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Smoke Control – The Importance of Test Procedures By: Lui Tai, P.Eng., AIFireE
Introduction Recently, you have probably heard a lot about “smoke control”, and the requirement of the Fire Code to have these tested to a pre-defined procedure. For many Building Owners, it is just one more item they need to add to the annual inspection requirement by their service provider. However, how the contractor tests the smoke control (to what procedure) is unknown to most Building Owners. The Ontario Fire Code states that for smoke control, “the inspections and tests for equipment shall be carried out in accordance with procedures established by the designer of the system.”. “Where procedures are not available, smoke control systems shall be assessed to ensure satisfactory operation using techniques described in MAH Supplementary Standard SB-4, “Measures for Fire Safety in High Buildings””, and “The procedures shall bear the signature and seal of a Professional Engineer or Architect.” So what is a test procedure? Why is it so important? If contractors are testing the fans as part of their annual inspections, isn’t that good enough? In the last couple of years, when assisting building owners to navigate the smoke control maze at many high-rise buildings in Toronto - some of which were landmark facilities - we have witnessed the importance of establishing the right test procedure for smoke control. Not having the correct test procedure could result in catastrophic failures. I would like to
share my experience here to highlight the importance of having the right test procedure, as well as how critical it is to the life safety of a building.
that the manual control at the CACF for the automatic door operators did not do anything, so they marked it as “N/A” on the inspection report.
Case Study 1: Never-Connected Automatic Door Operators
Once we understood the situation, we systematically reviewed available documents, including mechanical drawings, and clearly saw that these automatic door operators were part of the original design. However, there was no written procedure or sequences of operations for smoke control. Through on-site investigation, we were able to establish the appropriate MAH SB-4 “measure” associated with the smoke control, but it meant that the automatic door operators had to be part of the smoke control measure.
At an approximately ten-year-old residential condominium, we were contacted by the condo board as they did not know the test procedure for smoke control for their building. The condo was served by an Inspection Order from the local Fire Services to have the smoke control measures tested, but their service provider simply carried out the test of the manual controls at the Central Alarm Control Facility (CACF), including fans and dampers. There were also manual controls at the CACF for the automatic door operators located at the top of below-grade stairwell doors, but the contractor noted
Canadian Fire Safety Association News | Spring 2022
During our on-site testing, we noted that the corresponding LEDs for door operators at the ON-AUTO-OFF switches at the CACF were operating
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