National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) members and authorities having jurisdiction are invited to participate in the discussion concerning the pros and cons of a proposed change for the 2018 revision of the 2015 edition of NFPA 101 Life Safety Code. (http://bit.ly/1vY2j9K) The issue is whether the allowable smoke compartment in hospitals should be increased from 22,500 square feet to 40,000 square feet. July 6, 2015, is the closing date for the receipt of public input.
According to Ron Cote, P.E., principal life safety engineer at the NFPA, NFPA members rejected the proposal at the technical reports session of the NFPA Conference & Expo in June and proponents for the change, including members of the Life Safety Technical Committee on Health Care Occupancies (SAF-HEA), health care facility engineers who are members of the American Society for Healthcare Engineering, and other health care industry practitioners and regulators, plan to revisit the issue as part of the revision cycle for the 2018 edition.
Cote explains that the premise for the increase in smoke compartment size for new construction remains viable. New hospitals in the United States are designed to the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities, which allot a greater amount of floor space to individual patients. The FGI Guidelines help ensure that a new smoke compartment of 40,000 square feet has an occupant load similar to that traditionally associated with a 22,500-square-foot smoke compartment so that additional patients will not be placed at risk of fire within the smoke compartment.
Further, Cote says, “Smoke compartment size will be prevented from becoming excessive because a current code requirement limits the travel distance to reach a door to another smoke compartment to 200 feet. To meet the travel limitation, any smoke compartment that approaches 40,000 square feet will need access to more than one adjacent smoke compartment. A smoke compartment of typical proportions situated at an end of a rectangular-shaped building, so that it accesses only one adjacent smoke compartment along its narrow dimension, might approach 30,000 square feet before exceeding the 200-foot travel limitation—in other words, the 40,000-square-foot compartment size might not be realized because of the travel limitation.”
Among the reasons the NFPA membership rejected the size change at the NFPA conference was that smoke compartments in existing hospitals not designed to the FGI Guidelines are limited to 22,500 square feet. NFPA 101 applies both to new construction and existing building arrangements. The NFPA says that any provision for increased smoke compartment size should allow for the same language to be used in Chapter 18 for new facilities and Chapter 19 for existing facilities, which “would seem to rule out any mandate for compliance with the FGI Guidelines, as they are applicable only to new construction.”
One option, according to the NFPA, would be to apply “a substitute criterion to new and existing facilities of a maximum patient load per smoke compartment.” In addition, the NFPA recommends that the SAF-HEA committee “work to codify criteria necessary to permit the increase in smoke compartment size to be offered to nursing homes.”
MARY JANE DITTMAR is senior associate editor of Fire Engineering and conference manager of FDIC. Before joining the magazine in January 1991, she served as editor of a trade magazine in the health/nutrition market and held various positions in the educational and medical advertising fields. She has a bachelor’ degree in English/journalism and a master’ degree in communication arts.
