Wicks LifeLine Air System
The Patented Air System for Survival in Fire Emergencies.
Where sprinklers are impractical, a building's plumbing system can do double duty, turning bathrooms into places of refuge.
Exerpts from Chief Fire Executive Magazine June/July 1986 - by Charles Monzillo
No one knowledgeable in fire protection would ever question the fact that sprinklers are the most effective weapon against unwanted fire and that properly designed and operating sprinkler systems provide the highest level of life protection. Unfortunately, though, sprinkler systems protect only a small portion of the buildings which house people across the United States, and chief fire executives often face the perplexing problem of how to provide life safety in unsprinklered apartment buildings, nursing homes, hotels, and other occupancies where large numbers of people are at risk.
A partial solution - at least for buildings of fire-resistive construction - may be a new invention called the Wicks Life Line Air System, designed by Edward A. Wicks of Danbury, Connecticut. It uses a building's plumbing system to turn bathrooms into areas of refuge by pressurizing them with fresh air to maintain a constantly positive pressure and to keep smoke from penetrating. On command from a heat-sensing device, a sequence of events isolates the building's water distribution system from the water source, drains the network of pipes in two minutes, and opens the system to a supply of compressed air. The bathrooms are isolated by construction features to keep air leakage to a minimum.
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Smoke enters an unpressurized bathroom. |
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Elevated air pressure from faucets keeps smoke out. |
Based on illustrations by Jana Brenning |
The theory is the same as that which governs the operation of positive-pressure, self-contained breathing apparatus. A proper seal minimizes the potential for leakage, and what little seepage does occur will be from the inside out rather than from the contaminated outside atmosphere in. Thus, a person trapped by fire in a building provided with the Wicks system can retreat to a bathroom, put the system in operation by opening the faucet, and wait for firefighters to arrive, confident that neither fire nor smoke can penetrate the room.
The building must be of fire-resistive construction to provide integrity in the walls, ceiling, and floor of the bathroom. And the room has to be sealed: Weather stripping attached to the door ensures a tight seal with the frame, and any areas of potential air leakage - around pipe chases, for example - must be sealed. Provisions must be made to close the air vent off from the room during a fire, and this is normally accomplished by a preinstalled trap door which will spring closed over the vent opening on demand.
The system gets it's air from compressors located in the building's mechanical room. There should be redundancy in the air intake and compressor system so a compressor failure or contamination of an air source will not knock the system out of operation. Depending on the capacity of the water pipes, either hot or cold lines, or both together, can be purged and pressurized with air. Ideally, though, the system will use just the hot water side, leaving the cold water side intact and capable of providing water.