033 - Science, theatre or engineering? Polish take on hot smoke test with Piotr Smardz and Janusz Paliszek

Fire Science Show

Have you ever heard about the hot smoke testing approach? If you had, there is a great chance you have not heard anything positive about it... From our experience, this method is often downplayed as useless, unrealistic and inconclusive. While to some extent you have to agree with the limitations, in Poland we have found a way how to turn this theatrical tool into a powerhouse of engineering. And this episode is all about this.

I have invited two FSE's - Janusz Paliszek and Piotr Smardz of company INBEPO who are experts in carrying hot smoke tests. Together, we try to debunk the myths around the method and showcase its true strength - the ability to quickly verify the global behaviour of the fire safety automation within the building.

If you are interested more about the hot smoke testing, you can reach Piotr at piotr@inbepo.pl or through his LinkedIn and Janusz at  janusz@inbepo.pl 

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2022-01-12 58 min Transcript

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00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:02.831
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello and welcome to the Fire Science Show.

00:00:02.862 --> 00:00:04.062
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Happy New Year, everybody.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Glad to be here with you in the new season of this podcast.

00:00:09.037 --> 00:00:10.867
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>hope your winter holidays went well.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Mine did, fueled with energy ideas and ready to kick some podcasts.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the topic of today's episode for me, myself is, a bomb or a fire at least.

00:00:20.797 --> 00:00:23.437
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that is the hot smoke testing method.

00:00:23.647 --> 00:00:26.108
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>if you follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn.

00:00:26.108 --> 00:00:30.687
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And you sometimes see, I post pictures with us doing fires in buildings.

00:00:30.687 --> 00:00:38.210
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, sometimes I show these on conferences and usually there are two reactions to people outside of Poland seeing this either.

00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:39.722
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's like, wow, what's that?

00:00:39.725 --> 00:00:41.435
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How do you make fires in buildings?

00:00:41.435 --> 00:00:42.454
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What do we make them for?

00:00:42.454 --> 00:00:44.884
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And people are just curious because they have never seen.

00:00:45.307 --> 00:00:48.997
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Or the second group is people who say, oh my God, hold smoke testing.

00:00:49.008 --> 00:00:50.747
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a ridiculous concept.

00:00:50.747 --> 00:00:51.378
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's stupid.

00:00:51.378 --> 00:00:54.497
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's nothing like a real fire Thats a theater.

00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:56.149
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, that's a mockery of engineering.

00:00:56.229 --> 00:01:00.043
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I rarely hear opinions like, wow, it's a great tool.

00:01:00.043 --> 00:01:00.853
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's so useful.

00:01:00.853 --> 00:01:05.676
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm glad that we were doing that, but when I'm in Poland and discussing here internally.

00:01:06.096 --> 00:01:07.192
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it's, it's completely different.

00:01:07.192 --> 00:01:08.903
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like everyone is happy with the method.

00:01:08.953 --> 00:01:10.313
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Everyone is using that.

00:01:10.313 --> 00:01:11.376
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it's so common.

00:01:11.796 --> 00:01:16.356
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would put split claim that every single large building in Poland undergoes through these tests.

00:01:16.665 --> 00:01:27.512
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think we figured it out in here, how to make the best use of that method, how to sacrifice some of the components that you think are necessary.

00:01:27.512 --> 00:01:30.281
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like the ability to determine.

00:01:30.850 --> 00:01:43.870
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>capacity of the ehxaust system is correct or not like you sacrifice this element and you gain so many options that allow you to test so many different things and smoke control, just being one tiny puzzle of the, building.

00:01:44.171 --> 00:01:47.521
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So to discuss this today, I've invited two my Polish friends.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Piotr Smardz and Janusz Paliszek from a Polish engineering company INBEPO.

00:01:52.671 --> 00:02:00.650
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They are charted fire experts in here and they're running a successful engineering company, probably my biggest competitor in terms of hot smoke testing.

00:02:00.650 --> 00:02:01.941
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's kind of funny.

00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:08.236
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We get together to sit down and discuss this method, but it's quite funny that we share the views on the method.

00:02:08.266 --> 00:02:11.206
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Actually, we didn't develop it a together.

00:02:11.627 --> 00:02:17.806
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Each of us went through their own path, how with, with this, and we actually reached the same conclusions.

00:02:17.806 --> 00:02:21.626
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then, we agreed briefly much on how, this can be used.

00:02:21.725 --> 00:02:22.217
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So yeah.

00:02:22.247 --> 00:02:33.431
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Please join me in this discussion on hot smoke tests are actually not that bad thing and how they can be used to, to gunnery safety in buildings.

00:02:33.550 --> 00:02:45.319
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because after all in Poland, it works, we have countless investors who pay us money for a test that is not required by law.

00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:46.789
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That is usually.

00:02:47.284 --> 00:02:57.034
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Annoying because it points to errors that, creates additional complexities and, actions to be taken at the very end of your construction of your building.

00:02:57.514 --> 00:03:06.389
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And yet they, they do ask for these tests and they're routinely performed because the gains from them are just so much bigger than the hassle.

00:03:06.389 --> 00:03:08.429
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This creates on the construction work.

00:03:08.968 --> 00:03:11.098
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Anyway, that's enough of an intro.

00:03:11.158 --> 00:03:12.028
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's let's go with.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello guys, welcome to Fire Science Show after the short Christmas break.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, welcome to the new year, and I'm happy to be here with you.

00:03:43.957 --> 00:03:51.487
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And today with me, two of my good friends Piotr Smardz and Janusz Paliszek of INBEPO Polish fire expert company.

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<v Piotr Smardz>Hello,

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<v Janusz Paliszek>hello to you and to others and happy new year.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>happy new year.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, so, we're here today to discuss an interesting aspect of fire engineering and to my best reflection.

00:04:05.082 --> 00:04:15.193
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's a very Polish thing actually in a way, and that is hot smoke tests and it's something that we hear love and the rest of the world hates  in a way.

00:04:15.763 --> 00:04:24.026
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, for me, it was always surprising, that this method that does not have that much love outside of Poland as it has in here.

00:04:24.776 --> 00:04:28.319
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But first I would love to ask you, , how it started for you guys.

00:04:28.324 --> 00:04:33.725
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>w when did you start doing hot smoke test and then what were your initial experiences in doing that?

00:04:33.872 --> 00:04:56.802
<v Piotr Smardz>When we first sort of became aware of hot smoke tests while still working in Ireland in the early two thousands, both Janusz and myself, we were actually working as fire safety consultants in Dublin, Ireland, and on one of the projects, actually on two projects, prison projects, interestingly that we were involved, such a hot smoke test were requested by the client and they were carried out.

00:04:57.192 --> 00:05:02.749
<v Piotr Smardz>And this was really the first chance for us to become familiar with, the methodology, with the concept.

00:05:03.028 --> 00:05:07.579
<v Piotr Smardz>It must be said that hot smoke test were not very common in Ireland at the time.

00:05:07.579 --> 00:05:07.939
<v Piotr Smardz>And they are.

00:05:07.939 --> 00:05:17.216
<v Piotr Smardz>In fact, not that common, still today, as you said yourself, in many countries outside Poland and maybe Australia, and a couple more hot smoke tests are not very common.

00:05:17.512 --> 00:05:24.471
<v Piotr Smardz>And then shortly afterwards, we moved back to Poland we actually realized that there will be a market hot smoke tests.

00:05:24.771 --> 00:05:26.961
<v Piotr Smardz>And we started purchasing the equipment.

00:05:26.961 --> 00:05:36.505
<v Piotr Smardz>And actually because of the time, there was a lot of, progress in Poland in small control designed in general, we could see that and there will be a market for subsistence.

00:05:36.536 --> 00:05:41.961
<v Piotr Smardz>We started doing them as did ITB around probably roughly the same time.

00:05:42.137 --> 00:05:50.257
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>From my perspective, it was similiar I joined ITB in 2010 and  my previous boss Grzegorz Sztarbala was already doing them , in Poland.

00:05:50.617 --> 00:06:12.934
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I've joined the team that was  already performing these types of activities, but also, in relation to smoke control, you mentioned that the smoke control was booming in Poland at the time, and it was it's true that it was around the time when we've introduced performance based engineering in Poland for smoke control, which I would assume had an impact on new technologies being used, for also verification of the systems that.

00:06:13.158 --> 00:06:20.254
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Now today I know that hot smoke test is not that much about smoke control or maybe not primarily about smoke controls.

00:06:20.495 --> 00:06:26.745
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When did you realize that these two goes beyond  the smoke control system capabilities?

00:06:26.745 --> 00:06:30.125
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That it's actually could be something more than just testing.

00:06:30.175 --> 00:06:30.595
<v Piotr Smardz>Yes.

00:06:30.595 --> 00:06:39.314
<v Piotr Smardz>I think it's fair to say that, when you just do, even if the first few tests may be in different buildings, we started with a shopping center, with a car park.

00:06:39.524 --> 00:06:47.391
<v Piotr Smardz>You realize that a lot of phenomenon that you sort of read them out in the handbooks of maybe smoke control design that you can actually see them.

