On New Year’s Eve 2017 the fire within the multi-storey car park at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, reached over 1000C. 1,400 cars were destroyed and a year later it was decided that the structural damage to the building was to severe so the car park would be demolished.
Although it is estimated that over £20 million worth of damage was caused thankfully no lives were lost. The reason for such a devastating blaze; a car caught fire on the 3rd floor.
There is no doubt the fire risk posed by multi-storey and underground car parks. Even in the world of electric vehicles, the fire risk has reduced but not gone away. (London’s Fire Brigade alone were called to 102 electric vehicle fires in 2021)
Unlike many other risks within the building, car park areas cannot be reliably monitored for the early stages of fire by point type smoke detectors or smoke sampling systems due to the high incidence of unwanted alarms caused by vehicle exhaust emissions and moisture within car parks.
Signaline FT is used in the Trafalgar Street Car Park Brighton
Signaline Linear Heat Detection provides an excellent solution. The detection cable is not affected by the atmospheric conditions and can be installed so every car parking space is directly under the detection cable.
Benefits like this led to Signaline FT being selected for fire detection with the Trafalgar Street Car Park in Brighton.
More recently, and with the launch of the award winning Signaline FT-EN range in 2020 the EN54 part 28 product has been the product of choice.
The Signaline FT-EN Linear Heat Detection cables’ performance are not impacted by enviornmental conditions. Signaline FT-EN also incorporates an alarm point distance locator and integrated test switches to the End of Line unit.
The LocatorPlus-EN allows 2 zones of Signaline FT-EN to be installed, each upto 1km of cable. This allows large car parks to be covered using just a single controller. The controller also provides a Modbus output allowing the building operator to integrate the linear heat detection directly with the building management systems.
Signaline FT-EN is used extensively across Europe
The integrated test switches in the Signaline FT-EOL-EN also allow for two zones, thereby reducing product costs but also enable easy ongoing maintenance.
It was these attributes, amongst others, that has got Signaline FT-EN selected for use in various car park projects across Europe, including this one in the Netherlands.
LocatorPlus-EN can easily be monitored using addressable interfaces.
Integration with other systems is also simple given that the low power consumption of the Signaline FT-EN system means that the LocatorPlus-EN and linear heat detection can be powered directly off the loop when an addressable fire detection system is being used.
To learn more about how to use Signaline Linear Heat Detection in car parks please see our application page or download our application pdf here.
Alternatively, to speak to someone about using Signaline within a car park please call our sales department on +44 1252 725257 or email on sales@lgmproducts.com