Occupant Tenability in Single Family Homes: Part II: Impact of Door Control, Vertical Ventilation and Water Application

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes experimental investigations of fire service ventilation and suppression practices in full-scale residential structures, including a one-story, 112 m 2 , 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with 8 total rooms and a two-story 297 m 2 , 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house with 12 total rooms. The two-story house featured a modern open floor plan, two-story great room and open foyer. Seventeen experiments were conducted varying fire location, ventilation locations, the size of ventilation openings and suppression techniques. The experimental series was designed to examine the impact of several different tactics on tenability: door control, vertical ventilation size, and exterior suppression. The results of these experiments examine potential occupant and firefighter tenability and provide knowledge the fire service can use to examine their vertical ventilation and exterior suppression standard operating procedures and training content. It was observed that door control performed better at controlling the thermal exposure to occupants than did fully opening the door. Additionally, the impact of increased vertical ventilation area was minimal, and only slightly reduced the thermal exposure to occupants in a few non-fire rooms. In the two-story structure, the non-fire rooms on the second floor consistently had larger thermal fractional effective rate (FER) values (approximately 2.59 the thermal risk to oocupants) than did the non-fire rooms on the first floor. Water application was also shown to reduce the thermal risk to occupants 60 s after water application 1/3rd the original values on second floor rooms of the two-storry structure and by at least 1/5th of the original values on the first floor rooms of both structures. Data also showed that the impact of front door ventilation on the toxic gases exposure was minimal, as the toxic gases FER actually increased after front door ventilation for several experiments. However, after vertical ventilation there was a 30% reduction in the toxic gases exposure rate in two of the one-story structure experiments.

Occupant Tenability in Single Family Homes: Part I—Impact of Structure Type, Fire Location and Interior Doors Prior to Fire Department Arrival

“…This manuscript focuses on occupant exposures from the fire prior to ventilation and flashover did not occur in this timeframe (though flashover did occur after ventilation). Part II will analyze conditions after fire service ventilation [20]. Bedroom 1 in both houses was furnished with a queen bed comprised of a mattress, box spring, wood frame, two pillows and comforter.…”

Effect of Firefighting Intervention on Occupant Tenability during a Residential Fire

“…Each of these studies was focused on a specific fire service tactic and simulated those tactics in a controlled manner to examine the impact on the fire environment. In 2017, Traina et al [9] examined the impact of firefighter transitional attack on occupants during a series of vertical ventilation experiments. They concluded that transitional attack was able to reduce the thermal fractional effective rate (FER) by 1/5 in a ranch home geometry 60 s after water application.…”

Quantification of Elevated Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) Concentration Typical in a Residential Fire Environment Using Mid-IR Tunable Diode Laser

“…Similar conclusions about the effectiveness of a closed door have been arrived at in other experimental studies that have focused on concentrations of CO, CO 2 , O 2 , and water vapor. 1,[42][43][44] This work provides the first report of the effect of residential bedroom door position on HCN concentration. Together with CO, CO 2 , and O 2 concentration measurements, this new approach to quantify HCN concentration in live-fire experiments can provide a more complete understanding of the risks and possible protective measures for occupants trapped in residential fire environments.…”