00:06:47.692 --> 00:06:56.096
<v Piotr Smardz>I'm talking about things like, uh, like a spill plume, like distortion of a smoke layer by incoming air and so on and so forth.

00:06:56.096 --> 00:07:14.237
<v Piotr Smardz>So I think probably for both of us, it's fair to say that quite early  in doing the test, we realized that it's not only a tool to check something, but actually a very good tool to learn about things that, as you said yourself at the time, things like CFD simulations that were becoming more widely used in Poland.

00:07:14.237 --> 00:07:18.951
<v Piotr Smardz>So it was really a, you know, the two methods were complimenting one another point.

00:07:19.345 --> 00:07:27.562
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, in terms of how we are doing the hot smoke tests, I often, in the discussions, use the term, Polish methods.

00:07:27.591 --> 00:07:28.882
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I didn't coin that one.

00:07:28.882 --> 00:07:36.935
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was,  some people in, Graz conference in Austria who started calling this particular way of, of doing the hot smoke tested as the Polish method, which made me very happy.

00:07:37.324 --> 00:07:39.064
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I've picked a, the term.

00:07:39.334 --> 00:07:46.411
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, , maybe you can bring them listeners, on what the Polish what's, whether they is like,  what's the basics, how does it work?

00:07:47.062 --> 00:07:51.485
<v Janusz Paliszek>Actually, what I can say myself, I will, the Polish method they would call it much more.

00:07:51.774 --> 00:07:52.475
<v Janusz Paliszek>Australian

00:07:52.644 --> 00:07:53.454
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Australian method?

00:07:53.785 --> 00:07:57.295
<v Janusz Paliszek>was basically do the mythologies quite nicely.

00:07:57.295 --> 00:07:57.504
<v Janusz Paliszek>This.

00:07:58.545 --> 00:08:04.964
<v Janusz Paliszek>In Australia on standard 4391 from 1999.

00:08:05.562 --> 00:08:11.471
<v Janusz Paliszek>all the methodology is very nicely introduced in this standard.

00:08:11.841 --> 00:08:26.362
<v Janusz Paliszek>basically, we just adopted that method, I would say fully or nearly in all extent, what we do, we just burn in some traces, alcohol, which gives us a heat source.

00:08:26.843 --> 00:08:31.372
<v Janusz Paliszek>Although I have to admit that they are different types of the heat sources.

00:08:31.762 --> 00:08:39.923
<v Janusz Paliszek>They can be just gas burners or heaters, electrical heaters, or as I said, an alcohol.

00:08:40.432 --> 00:08:43.462
<v Janusz Paliszek>And also we use like, as a tracer.

00:08:43.980 --> 00:08:54.110
<v Janusz Paliszek>a white smoke, which is provided into the, smoke plume And, that's more or less how the methodology of the testing works.

00:08:54.500 --> 00:08:55.400
<v Janusz Paliszek>What we also do.

00:08:55.400 --> 00:09:18.153
<v Janusz Paliszek>We also record the, , entire tests, just videotaping it, just to have the evidence of the, outcome things and observation, because during the test, because usually the objects are quite large, it's not really possible to see every, uh, little happenings, taking place during the tests.

00:09:18.573 --> 00:09:19.833
<v Janusz Paliszek>We have to take measures.

00:09:19.833 --> 00:09:26.193
<v Janusz Paliszek>You read there is plenty of people doing so some people are just measuring the air flow velocity.

00:09:26.313 --> 00:09:34.458
<v Janusz Paliszek>Some people are just trying to take the notes about to the action we take place during the test, including how the fire grows.

00:09:34.458 --> 00:09:37.619
<v Janusz Paliszek>When we switch on the, , smoke generators.

00:09:37.619 --> 00:09:52.149
<v Janusz Paliszek>When we set up the fire, when the alarm starts, when the steering of the smoke control system starts and other systems like smoke detection or fire, the fire alarm system and so on and so forth.

00:09:52.509 --> 00:10:02.403
<v Janusz Paliszek>So in all together, this is quite complex things where we can just watch and witness and experience it the way which is close to the real fire.

00:10:02.403 --> 00:10:03.702
<v Janusz Paliszek>But it's not a real fire.

00:10:04.283 --> 00:10:11.879
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, I absolutely love the, that it took you 30 seconds to describe the smoke generation and the heat source.

00:10:12.208 --> 00:10:15.958
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then you went on and on about the things that happen during the test.

00:10:16.379 --> 00:10:22.499
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I find it is an amazing way to summarize what the hot smoke test is.

00:10:22.528 --> 00:10:25.828
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not about releasing the smoke in the building.

00:10:26.219 --> 00:10:28.589
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's about what happens in the building when you do that.

00:10:29.099 --> 00:10:32.288
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I think this is something that.

00:10:32.313 --> 00:10:58.673
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Makes the difference between the approach we are using it and how we are using and what for, we are using that in Poland compared to other countries in which they don't like it because it's theatrical, because it's, just an illustration of a fire someone is trying to prove that in a real fire, something will act in a certain way when we were not really reproducing a real fire or not, fire of a, of a full size.

00:10:59.191 --> 00:11:07.375
<v Piotr Smardz>One thing I wanted to add, I mean, you are very right this is not a real fire, but we still can have a relatively large, testifier in a building.

00:11:07.674 --> 00:11:15.148
<v Piotr Smardz>And what the Australian standard AS4291 puts a really stress on is that you need to do this safely.

00:11:15.357 --> 00:11:17.878
<v Piotr Smardz>So there is a number of actually of safeguards.

00:11:18.011 --> 00:11:22.537
<v Piotr Smardz>The, the metal trays are actually now, in water bath uh, there is a number of safeguards.

00:11:22.537 --> 00:11:26.557
<v Piotr Smardz>You need to ensure that they are in place in order to do this safely.

00:11:26.557 --> 00:11:33.876
<v Piotr Smardz>And there is the entire methodology in the test, helping you to, select the right fire size test fire size.

00:11:33.876 --> 00:11:38.692
<v Piotr Smardz>That will be large enough be as close to, the actual fire as can be.

00:11:38.783 --> 00:11:48.210
<v Piotr Smardz>But at the same time, that will not damage your, installations that are probably already in the building that will not activate the sprinklers because quite often you do this in a sprinkler building.

00:11:48.210 --> 00:11:51.509
<v Piotr Smardz>So while you are right, that this is, this is smaller.

00:11:51.509 --> 00:11:54.629
<v Piotr Smardz>And of course the test is not about just producing the smoke.

00:11:54.840 --> 00:12:04.090
<v Piotr Smardz>It is important to recognize that the  standard really gives you a methodology, how to do this safely, and in a controlled and repeatable manner.

00:12:04.596 --> 00:12:08.802
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>if I remember correctly, one day I was searching for the origins of the standard.

00:12:08.802 --> 00:12:16.394
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I have came upon a paper from some people from Melbourne fire brigade that was like 1995 or something.

00:12:16.394 --> 00:12:21.471
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And they were doing this methylated spirits experiments  , in a water stabilized, pool fires.

00:12:21.981 --> 00:12:28.142
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And this gave the origin to all these traces and fire sizes and everything that's in the standards.

00:12:28.142 --> 00:12:31.841
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I'd actually started with some pretty neat,, fire science in there.

00:12:32.302 --> 00:12:43.823
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In ITB, we're following that methodology or maybe we're doing it in a similar way as the Australian standard would describe it, or we use our own, fire sources.

00:12:44.033 --> 00:12:50.394
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like we've done the exercise myself and we've measured the heat release rates from our trays.

00:12:50.779 --> 00:12:56.667
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We don't water stabilize them because we use mixtures of alcohols that we know how they burn.

00:12:56.667 --> 00:12:59.476
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, we know how long they will burn what, temperatures we'll gonna get.

00:12:59.836 --> 00:13:12.850
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it, it was quite a bit of, , exercise from our site to, to engineer this, but it was necessary to simplify the test, you know, and cut off the, , additional, that make the test more complex and harder to set up.

00:13:12.879 --> 00:13:19.320
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because later in the talk, I guess I'll try to convince you that the, quick hot smoke test is better than the complex and the slow one.

00:13:19.693 --> 00:13:28.203
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But before we go there, I wanted to comment , on the different methodologies used around the world, because it's obviously not the only way to smoke your buildings up.

00:13:28.751 --> 00:13:56.504
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>From very simple things like using pyrotechnics in your building, like smoke flares and firework type materials, which I highly don't recommend because they are dangerous in terms of toxicology and, the smoke made by them is very persistent through, something I really love the Austrian,  tunnel hot smoke test methodology, where you literally put 20 liter,, gasoline, 40 liter diesel in the two square meter pan you set it on fire and it is a real fire.

00:13:56.865 --> 00:13:59.384
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that's that, that one is, is absolutely crazy.

00:13:59.715 --> 00:14:04.549
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Up I have to very, complex tools used to generate smoke in buildings.

