Brompton Bicycles, London

Shopping centres are some of the most complex retail structures and as such, the Building Regulations have a strong emphasis on the provision of life safety systems such as smoke control in them. A well-designed smoke control system can play a big part in helping people escape quickly and should be able to maintain smoke-free escape conditions at low level to allow the building to be evacuated with minimum risk of smoke inhalation, injury or death.

To get started on this topic, let’s first explore what a fire curtain is and how it helps keep buildings safe. A fire curtain is a flexible fire-rated barrier that is held out of sight in a headbox until needed. When activated by a fire alarm system, a fire curtain automatically drops down, between guide channels to seal the space where a wall and door would normally have been.

Smoke control systems are vital to keeping buildings and occupants safe. However, unfortunately there are also occasionally times when things can go wrong and the systems fail. In this blog, we aim to cover some of the most common issues and how they can affect the overall performance of smoke shaft systems.