters are occupying the building.