00:14:04.549 --> 00:14:18.789
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't know if you've ever seen that, but there are people that I know in Spain to develop, the machine to generate smoke, which incorporates both the heater and the smoke generators in inside, and does actually quite, quite a crazy concept that you have it on one cart.

00:14:18.789 --> 00:14:24.889
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that's probably the pinnacle of how mobile the method can and can get so-so.

00:14:24.909 --> 00:14:33.899
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There are , many ways of putting your smoke into the building For me, myself,  important aspect is that we have a buoyant plume of smoke.

00:14:34.379 --> 00:14:40.840
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So  we see these layered behavior of smoke that is more or less representing the physics of a real fire.

00:14:41.740 --> 00:14:43.090
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the other thing is that.

00:14:43.798 --> 00:14:51.089
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Activate many things at the same time, like we don't discuss this as a global test of building, not the local test of a single sensor.

00:14:51.389 --> 00:14:53.879
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And for me, that's the groundbreaking thing about it.

00:14:54.509 --> 00:15:01.769
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But the true question is, does it have to be a real fire to be useful in a building to be a valuable thing to do in your building?

00:15:01.769 --> 00:15:02.969
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Does it have to be a real fire?

00:15:03.624 --> 00:15:08.683
<v Janusz Paliszek>Well, you know, , I can say that the best option would be if the fire  would be a real fire.

00:15:09.214 --> 00:15:17.606
<v Janusz Paliszek>Unfortunately we are not really able to, witness the fires and experience the fires the same way as the firefighters.

00:15:18.057 --> 00:15:21.533
<v Janusz Paliszek>That's the only people who have the real connection with.

00:15:22.297 --> 00:15:26.157
<v Janusz Paliszek>As we are fire safety engineers, we need to use tools.

00:15:26.557 --> 00:15:30.006
<v Janusz Paliszek>And for ourself, the hot smoke test is just a tool.

00:15:30.697 --> 00:15:34.573
<v Janusz Paliszek>It's tool, which replicates the possibility of the fire.

00:15:34.994 --> 00:15:42.724
<v Janusz Paliszek>So my answer is, we not really providing the conditions as actually the same as during a real fire situation.

00:15:43.234 --> 00:15:51.634
<v Janusz Paliszek>Mostly this is related to the thing which Peter already said before, which is related to the possible damage to the object.

00:15:52.024 --> 00:16:01.136
<v Janusz Paliszek>Obviously it's possible physically to create a large fire, but the question is, if we are going to have this large test fire under control.

00:16:01.662 --> 00:16:03.042
<v Janusz Paliszek>That's the first question.

00:16:03.131 --> 00:16:05.022
<v Janusz Paliszek>And I would guess not really.

00:16:05.532 --> 00:16:15.131
<v Janusz Paliszek>And the second question, which is just a consequence of the first answer is what's the damage are we going to make to the building itself?

00:16:15.642 --> 00:16:38.741
<v Janusz Paliszek>We have to always say that basically the time when we get into the object to provide the tests, it's under the latest stage of the construction, just right at the hand over not always the building is fully ready to be open, but at the same time, all the systems should be working correctly.

00:16:39.201 --> 00:16:49.011
<v Piotr Smardz>One thing I would add to that is that UK people sometimes say that, okay, this is not the real fire because you might design fire is five or 10 or whatever megawatt.

00:16:49.662 --> 00:16:50.072
<v Track 2>Yeah.

00:16:50.197 --> 00:16:55.567
<v Piotr Smardz>I don't know, maybe  think that really misses the point on sort of two accounts.

00:16:55.897 --> 00:17:00.767
<v Piotr Smardz>First of all, as Janusz said, it's just not practical to have the real fire in the building.

00:17:01.067 --> 00:17:05.817
<v Piotr Smardz>And also, we sometimes miss the fact that we assume fires could be growing fires.

00:17:06.656 --> 00:17:10.156
<v Piotr Smardz>Like very often this concept of t-squared fire , is adopted.

00:17:10.336 --> 00:17:15.707
<v Piotr Smardz>We recognize the fact that fire is small at the beginning, and then it grows the heat output grows and so on.

00:17:16.096 --> 00:17:30.773
<v Piotr Smardz>So we must realize that this fire size that typically can be used in a hot smoke test say may be between 300 kilowatt and maybe one megawatt,   that is not really far off the fire size that you will on average have in the first few minutes.

00:17:30.834 --> 00:17:42.574
<v Piotr Smardz>And the first few minutes is actually the time when people evacuate and at least in the Polish regulatory framework, that's the time that you, for example, For your, evacuation conditions.

00:17:42.753 --> 00:17:51.273
<v Piotr Smardz>So I would actually argue that, although, okay, we will not even get close to the maximum heat output that we designed the system for.

00:17:51.544 --> 00:18:09.221
<v Piotr Smardz>In fact, we will not be that far off and certainly what we are producing with this hot or say warm smoke is much closer to reality because it's a buoyant, , smoke layer compared to a situation where you just introduce what is called cold smoke test, where introduce smoke.

00:18:10.300 --> 00:18:15.520
<v Piotr Smardz>That is just feeding the space with smoke but bears, no resemblance , to actual fire.

00:18:15.530 --> 00:18:25.544
<v Piotr Smardz>So I think hot smoke test methodology is much, much closer a real fire, although it must be admitted that it's not the fire size we normally design

00:18:25.887 --> 00:18:28.077
<v Janusz Paliszek>If I can just add something else, it's basically.

00:18:28.782 --> 00:18:54.818
<v Janusz Paliszek>Maybe we do not replicate the real fire, but at the same time, we can be close to the design fire, including the growing part, like having couple of cases with the fuel or heat sources we can switch on one by one, all the heat sources, just trying to replicate the fire growth to the size, which is obviously for the test itself.

00:18:55.179 --> 00:19:07.239
<v Janusz Paliszek>So we can observe, and we can,  analyze the situation in a real building as during the design stage, when for example, somebody is doing CFD.

00:19:08.048 --> 00:19:10.659
<v Janusz Paliszek>So basically what is very important.

00:19:10.689 --> 00:19:14.288
<v Janusz Paliszek>This is quite a good CFD verification tool.

00:19:14.702 --> 00:19:16.542
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I liked how you framed it.

00:19:17.365 --> 00:19:21.756
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Interesting part from the life safety perspective, which is the growing phase of the fire.

00:19:21.756 --> 00:19:24.776
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It may be not such a bad representation.

00:19:24.776 --> 00:19:32.665
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And you've also mentioned sprinklered buildings in which you would guess that at some point, the sprinkler gains the control over the fire size.

00:19:32.846 --> 00:19:35.155
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So assume it may actually be quite close to that.

00:19:35.486 --> 00:19:40.368
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Obviously we don't simulate cooling effects of the sprinklers unless you trigger them.

00:19:40.778 --> 00:19:46.388
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We've actually did that twice and unfortunately, , out of, more than a thousand tests.

00:19:46.388 --> 00:19:52.648
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's not a, not a horrible outcome statistics for you, but yeah  twice we've witnessed a wet smoke test.

00:19:53.227 --> 00:20:07.513
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I asked you the question,, about the realness of the fire, because, looking through the literature or even the reviewing papers recently, I see people trying to justify the design of smoke control system with a hot smoke test.

00:20:07.864 --> 00:20:15.310
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>People claim that, okay, this particular system has worked well with this particular size of a hot smoke test.

00:20:15.641 --> 00:20:17.800
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the design is valid.

00:20:18.461 --> 00:20:21.580
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, for me, I don't like this approach.

00:20:22.151 --> 00:20:34.201
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, I've also know about approaches where people try to measure like temperature profile along the height of the building, or try to do some very complex measurements of flows and other things and justify, okay.

00:20:34.201 --> 00:20:39.570
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In my hot smoke test, I have achieved this height of smoke layer.

00:20:39.901 --> 00:20:49.594
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if a real fire had like 10 megawatts, the layer height would be at this size based on fundamental, like Froude number, uh, calculations or just, by an experience.

00:20:49.894 --> 00:20:59.344
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>For me, at the one hand, it may be where the hot smoke test is originated from, because if you go back to work of  de Smedt and Morgan, they've used it in this way, but for me it kills the purpose.

00:20:59.344 --> 00:21:16.757
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I am personally completely happy giving up the capability of verifying if smoke control capacity is good or not, because I've already done that with CFD or someone else has done that with CFD and focus on other things rather than make my hot smoke test extremely complex.

00:21:17.027 --> 00:21:19.967
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And try to prove that, that this efficiency is good.

00:21:20.291 --> 00:21:38.419
<v Piotr Smardz>I must say that we have not come across such a demand say from our clients or maybe from the authority from the fire brigade witnessing the test, but we are aware of that discussion, as you said, especially in the UK and the paper Howard Morgan and, , Jean-Claude de Smedt published sort of suggesting this methodology.

00:21:38.568 --> 00:21:41.078
<v Piotr Smardz>I must say that  I would agree with what you just said.

