User Manual

25
Siemens Switzerland Ltd
Building Technologies Division
3.2.3. Archives and storage vaults
Figure 11 Archives and storage vaults
Archives and storage vaults may house various different types
of object; depending on the building itself (e.g. documents,
manuscripts, works of art, archaeological finds, etc.). These
are risk areas that need to be especially well protected,
particularly from the danger of fire.
The high concentration of flammable and very valuable
artifacts implies that any incipient fire must be detected as
early as possible and effectively extinguished, without the
extinguishing agent used causing any further damage to the
objects stored in such rooms. As archives often consist of
multiple rooms, the fire protection infrastructure should also
ensure that a fire in one room cannot spread to an adjoining
room or to any other part of the building.
Aspirating smoke detection systems (ASD) are able to detect
even the smallest aerosol concentrations and offer the ideal
solution for fire detection in archives. An alarm from such a
system can be used to automatically activate a fixed
extinguishing system. Extremely good results have been
achieved by using a mixture of nitrogen together with a fine
water mist. The nitrogen effectively reduces the oxygen
content of the room atmosphere and extinguishes the fire.
The water mist provides additional cooling and eliminates any
danger of re-ignition, without causing damage to the stored
artifacts.
More detailed information regarding fire protection in
archives is given in the document “Fire protection in archives
and storage vaults”.
3.2.4. Restaurants and cafés
Figure 12 Restaurants and cafés
Many large historical buildings and museums provide
restaurant facilities for visitors and for special functions such
as weddings or conferences. These areas must be considered
as relatively critical zones, due to the variety of ignition
sources such as candles or cooking and frying at the table and
the number of guests in the room.
Depending on the room dimensions and the expected
deceptive phenomena smoke detectors or multi-sensor fire
detectors with a smoke/heat combination are recommended
for monitoring restaurant areas.
More detailed information regarding fire detection in
restaurants is given in the document “Fire detection in
restaurants”.