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Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

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MSpurling
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Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by MSpurling »

Hi all,

This is going to cross the Environmental and Fire areas of expertise I would imagine.

We are currently in the process of putting together our Fire Prevention Plan to submit to the EA.

We are working with a consultancy who have proposed using a Water-gate Barrier to control fire water run off from fires inside the building and outside. If there was a fire these barriers would be put out across all of the bay doors to prevent run off from entering the drains in the yard, or around the stockpiles in the yard to prevent run off from reaching the drains.
Calculations show that we only require a containment height of 4cm around the building and only 2cm around the yard.

One thing I'm after is if anyone has used these before, and what their opinion of them is.
I'm not to keen as looking at them they are best used for flood defence.
I'm also concerned that once put in place we wouldn't be able to get any appliances either in or out of the building as they would have to drive over the barriers and breach the containment we had put in place.

There's probably plenty more information that I have missed so if you want to know anymore I will try to answer as best as I can.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by Messy »

I am afraid I won't be of much help as, although I have experience of flood protection, I have never prepared a fire prevention plan for the EA such as this.

Can I ask you why this is required? I am asking as I hope I haven't missed something!!

Is your address in a sensitive environment (SSSSI?) or is there some legislation or COP I should be following and doing the same??

Sorry to hijack the thread before it has got going and I hope somebody more knowledgeable can help ./thumbsup..
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by Andyblue »

They sound like very low barriers, especially outside. Assuming there is a safety overflow margin, let assume the fire isn’t towards the end of some heavy rain, even of a couple of mm, you’d barely get wet feet.
On a positive, you could consider permanent or more solid barriers for traffic crossover points.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by MSpurling »

Messy wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 10:17 pm I am afraid I won't be of much help as, although I have experience of flood protection, I have never prepared a fire prevention plan for the EA such as this.
Can I ask you why this is required? I am asking as I hope I haven't missed something!!
Is your address in a sensitive environment (SSSSI?) or is there some legislation or COP I should be following and doing the same??
Hi Messy,
Fire Prevention Plans are now a requirement of most environmental permits. We are a waste recycling company so deal with large stockpiles of household recycling. Nothing to do with sensitive environments etc.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by Merlot »

Hi,

we are in a similar industry and also needed barriers to control fire water run off. Our sites were designed and constructed so all the water drained towards the center of the site but we still needed to be able to control extreme circumstances.

our barriers are flat packed for storage but are rolled out across the access road and filled with water when required. As part of achieving our FPP we had to carry out timed deployment exercises! The barriers will not take a fire appliance driving over it, but our local crew said they wouldn't be taking their appliance anywhere near it anyway.

EA more than happy with it, I don't have the details to hand but can dig it out next week if you want?

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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by MSpurling »

Hi Merlot,

That would be great!
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by Merlot »

Hi MSPurling,

I haven't forgotten the request. Will get the information to you as soon as I can.

Merlot.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by MSpurling »

No worries Merlot.

Our consultant has done another draft and I've found more problems with it.
The water barriers are planned to be put in place where they don't stop water entering the foul aco drains across the entrances to the tipping floor, basically rendering them pointless.

Then the retention calculations for a fire in the external yard has been based on using the full yard for the water run off, but they have planned using the watergate barriers to bund off a much smaller area of the yard meaning all of the calculations will be wrong.

Having come into this when the FPP is well under development before I joined the company it feels like no one has read the proposed document and it's actually just a cookie cutter FPP the consultant has used previously.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by Merlot »

Hi MSpurling,

finally got round to digging out the information regarding our barriers. Bear in mind that these are large scale barriers for erecting across relatively long distances (ours is in the region of 30meters) and I am not sure if they do smaller ones. Due to the long length, we would place concrete lego blocks behind it at intervals to prevent it moving if we were getting towards its limits of holding capacity.

They were originally designed as flood defense walls so searching for alternatives within flood defenses may yield alternatives that are more suitable for you.

Hope its ok posting a link to the website? I have no affiliation with them, simply bought product off them.

https://www.darcy.co.uk/product/spill-a ... -barriers/

Your right, FPP are the bane of our life. One of our current sites has had 8 revisions before it finally got approved. It seems that EA staff change posts regularly and when your nearly at the finishing line they move on and the new incumbent wants something completely different!

R
Merlot.
Last edited by Alexis on Wed Dec 02, 2020 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: No problem Merlot. It is in relation to the question. Thank you.
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Re: Fire Prevention Plan - Water-gate Barrier

Post by MSpurling »

Thanks Merlot!

The website shows them down to 10m which would potentially work for us.
Certainly look like they would work better than what is currently proposed.
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