00:21:41.078 --> 00:21:53.654
<v Piotr Smardz>I mean, we must, and we are trying to explain this to people that the hot smoke test is not really a verification of the overall efficiency and the fact that the system is sufficiently sized.

00:21:53.654 --> 00:21:53.924
<v Piotr Smardz>Okay.

00:21:53.924 --> 00:22:02.984
<v Piotr Smardz>Because we knew that the capability of the system is sufficient because at the end of the day, we'll probably be an order of magnitude below what the design fire is.

00:22:02.984 --> 00:22:08.598
<v Piotr Smardz>I mean, just to give you an idea, you would design this for maybe depending on the situation.

00:22:08.598 --> 00:22:11.959
<v Piotr Smardz>Say between four let's say and 10 megawatt, roughly speaking.

00:22:11.959 --> 00:22:12.469
<v Piotr Smardz>Okay.

00:22:12.769 --> 00:22:25.838
<v Piotr Smardz>The test in a typical car park, especially with sprinklers, you will normally be limited to a maximum of maybe below 500, like one large tray would be 340 kilowats So that's 10 times less than the design fire.

00:22:25.838 --> 00:22:34.798
<v Piotr Smardz>So we are not claiming that this is the real fire, but the fact that we introduced a large amount of smoke that this smoke may be can migrate to adjacent smoke zone.

00:22:35.009 --> 00:22:46.991
<v Piotr Smardz>We will be able to, for example, if the system is incorrect program, we will be able to demonstrate that because maybe we will activate the smoke extract in adjacent zone where it was not intended to.

00:22:46.991 --> 00:22:52.271
<v Piotr Smardz>So  I think it's fair to say that we are not in any way, trying to prove that the system works.

00:22:52.271 --> 00:23:01.497
<v Piotr Smardz>As you said, this is done typically by you either hand calculation or a CFD in case of a say car park it would more typically be a CFD model.

00:23:01.856 --> 00:23:25.287
<v Piotr Smardz>But what also Janusz mentioned is that you can validate that model to some extent, obviously not comparing your design simulation with your hot smoke test, but if you, in the same computer model, if you introduce a smaller fire, which is representative of what you did in the hot smoke test, and you get similar results, they will be different from your original simulation.

00:23:25.406 --> 00:23:31.926
<v Piotr Smardz>But if you compare them with the results of the hot smoke test, that will be a nice, validation of what you have done in the modeling.

00:23:31.926 --> 00:23:33.936
<v Piotr Smardz>So that's the way we would look at it.

00:23:34.505 --> 00:23:45.484
<v Janusz Paliszek>We believe that hot smoke test is a very nice verification tool for the analysis and design of the smoke control system.

00:23:46.061 --> 00:23:51.454
<v Janusz Paliszek>ways the hot smoke test takes priority in terms of the results, rather than.

00:23:52.204 --> 00:24:08.015
<v Janusz Paliszek>CFD analysis or the design itself, because it happens in the real building with, we would say real environmental conditions, not exactly with the size of the fire, of course, but it happens in the real life.

00:24:08.015 --> 00:24:14.565
<v Janusz Paliszek>So whatever happens in the real , life is more realistic that whatever happens in the virtual reality.

00:24:14.958 --> 00:24:20.768
<v Piotr Smardz>Well, in the sense that you're  assuming to not include problems with programming of the system,

00:24:21.683 --> 00:24:31.391
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think we have the biggest difference in actually in tunnels and in ITB we had tunnels just recently in Warsaw which was designed for a hundred megawatt fire and okay.

00:24:31.391 --> 00:24:34.721
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We could go crazy with our hot smoke test because we've done like two megawatts in it.

00:24:35.137 --> 00:24:40.488
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it was, it was scary that the fire was like four meters tall and it was like,, yeah, it was a big fire.

00:24:40.488 --> 00:24:41.748
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I wouldn't didn't do that in the car park.

00:24:41.748 --> 00:24:44.718
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would not, I would not recommend that in the car park.

00:24:44.748 --> 00:24:50.298
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>However, I know that in Singapore, they actually do that large fires in car parks and I admire them.

00:24:50.347 --> 00:24:53.048
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would love to be invited to one of them to witness that.

00:24:53.548 --> 00:24:55.748
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>However, in the tunnel we do two megawatts.

00:24:55.778 --> 00:25:02.268
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You designed for a hundred megawatts and you usually focus on concepts like backlayering or just general, where the smoke will go in.

00:25:03.198 --> 00:25:09.317
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And there is absolutely no way you can compare two megawatt, fire to a hundred megawatt fire that is completely different physics.

00:25:09.617 --> 00:25:25.615
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it's not only a negative physics and it's kind of funny, but sometimes with a bigger fire, the system would have a better performance because,, you would exhaust more volume of the air because your exhaust has constant mass exhausts rate.

00:25:26.096 --> 00:25:28.405
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The smoke cools down as it flows through the channel.

00:25:28.885 --> 00:25:35.486
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So sometimes there's the systems in tunnels at the inlets, they have higher capacity at high temperature than they have in low temperature.

00:25:35.786 --> 00:25:38.066
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The chimney effect will be completely different.

00:25:38.435 --> 00:25:46.615
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, The way how smoke will, , block the airflow because in tunnels, the air coming from both sides of the tunnel is the most difficult thing to manage.

00:25:47.006 --> 00:25:49.076
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the huge fire is a block for that air.

00:25:49.286 --> 00:25:50.905
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it makes controlling that easier.

00:25:51.205 --> 00:25:55.494
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like it's completely different physics than you would have in a small hot smoke test.

00:25:55.505 --> 00:26:00.944
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And yet, you, you can test a lot of things, but you cannot really prove the physics is correct.

00:26:01.515 --> 00:26:15.775
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I assume it would be same in shopping malls where you have spill plumes and the physics will be completely different in the large fire, like in large open plan buildings where you have very tall, buoyant plumes and the physics will be different.

00:26:15.775 --> 00:26:21.560
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, , catching the real behavior of the fire , is not always possible, but also not always necessary.

00:26:21.951 --> 00:26:24.690
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So coming back to the bullseye, you've hit with the programming.

00:26:24.711 --> 00:26:31.656
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When I was doing a hot smoke test, when I was learning hot smoke tests, I have, learned the immense amount of ways.

00:26:31.656 --> 00:26:33.547
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You can screw up a system in the building.

00:26:33.946 --> 00:26:38.925
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You know, you can make so many things go wrong in a ways a normal fire engineer.

00:26:38.981 --> 00:26:42.180
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>would never expect, we assume that things work in the building.

00:26:42.180 --> 00:26:47.628
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When I design smoke control system, I assume that the smoke detection system will be working and we'll pick up the fire.

00:26:47.898 --> 00:26:48.229
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah.

00:26:48.709 --> 00:26:55.316
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If I, uh, have compartmentation in my car park, I assume that, the gate closing them when close.

00:26:55.316 --> 00:26:55.675
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Right.

00:26:56.155 --> 00:26:58.226
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And these are the things I don't even think about.

00:26:58.256 --> 00:26:59.516
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I just assume they work.

00:27:00.056 --> 00:27:03.622
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And yet in the buildings, they often don't like, I don't know.

00:27:03.832 --> 00:27:08.182
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Do you guys make a statistic of how many times something went wrong in the hot smoke test?

00:27:08.541 --> 00:27:12.561
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We used to do that in ITB and we were after a few hundred tests.

00:27:12.561 --> 00:27:16.342
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We were like at 80% non-working, which was a horrible statistic.

00:27:16.342 --> 00:27:17.031
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And we've stopped.

00:27:17.632 --> 00:27:17.961
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't know.

00:27:17.961 --> 00:27:21.432
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What's your experience with automation in the building failing in a way.

00:27:21.976 --> 00:27:40.811
<v Piotr Smardz>Well, we do not sort of keep track on it and we do not calculate and statistics, but we would agree, especially, I mean, we see this often in practical terms on building sites that are just about to become operational buildings, that there is this push from the contractor to get you on board as early as possible.

00:27:40.842 --> 00:27:46.271
<v Piotr Smardz>But you end up going to a building, which is really not ready for this test to be quite honest.

00:27:46.481 --> 00:27:50.561
<v Piotr Smardz>So it very often happens in our case that we do this sort of preliminary.

00:27:51.211 --> 00:28:05.791
<v Piotr Smardz>It turns out that somethings I've done incorrectly that maybe this or about this program incorrect you're installed incorrectly and we ended up coming there again and doing the actual test , that ends up  in the documentation as the official test that was carried out.

00:28:05.842 --> 00:28:11.811
<v Piotr Smardz>but yes, I mean, very often, it's funny because theoretic, you go to a building that the systems were already checked.

00:28:11.811 --> 00:28:13.842
<v Piotr Smardz>Someone may went anemometer.

00:28:14.138 --> 00:28:18.828
<v Piotr Smardz>Someone wants supposed to anyway you to go and check the air flow through the extract.

00:28:18.878 --> 00:28:24.308
<v Piotr Smardz>, grill is such and such that the incoming air is in fact in coming and so on and so forth.

