waRehouses and Recycling in focus
Heavy metal The installation of a smoke detection system in a metal recycling plant presented a number of challenges for Bryland Fire, not least of which was access.
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It was not possible to use traditional access equipment due to the presence of plant machinery.
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hen traditional high-access equipment could not overcome the sheer size and bulk of plant machinery in a metal recycling centre it was time to consider a more hands-on approach. One of the world’s leading metal recyclers, EMR, recently enlisted the help of fire protection specialist Bryland Fire to further safeguard them against the risk of fire at their Oldbury depot. EMR specialises in the recycling of scrap metal from sources including end-of-life vehicles, consumer products and industry, construction and demolition. The project involved the installation of an aspirating smoke detection system, which was commissioned in February 2018. The site is an open-plan building around 110m long, 40m wide and 18m high at the apex, made from steel construction and cladding. In the event of a fire alarm, the building is evacuated and an alert is sent to the in-house fire team, which is equipped with a fire engine. The previous ASD system had been installed by another
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company when the building was still an empty shell, but for this project the facility was full of heavy plant machinery and conveyor belts. Other types of detection had been discarded by Bryland Fire Protection for a number of reasons. The ceiling was too high for the reliable use of point detection; linear heat cable could have been used, but it would not have provided the early warning offered by smoke aspiration. The chosen installation design consists of three air-sampling detectors from Honeywell Gent’s Fire Alarm Aspirating Sensing Technology XM range and 550m of pipework. A large draw for this technology is that it has a separate purge unit linked to the system. At intervals throughout the day, the purge unit automatically blows air in the opposite direction to clear any contamination. “You can set it at different intervals, blowing air at 3 bar in three-second blasts every four hours, for example. The purge unit at the time was so new that we had to wait a month for it to come out after the order had come in,” says Andrew Smith, Bryland Fire Protection’s project manager. The auto-purging unit means that it is unnecessary to clean the piping twice a year during service, as would be required with a standard ASD system under British Standard 5839. In addition, the selected ASD unit has a patented ‘wing filter’ that enables large airborne particulate to be expelled before reaching the detection chamber. When the time had come to assess the project in detail, it was soon realised that standard high-level access equipment such as scissor lifts, spider lifts and cherry pickers was not appropriate: their reach was not sufficient to go over the top of the heavy metal-recycling machinery. “We even looked at truck-mounted boom lifts, which had an even bigger footprint, but they still wouldn’t reach,” says Smith. Then Smith hit upon the idea of contacting rope access specialists to discuss whether they could help. “I recalled that when I was an electrician putting power to aerials for a mobile phone company, rope access specialists were used to clip cables at unusual locations.” By chance, such a company was found in nearby Birmingham and, even better, the rope access specialists had carried out a similar installation at a major automotive manufacturer. “Rope Task came to the rescue. Their specialists carried out their own risk assessments and method statements, and for our part we gave them some pointers so that the installation was carried out in our way. It went very well.” Bryland Fire estimates it took around 290 man-hours to complete the installation.
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