Deptford Wharves, London

COLT PROVIDES A COMPLETE RESIDENTIAL AND CAR PARK SMOKE AND FUME EXTRACT SOLUTION FOR THIS MAJOR NEW DEVELOPMENT.

Situated near to Greenwich Park and the Thames, LendLease’s Deptford Wharves housing development is part of a major regeneration zone, with transport improvements, employment opportunities and an enhanced retail mix all benefitting from increased investment.

Made up of six neighbourhoods and delivering 1,132 homes, the Deptford Wharves development is an ambitious undertaking. Our client, Cilantro Engineering, understood they needed an experienced and professional smoke control partner to meet the product and project management quality this project would demand. Having worked with Colt previously on other projects such as London City Island, they turned to Colt again for their smoke and fume extract needs.

The requirement for Colt on this project was to install smoke extract systems for 4x residential blocks as well as a car park fume and smoke extract system. The fact that Colt is big enough to provide all the different product types required for both car park and residential needs helped to streamline the entire project management process for everyone involved as Colt provides a singular point of contact for all the different building types.

For the Deptford Wharves car park system, Colt installed 9x Jetstream fans mounted on the ceiling with a weathervane. Colt Jetstream fans can blow in two directions, but because the car park entrance/exit is an area open to the outside world, depending on which way the wind is blowing, the air flow can be reversed with the weathervane if needed so that the fumes don’t come back into the building. The car park is also fitted with a CO detection system, so depending on the amount of CO gases in the car park, fans will run at a higher speed as needed to extract at the required level.

For the residential smoke control ask on this project, we adopted three different approaches, depending on the layout of the block in question:

Block A:
In block A, we have a ColtShaft Variable system. With this type of system, the door, instead of opening into the lobby (as on a ColShaft Constant system), will open into the stairwell. Fans in the stairwell will run at a trickle speed until the door is opened and then a pressure sensor that is attached to the door, kicks the fans into a higher speed setting to start the smoke extract process. Any potential smoke in the affected area then gets drawn into the lobby and out through the smoke shafts. At the same time as the smoke is extracted through the shafts in the lobby, so too is fresh air being pulled into the stairwell from the head of stair vent to ensure fresh air is circulating throughout the stairwell. This fresh air ensures a safe escape path out of the building for any occupants.

Block B:
In Block B, we were asked to provide a standard smoke extract system that would also help counter any overheating issues in the corridors because of extra heat generated from the services going in and out of the apartments. Therefore, we chose to install a ColtShaft Constant Push Pull system in this part of the project. The ColtShaft Constant Push Pull system works through pulling in a constant supply of fresh air from the outside through a smoke shaft situated on the side of the corridor. It then simultaneously removes any stagnant, warm air by pulling it out of another smoke shaft at the other side of the corridor. This constant replacement of fresh air/removal of ‘used’ air provides an effective climate control solution in addition to providing smoke control.

Blocks D and E on this development are two separate blocks that are sometimes joined together on certain floors, creating an ‘L’ shape, which required some additional design expertise and skill. Our designers and project managers rose to the challenge and created a system whereby our ColtShaft Constant Push Pull and ColtShaft Constant approaches work together to achieve effective smoke extract while avoiding corridors overheating.