00:28:24.548 --> 00:28:29.378
<v Piotr Smardz>But you end up seeing in the test that there is maybe no air flow or worse steel.

00:28:29.439 --> 00:28:35.108
<v Piotr Smardz>Someone measured that there is an air flow, but just in this particular fire scenario, it should be the other way around.

00:28:35.108 --> 00:28:47.298
<v Piotr Smardz>Because as you know, in reversible systems, very often in one's fire scenario, particular point will be an inlet for fresh air, but in other situation, in other fires scenario, that will be an extract point.

00:28:47.298 --> 00:29:18.942
<v Piotr Smardz>So that is really what you can see quite clearly  in the tests, Also why things like excessive velocity, for example, of replacement air inlet again, that is something that you see,  quite often that is more, probably a design problem rather than installation problem, but that's something I think is one of the biggest points  in the correct, placement and size and, operation of, replacement air inlets is probably a bigger problem that incorrect placement, of extraction points.

00:29:18.951 --> 00:29:19.932
<v Piotr Smardz>I would argue.

00:29:20.592 --> 00:29:21.311
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Absolutely.

00:29:21.750 --> 00:29:22.308
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Absolutely that.

00:29:22.659 --> 00:29:26.071
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Coming back to the automation, people, thats my opinion.

00:29:26.311 --> 00:29:30.061
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>People don't really appreciate the complexity of fire systems in large buildings.

00:29:30.451 --> 00:29:40.794
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you have an airport or a shopping mall, like a really large complex, multi-functional building the smoke automation systems inside crazy complex.

00:29:41.153 --> 00:29:43.953
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We are talking about thousands of sensors.

00:29:44.394 --> 00:29:46.134
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Each of them has an address.

00:29:46.163 --> 00:29:49.523
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Each of them is designed to a certain zone in the building.

00:29:49.554 --> 00:29:51.344
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Each of them has to be working.

00:29:51.344 --> 00:29:52.784
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It has to not be in a failure mode.

00:29:53.064 --> 00:29:58.277
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it has to actually, be giving the correct alarm when it's triggered.

00:29:58.807 --> 00:30:07.520
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You have countless, countless dampers on your ducts, which have to close or open accordingly in every scenario.

00:30:07.881 --> 00:30:08.391
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And.

00:30:09.125 --> 00:30:26.715
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In many scenarios, it will be completely different operation like you mentioned one, one scenario, you're exhausting air through a duct, another scenario you're pushing the air to the duct inone scenario you want this damper closed in other, you want this damper open and you have hundreds of dampers to program in your building.

00:30:27.105 --> 00:30:28.695
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it takes a single human error.

00:30:28.695 --> 00:30:32.195
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You know, that, , this inlet was supposed to be close, but it's open.

00:30:32.435 --> 00:30:43.586
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And suddenly the system behaves completely different   in a fire in the hot smoke test that's then you would expect it to be, , the same thing goes with, the direction of the, fans.

00:30:43.586 --> 00:30:53.878
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And especially in terms of jet fans, I mean, the listeners, it may sound hilarious to you that someone can program a fan incorrectly that goes to the wrong way.

00:30:54.239 --> 00:30:57.662
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But trust me this happens more often than you would think.

00:30:57.692 --> 00:30:58.142
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And.

00:30:58.832 --> 00:31:06.731
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In, in hot smoke test, it takes one hot smoke test to figure it out,  the direction of all the fans and their combined effort in, in a car park.

00:31:07.172 --> 00:31:11.442
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it really makes like checking these errors very easy.

00:31:11.501 --> 00:31:25.082
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Whereas if you wanted to do it hand by hand device by device it's usually very labor consuming and Piotr you've mentioned , the air, inlet air, this, I would like, like you said, it's more design thing.

00:31:25.082 --> 00:31:33.001
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would put it into physics, not automation, because usually that areas let's say there is coming through where we've expected it to be coming from.

00:31:33.092 --> 00:31:40.455
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>However, commonly the velocity of the air is much higher than would be.

00:31:41.506 --> 00:31:45.496
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I didn't know why it is designed like that.

00:31:45.496 --> 00:31:51.266
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't think there is a good unified guideline of what the velocity would be, or maybe the guidance exists.

00:31:51.266 --> 00:31:56.806
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And they say it's one meter per second, which no one likes because it leads to a huge, huge openings in your walls.

00:31:57.135 --> 00:32:01.618
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But truly that is something that you can observe a lot in hot smoke test.

00:32:01.949 --> 00:32:19.925
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Whenever you have an inlet with like 3, 4, 5 meters per second, airflow velocity, and you place your hot smoke test anywhere near that, you see extreme mixing of smoke, which should have been buoyant and should flow up into the ceiling, but it's not flowing up because it's being captured by the inflowing air.

00:32:19.965 --> 00:32:22.445
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then suddenly your whole room is in smoke.

00:32:22.828 --> 00:32:28.128
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, we've observed that in the so many buildings and in so many buildings, it was the, the main issue with the systems.

00:32:28.368 --> 00:32:34.699
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in fact, the designer I'm not even sure if it was design error, like probably okay.

00:32:34.699 --> 00:32:40.201
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you done a CFD better, maybe if you were more conservative with the assumptions, you would, do it better.

00:32:40.826 --> 00:32:43.615
<v Piotr Smardz>that's something we're dealing with Janusz, really a lot.

00:32:44.257 --> 00:32:51.041
<v Piotr Smardz>you just realized doing hot smoke test, how profound effect on the smoke plume, the incoming air can have.

00:32:51.102 --> 00:32:59.922
<v Piotr Smardz>And if you, it's not only that you should have sufficient size of the, of the inlet so that the velocity is relatively low.

00:33:00.221 --> 00:33:04.571
<v Piotr Smardz>And in Poland, that is, there is a lot of confusion about, you know, what is the right value.

00:33:04.571 --> 00:33:20.801
<v Piotr Smardz>Some people claim that five meters per second, this is great because that figure, as you know, is in the UK, design guideline documents and so on, but that's really just referring to velocity that is not obstructing people in crossing,, maybe a doorway or a gate.

00:33:21.261 --> 00:33:28.576
<v Piotr Smardz>If you introduce air at five meters per second, close to the fire or close to the small plume, you will completely distorted.

00:33:28.576 --> 00:33:51.718
<v Piotr Smardz>And in fact, I think it's fair to say that we have seen buildings where the situation in terms of smoke logging was better before starting the smoke ventilation system then after, so you can really distort and you can really completely damaged this flow of smoke under the ceiling  in the spill plume  in the axisymmetric plume if you have excessive air.

00:33:51.768 --> 00:33:53.928
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, it's in the CFD.

00:33:53.928 --> 00:34:01.760
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You may not appreciate that, that much, because as I mentioned before, you have high, , heat release rate of your smoke plume so maybe the buoyancy is larger.

00:34:02.030 --> 00:34:04.250
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe it's a little tougher to distort the plume.

00:34:04.790 --> 00:34:11.010
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, it's also not that dramatic as when you are in the compartment, that's filling with smoke and it's obvious it's wrong.

00:34:11.460 --> 00:34:13.981
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It really strikes you when you see that in a hot smoke test.

00:34:13.981 --> 00:34:19.141
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it's one of the things that we find most commonly during the, the hot smoke test.

00:34:19.820 --> 00:34:21.963
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The other thing that we find very common.

00:34:22.733 --> 00:34:36.958
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And for me, this is probably the most horrifying in fact, aspect of fire automation in buildings is like, there is this assumption  that there will be one fire in the building at a time, like that's the golden rule.

00:34:37.237 --> 00:34:39.907
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We designed for a single threat in the building at the time.

00:34:40.014 --> 00:34:59.467
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if my fire is detected in a fire compartment that I'm in, or let's say a zone of the building that I'm in, and then the smoke migrates outside of the zone, then the system should ignore that new information and should just keep removing the smoke from where it has started.

00:35:00.097 --> 00:35:06.460
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then in many buildings, I don't know the reason why, but we had situations in which the.

00:35:06.795 --> 00:35:15.170
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Secondary detection in another compartment has caused stop of the systems in the one we were burning in and started the systems in the neighboring compartment.

00:35:15.650 --> 00:35:18.260
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then the fire moved to another one, the smoke move to another one.

00:35:18.530 --> 00:35:20.150
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the same thing happened again and again.

00:35:20.391 --> 00:35:35.704
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the system was operating in a remote area of the building when they should have been operating in the area where we were doing the hot smoke test and why this is so dramatic, because this is actually a fault that could lead to a loss of life.

00:35:36.393 --> 00:35:51.847
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You stopped protecting the area where you have the fire and you start the systems in a different area and you actually create additional threat in the area where you were before, because suddenly, maybe you will start putting air inside that area because in the other scenario would access it as an inlet.

00:35:52.418 --> 00:35:55.068
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I would think it's in a very exotic.

00:35:55.264 --> 00:36:00.690
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Things to happen, but no, actually I've seen it on multiple buildings, like more than a dozen.

00:36:01.010 --> 00:36:06.150
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And some of them were like really, important buildings or critical buildings you may say.

00:36:06.360 --> 00:36:08.460
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you would assume no one would have done that mistake.

00:36:09.181 --> 00:36:12.960
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I don't know where the mistake came from was the automation people.

00:36:13.231 --> 00:36:14.760
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't think it was the designer's mistake.

00:36:14.791 --> 00:36:18.630
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think it was the mistake in how the system was executed in the building.

00:36:19.141 --> 00:36:23.621
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But this is something that you would have never, ever captured.

00:36:23.951 --> 00:36:34.871
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you are going a smoke sensor after a smoke sensor with a little, stick with a smoke can in your hands, like triggering a sensor after a sensor, one by one, you would never capture that.

00:36:34.900 --> 00:36:39.951
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You need to fill the building with smoke to observe such effects and for me, this was the.

00:36:40.851 --> 00:36:45.201
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Most horrifying experience I've had during hot smoke tests like this really good.

00:36:45.320 --> 00:36:47.331
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If this happened in real fire, it could take lives.

00:36:47.471 --> 00:36:54.670
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Did you guys come against such a big mistakes in the system automation that, , that were critical for the building during the hot smoke test?

00:36:55.190 --> 00:36:55.811
<v Janusz Paliszek>Yes, of course.

00:36:55.990 --> 00:36:56.360
<v Janusz Paliszek>I have to.

00:36:56.411 --> 00:36:57.130
<v Janusz Paliszek>I agree with you.

00:36:57.141 --> 00:36:59.523
<v Janusz Paliszek>I also disagree with one thing.

00:36:59.594 --> 00:37:02.554
<v Janusz Paliszek>You've heard that you don't really understand how it happens.

00:37:02.764 --> 00:37:03.724
<v Janusz Paliszek>We understood.

00:37:04.173 --> 00:37:12.159
<v Janusz Paliszek>Basically talking to the people who were responsible for putting the fire matrix into working stage.

00:37:12.579 --> 00:37:14.079
<v Janusz Paliszek>For them is very easy.

00:37:14.108 --> 00:37:25.389
<v Janusz Paliszek>When they look out the fire Metrix, they matrix if the detection is in this area, this happens if the detection is in the other area, another scenario happens.

00:37:25.838 --> 00:37:37.628
<v Janusz Paliszek>So what happens is basically they do not understand the simple principle, which you said very early before that we assume that there is only one fire location.

00:37:37.628 --> 00:37:55.833
<v Janusz Paliszek>We know this as the fire safety engineers, but it appears that due to the lack of sharing that knowledge in much more wide area, the people, for example, responsible for the fire matrix and fire control, they do not really know that basic.

00:37:56.523 --> 00:38:00.302
<v Janusz Paliszek>What happens is basically the situation when the fire.

00:38:00.992 --> 00:38:09.932
<v Janusz Paliszek>Or a small control zone starts one after the other and after the other someone and so forth, we had this experience ourselves.

00:38:10.353 --> 00:38:29.076
<v Janusz Paliszek>Once we were doing the first, hot smoke test in one of the shopping centers, quite large, which was incorporating two mechanical smoke control zones, both being designed for 400,000 cubic meters per hour.

00:38:29.576 --> 00:38:45.914
<v Janusz Paliszek>Due to the smoke migration from one zone to the other, this smoke extraction started in the adjacent a smoke control zone doubling up to 800,000 cubic meters per hour.

00:38:46.371 --> 00:38:47.373
<v Janusz Paliszek>extract volume.

00:38:48.063 --> 00:38:49.563
<v Janusz Paliszek>What, what does it mean?

00:38:49.726 --> 00:39:13.597
<v Janusz Paliszek>You have exactly the same inlets, which you were talking about that usually are, there are more now, if you multiply those already crazy velocities, but twice you get even more difficult conditions inside what happens was we had basically a fog, a foggy place, although the extraction volume was huge, but it couldn't work sufficient.

00:39:14.257 --> 00:39:31.304
<v Janusz Paliszek>I also would like to talk about this, what you said before, in terms of the hot smoke  test fire size, basically, there is a plenty of spaces, which you can prove that the smoke control system is designed for some minimum size of the fire.

00:39:31.724 --> 00:39:40.568
<v Janusz Paliszek>If the fire is smaller than some amount of the energy, which is provided to the volume, this, the smoke control system doesn't work.

00:39:41.048 --> 00:39:54.059
<v Janusz Paliszek>And how, how can you observe this as a foggy space  and sometimes even the mechanical ventilation system doesn't help . So I would say that, yes, we went across it.

00:39:54.239 --> 00:39:55.619
<v Janusz Paliszek>We know the answer.

00:39:55.768 --> 00:40:02.608
<v Janusz Paliszek>There is no full cooperation between all the design members, including the MNE people.

00:40:02.608 --> 00:40:20.056
<v Janusz Paliszek>who usually incorporates guys responsible for providing the fire matrix but I would say the guys being on the contractor size, they usually have no connection with fire safety engineers.

00:40:20.206 --> 00:40:24.137
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You've mentioned education and that they don't know that.

00:40:24.586 --> 00:40:27.766
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And actually that's a funny consequence of hot smoke test.

00:40:28.217 --> 00:40:33.637
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This errors are so striking, so obvious during your hot smoke tests, you cannot.

00:40:34.552 --> 00:40:35.902
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Pretend it didn't happen.

00:40:36.112 --> 00:40:42.652
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you have your whole building in smoke and you cannot find your way out and you realize that something is not working.

00:40:43.072 --> 00:40:54.231
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the more hot smoke test you do, the more contractors' witnessed this state of mind, the better the overall engineering is in the country because they do less and less of these errors.

00:40:54.681 --> 00:40:59.121
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>However, it's a, it's still can be a considerable amount.

00:40:59.353 --> 00:41:14.351
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So for the last 20 minutes, we've been talking about all the things that go wrong with the automations, all the, um small, Issues that happened with the building that actually made the systems not work correctly, all the errors.

00:41:14.771 --> 00:41:30.143
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Now one could argue that you can find these errors without the hot smoke tests, because I guess you can, you can go on and measure every point with any in every scenario, but it would be just so much more labor intense than just doing a hot smoke test.

00:41:30.534 --> 00:41:36.353
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Then for me, that the hospital test is really a valuable  hot smoke and the second thing is the hot smoke test does not lie.

00:41:36.713 --> 00:41:40.954
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You cannot convince smoke to not stagnate somewhere or to not flow in place.

00:41:40.963 --> 00:41:43.443
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It shouldn't where the physics make it flow there.

00:41:43.804 --> 00:41:49.534
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it's also very obvious to point it to other people that look, this is an error in your system.

00:41:49.534 --> 00:41:53.103
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You have to fix it because there is no way they can pretend they do not see it.

00:41:53.523 --> 00:41:57.813
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I see an immense value in here and I would like to make a cause.

00:41:58.612 --> 00:42:15.702
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because of all of these issues that happen in the building because of all these automation errors, because all of these simple problems like with inlet air or air balance or pressure that you find in your buildings  quick and robust, hot smoke test method is extremely valuable to the building.

00:42:16.181 --> 00:42:30.969
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And this is exactly why our methodology has evolved from the overly complex setup of Howard  Morgan from this,, measurements of temperatures, planes, very complex setups that take you one day to set up.

00:42:31.239 --> 00:42:40.478
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Then one day of an experiment one day to take off into a method that takes 15 minutes to set up, let's say an hour to perform the test.

00:42:40.509 --> 00:42:41.409
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then you move on.

00:42:41.619 --> 00:42:51.782
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You can do five tests a day per building, and suddenly you become very efficient in testing buildings, part by part so in the end you can actually test it fully.

00:42:52.742 --> 00:43:01.418
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's not just a sample that we've done one test in the basement, one test in an office, but you can truly like test the whole building with this.

00:43:01.958 --> 00:43:12.041
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And from my experience, this is where the benefits of this method come into play, that you suddenly have a tool to verify.

00:43:12.371 --> 00:43:21.358
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If the building has reached the, the zero level of safety that was designed with the line where the, which you design a drawn by designing all the systems.

00:43:21.728 --> 00:43:23.608
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Does the building has this minimum level.

00:43:24.028 --> 00:43:35.088
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And for me, this is so, so much more powerful than just theatrical, representation of a smoke in the building, or trying to convince someone that exhaust rate is correct.

00:43:35.409 --> 00:43:37.028
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, for, for me, that is the hot smoke testing.

00:43:37.298 --> 00:43:38.619
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I hope you guys agree with that.

00:43:38.954 --> 00:43:39.434
<v Piotr Smardz>Yes.

00:43:39.434 --> 00:43:40.574
<v Piotr Smardz>Although I would, yeah.

00:43:40.605 --> 00:43:49.864
<v Piotr Smardz>That I think at least in the Polish legal framework, I mean that sort of laborious and systematic, checking of the system is still needs to be done.

00:43:49.864 --> 00:44:18.844
<v Piotr Smardz>It's just part of the commissioning process, but the hot is like a second layer of verification is like a, another song, suppose something extra that you can do to make sure that in fact, that all works together because as we said, certain things like for example, migration of smoke, which we realy see a lot be it through a leaky, a curtain or a smoke, everything, which is not deep enough, or even through lift shafts for providers, various ways.

00:44:19.114 --> 00:44:22.715
<v Piotr Smardz>Some people do not even realize that they exist.

00:44:22.894 --> 00:44:23.824
<v Piotr Smardz>We see it a lot.

00:44:23.855 --> 00:44:27.105
<v Piotr Smardz>And then this is this added value of a hot smoke test.

00:44:27.105 --> 00:44:36.264
<v Piotr Smardz>So that's something we see out, but I would still encourage people on construction sites to do the checking before we come and test because that, that needs to be done.

00:44:36.478 --> 00:44:42.472
<v Janusz Paliszek>I will just at one, one thing, it's basically the best educational tool.

00:44:42.472 --> 00:44:57.327
<v Janusz Paliszek>Everyone who was tested, I would say he's designed was checked by hot smoke test, , will ignore the power of this tool to be verified and will  come to the next design more carefully.

00:44:57.858 --> 00:44:58.847
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>absolutely

00:44:58.847 --> 00:45:23.144
<v Janusz Paliszek>The same way as we can test someone, we can be tested by someone and being conscious about this fact just brings the design to a higher, safer level, including for example, not ignoring the power of the inflowing air from the inlets because they can just ruin totally the entire system.

00:45:23.985 --> 00:45:32.385
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You will completely correct, with that, sometimes enough to tell a designer dude this will be tested with the hot smoke test and it will, it will fail.

00:45:32.385 --> 00:45:34.994
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It will have smoke everywhere and this will not be commissioned.

00:45:35.204 --> 00:45:37.125
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you better, do it correctly.

00:45:38.172 --> 00:45:40.152
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>.

00:45:38.172 --> 00:45:41.842
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Piotr Smardz: Obviously the test to educate anyone.

00:45:41.842 --> 00:45:45.172
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I think it's this sort of extra benefit that you get.

00:45:45.172 --> 00:45:59.922
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I mean, we have seen it with our team, with people working with us here in the company, but also, you know, by the reaction of people, the designers who can witness the tests, the fire brigade people, because okay, many people in the fire brigade, especially working in prevention, let's face it.

00:45:59.931 --> 00:46:09.264
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Then they not necessarily get to see a fire up close or maybe in a situation, which would allow them to appreciate the nuances of the smoke control design.

00:46:09.264 --> 00:46:16.748
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I think it's another benefit not on you test the system, but many people involved in the process actually get to learn something.

00:46:16.748 --> 00:46:18.849
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I think that's something that's not the intent.

00:46:19.614 --> 00:46:22.824
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The aim of the test, but it's another element of it.

00:46:23.262 --> 00:46:30.704
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And now, as a final thing, we've mentioned so many things that go wrong in a building that can go wrong in a building, especially in the automation.

00:46:31.195 --> 00:46:42.032
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's put ourselves in the, in the shoes of an investor, you hired these people to do a hot smoke test in your building, and they show you like five days before the building was supposed to be open that it's not working.

00:46:42.445 --> 00:46:46.465
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>To what extent the things in the building are fixable.

00:46:46.824 --> 00:46:48.291
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like to what extent.

00:46:48.637 --> 00:46:56.519
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>After a hot smoke test, how quickly you can incorporate fixes to solve the most common issues you find in the building.

00:46:56.579 --> 00:47:02.309
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Obviously, if with the hot smoke test, you find that there is no smoke exhaust when it should be, you cannot fix that.

00:47:02.670 --> 00:47:11.137
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But when there are the errors are inside the matrix or the automation or the computer side of the system, they are fixable.

00:47:11.197 --> 00:47:12.186
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What's your opinion on that?

00:47:12.577 --> 00:47:15.876
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>To what extent the building can be fixed after out smoke test

00:47:17.179 --> 00:47:19.369
<v Piotr Smardz>Well, it really depends on the situation.

00:47:19.369 --> 00:47:28.219
<v Piotr Smardz>As you said yourself, the programming errors are the easiest and weakest , to fix, and they are, they're the errors that, that we frequently see.

00:47:28.458 --> 00:47:48.472
<v Piotr Smardz>But it's fair to say that depending on the situation and sometimes also on the, on whether or not the designer had this foresight to, to actually try and maybe for example, design with a little bit extra capacity of smoke fans or a little bit more, replacement air inlets, then, then theoretically required..

00:47:48.722 --> 00:47:49.742
<v Piotr Smardz>If this is the case.

00:47:49.742 --> 00:48:01.146
<v Piotr Smardz>If the designer has this, instinct or experience to actually maybe sometimes oversize the system a little bit, then you actually have , some ways of fixing some problems.

00:48:01.146 --> 00:48:11.673
<v Piotr Smardz>Like for example, what we have seen a lot is that, sometimes the overall, way in which a smoke control or a smoke extract system works depends highly on the architecture.

00:48:11.673 --> 00:48:14.108
<v Piotr Smardz>And sometimes by adding, something like.

00:48:14.788 --> 00:48:27.012
<v Piotr Smardz>barrier in a certain place, or sometimes even putting a piece of a wall, maybe a few meters long in the right place can actually hugely improve the situation in terms of smoke logging.

00:48:27.012 --> 00:48:31.483
<v Piotr Smardz>So these are things that fairly often can be relatively cheaply and easily done.

00:48:31.813 --> 00:48:46.885
<v Piotr Smardz>Obviously you cannot very often, you cannot add a completely new inlet, but if, for example, your inlets are just made in the form of, something like external gates, then by opening more gates, you can probably improve the situation.

00:48:46.976 --> 00:48:52.545
<v Piotr Smardz>Sometimes it's actually the other way around that you may have an inlet in an incorrect position.

00:48:52.576 --> 00:49:02.668
<v Piotr Smardz>And then if you have, again, as I said, this extra area or extra capacity of replacement air inlet, then you can probably, either cover it or remove it.

00:49:03.422 --> 00:49:07.795
<v Piotr Smardz>This can also allow you to influence the way in which the system, works.

00:49:08.065 --> 00:49:23.398
<v Piotr Smardz>Also, what we have found is that sometimes the system is started from the very beginning, with the full capacity, where in fact, at the early stages of the fire, it's more appropriate to start maybe just with 50% capacity.

00:49:23.398 --> 00:49:29.668
<v Piotr Smardz>So if you are designed to incorporate several smoke fans you can start the sequence.

00:49:29.849 --> 00:49:37.326
<v Piotr Smardz>Sometimes you have frequency inverter that you can use to increase the capacity of smoke extract.

00:49:37.445 --> 00:50:00.532
<v Piotr Smardz>So there are, if you are lucky, there are ways that you can, , fix a system which is not working exactly as it should, but course it's much easier fix the problems at design stage and better to do the design at the design stage that you find that to find out in a hot smoke and the five days before commissioning of the building, That's obvious

00:50:01.713 --> 00:50:09.838
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>as I've mentioned before, we found the errors or problems, issues in at least 80% of the buildings we have tested.

00:50:10.588 --> 00:50:16.288
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I guess we've done more than 120 buildings by now at ITB.

00:50:16.505 --> 00:50:20.277
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I recall only one building.

00:50:21.137 --> 00:50:24.498
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In which the issue was, critical design flow.

00:50:24.498 --> 00:50:37.478
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>and they had to actually build an additional shaft to provide, inlets air but that was the, in my whole career, that was the only building, which could not be fixed to a simple means.

00:50:37.509 --> 00:50:46.349
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you said, adding a smoke barrier, adding a wall, removing curtain wall, opening or closing an inlet or outlet.

00:50:46.791 --> 00:50:56.001
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Also things like merging smoke zone sometimes work, but sometimes you have a huge smoke control zone and you have to split it into two separate zones.

00:50:56.481 --> 00:51:00.771
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, sometimes you have multiple sources of air that you can choose from.

00:51:01.101 --> 00:51:05.840
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And maybe the inlet that you thought will be most efficient is not the one that you should use.

00:51:05.840 --> 00:51:07.251
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe you should use adjacent one.

00:51:07.791 --> 00:51:07.880
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yes.

00:51:08.286 --> 00:51:24.135
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It truly is remarkable how much you can change in the building that's already been built and, having this tool at your hands, like you are there with the smoke machine, you can do the change and test it and check if it works or not.

00:51:24.735 --> 00:51:28.998
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, for me, outside of that one case, we always found a way out.

00:51:29.358 --> 00:51:38.025
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like it was never a case that the building could not have been opened or would have been severely delayed because the hot smoke tests were done in it.

00:51:38.324 --> 00:51:42.465
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in every single case, the building was safer after that.

00:51:43.275 --> 00:51:47.295
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's like, we've never made the building less safe with hot smoke tests.

00:51:47.684 --> 00:51:49.635
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They have always made the building safer.

00:51:50.054 --> 00:51:52.407
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And for me, Outside of everything.

00:51:52.467 --> 00:51:55.288
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This is biggest added value of this method.

00:51:55.418 --> 00:51:57.177
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It adds safety to the building.

00:51:57.177 --> 00:52:05.873
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I really appreciate us finding that way of doing these tests and being able to actually deliver the safety to the buildings.

00:52:06.492 --> 00:52:07.572
<v Janusz Paliszek>We can all agree.

00:52:07.898 --> 00:52:08.277
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Ah,

00:52:09.943 --> 00:52:10.262
<v Piotr Smardz>Yes.

00:52:10.262 --> 00:52:13.478
<v Piotr Smardz>As you Janusz said, we can only, you agree with that.

00:52:13.789 --> 00:52:25.793
<v Piotr Smardz>as you said, after most of these tests, essentially the modifications or the improvements in the programming, sometimes it's even simple things like changing orientation slightly you have jet funds, things like that.

00:52:25.793 --> 00:52:33.083
<v Piotr Smardz>That really can be done in a matter of maybe a couple of weeks at the construction site, but they do improve the way in which the system works.

00:52:33.083 --> 00:52:36.003
<v Piotr Smardz>So, yeah, I think we, we, we both agree with Janusz that.

00:52:36.003 --> 00:52:37.742
<v Piotr Smardz>What you said is very true.

00:52:38.456 --> 00:52:52.617
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it makes me very happy that we share this common opinion about the tool, because I think this is what the tool needs to be marketed as, the thing that adds safety to the buildings, not the theatrical representation , of smoke or a show for the firefighters.

00:52:52.887 --> 00:52:55.106
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So they get lost and they, they approve the building.

00:52:55.166 --> 00:53:00.996
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I hope the tool is not that I really hope it is something that adds value to the building.

00:53:00.996 --> 00:53:01.947
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay, Piotr, Janusz.

00:53:02.887 --> 00:53:05.757
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>thank you so much for coming to the show.

00:53:05.757 --> 00:53:07.717
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Why I really appreciate that.

00:53:07.717 --> 00:53:14.800
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I hope that Polish methods will spread like a virus to the world and give safety to the buildings and their users.

00:53:15.369 --> 00:53:17.230
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And maybe, maybe someone picks up.

00:53:17.469 --> 00:53:24.304
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And if you were interested about this method, No, I'll drop the context to, to Piotr and Janusz in the show notes.

00:53:24.664 --> 00:53:26.855
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you can, , flood them with emails.

00:53:27.065 --> 00:53:27.875
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They are very nice.

00:53:28.144 --> 00:53:29.704
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Janusz replies immediately.

00:53:29.704 --> 00:53:32.244
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So  please, please do.

00:53:32.244 --> 00:53:38.425
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if you have how to implement that in your engineering Piotr, Janusz thank you so much for being here.

00:53:38.643 --> 00:53:40.443
<v Janusz Paliszek>Thank you very much for invitation.

00:53:40.474 --> 00:53:43.123
<v Piotr Smardz>Thank you very much for inviting us and for the discussion since.

00:53:44.018 --> 00:53:44.889
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, it was great.

00:53:44.889 --> 00:53:45.369
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you guys.

00:53:45.369 --> 00:53:45.668
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Bye.

00:53:46.114 --> 00:53:46.833
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that's it.

00:53:47.494 --> 00:53:48.844
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I hope you've enjoyed that.

00:53:49.273 --> 00:54:06.070
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>let me summarize on what the Polish hot smoke method for me, The first thing is about creating a large size, threat in the building in the, in the form of, of buoyant, thermal plume, and a lot of smoke in it that spreads in the zone of the building that you are testing.

00:54:06.686 --> 00:54:13.885
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And actually you can call it a global challenge for the building because there's, there's going to be a large part of the building being filled with smoke.

00:54:14.516 --> 00:54:20.186
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And this global approach is so much better than individual testing.

00:54:20.246 --> 00:54:26.096
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like Piotr said in the interview, you have to do the individual testing of all of the components of the system, obviously, but.

00:54:26.454 --> 00:54:30.807
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Sometimes they just act different when they are together in the system.

00:54:31.240 --> 00:54:33.490
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>To the extent sometimes delay.

00:54:33.925 --> 00:54:49.556
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Caused by the amount of sensors in the system can just change the outcome completely compared to when you test the sensor after sensor, truly, we've seen that on some buildings that there were just too many sensors the network was overloaded and it took minutes to process the data.

00:54:50.018 --> 00:55:09.460
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The second thing, it's not necessarily about the exhaust of the smoke control system or the performance of the smoke control system, but yet with this method, you can emphasize some failures of the smoke control system, like excessive, eh, inlet city, like, incorrect placement of smoke, curtains, leakages, , incorrect.

00:55:09.480 --> 00:55:12.480
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Performance of dampers gates and so on.

00:55:12.900 --> 00:55:27.686
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So this things you can hot smoke spot when doing hot smoke  test, but you cannot really tell if the hot smoke  test, yes, the system is, , appropriate for the building and the challenges, the fires in this building will bring, because we don't know The real fire.

00:55:28.195 --> 00:55:29.726
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the third thing is speed.

00:55:30.385 --> 00:55:47.516
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When you cut down all the hassle with setting up thermo couple trees in the building, when you make the source very simple, something that you can move, something that takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes to set up, you suddenly gain ability.

00:55:47.606 --> 00:55:56.565
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>To run a lot of these tests and this changes the game completely because suddenly you're able to test the building as a whole.

00:55:56.894 --> 00:56:07.275
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You can spend two or three days having 15, 20 tests in them and you build up this realistic image about the systems in.

00:56:08.110 --> 00:56:09.820
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that is just amazing.

00:56:10.300 --> 00:56:21.132
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would never trade this speed for ability to have 2 Megawatt fire in the building or ability to measure the smoke layer height with a non visual methods.

00:56:21.163 --> 00:56:24.172
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Never it's just too powerful to be this quick.

00:56:24.503 --> 00:56:28.795
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, The experiments are very repeteable we've done that in laboratory.

00:56:29.215 --> 00:56:31.164
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We've been to trace countless times.

00:56:31.764 --> 00:56:40.980
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, we, we get pretty much the same result in terms , of heat release rate or burning time So the repeatability of the, of the method is really good actually.

00:56:41.907 --> 00:56:42.885
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the final thing.

00:56:43.126 --> 00:56:47.086
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You can fix almost everything that you witnessed on the building.

00:56:47.266 --> 00:56:51.307
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like literally buildings are fixable, smoke control systems are fixable.

00:56:51.637 --> 00:56:53.835
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Smoke detection systems are fixable.

00:56:54.166 --> 00:57:00.925
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You very, very rarely run into issues that would prevent opening of a building with a hot smoke test.

00:57:01.286 --> 00:57:04.286
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And actually, if you do, that's probably some life-threatening issues that.

00:57:04.322 --> 00:57:09.722
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's maybe better that you captured that with the hot smoke test rather than open the building in just go on with your life.

00:57:10.233 --> 00:57:16.402
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So there's really little risk that, , this will introduce delays in your building completion.

00:57:16.822 --> 00:57:25.090
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, as I said, in the final conclusion of the, interview, We never left the building, making it less safe than when we've arrived.

00:57:25.210 --> 00:57:26.501
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It always made it safer.

00:57:26.860 --> 00:57:31.690
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I'm hoping that, uh, you're at least intrigued by this approach.

00:57:31.722 --> 00:57:43.945
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe you would like to try it if you want to know what equipment is used or how we're actually doing that, maybe want some photographs of the tests or something, please contact Janusz or Piotr the  or you can email me.

00:57:44.039 --> 00:57:48.360
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And when the share you with the details, because we are very happy to share this approach.

00:57:49.019 --> 00:57:52.230
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, uh, yeah, I guess that's, that's it for the episode.

00:57:52.262 --> 00:57:55.106
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I hope you stick with me for the rest of the year.

00:57:55.556 --> 00:57:58.106
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And episodes will be coming as usual on Wednesdays.

00:57:58.364 --> 00:58:08.853
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We are going onwards so to the milestone of 25,000 listens of the podcast which I would love to achieve before one year anniversary that's in June.

00:58:09.407 --> 00:58:12.257
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>at this moment we just broke 15,000.

00:58:12.257 --> 00:58:14.527
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So that's very good.

00:58:14.536 --> 00:58:16.126
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that makes me very happy.

00:58:16.137 --> 00:58:22.574
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>to have this big of an audience, , this wholesome audience that you are, and I hope you stick here with me.

00:58:22.710 --> 00:58:32.320
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you want to help me break the record, you can either listen to every episode three times, or you can invite some friends to listen to the podcast and, whichever you pick it.

00:58:33.039 --> 00:58:35.719
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you can share with someone please do so.

00:58:36.228 --> 00:58:37.608
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that's it for today.

00:58:37.728 --> 00:58:40.969
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you for being here with me and see you next Wednesday.

00:58:40.969 --> 00:58:41.358
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Bye.

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