The primary goal of installing the smoke vents into buildings is to protect it against incidences of fire occurrence. This protective measure ensures that the building is secured from active fire. The gravity vents utilizes the property of buoyancy which enables it to let out the smoke and heat generated from inside the building. Depending on the prevailing circumstances, you can either use natural buoyancy or mechanical buoyancy. The latter uses natural hot gases to get rid of the smoke, while the former uses artificially designed mechanism mainly the use of fans. The vents are located on the roof and they are made in such a way that smoke and heat can be channelled to the outside therefore releasing the high pressure that was building up inside the building. Apart from the usual role played by the ventilators, they also are essential in the normal ventilation and aeration of the building. Some vents have also large internal spaces which are used to ventilate places with huge crowds of people.
The roof will be in danger of catching fire when the high piled commodities releases heat at extremely high rates. The effect of this rapid increase in temperature is that it might lead to a fire breakout. According to professionals in the fire protection and prevention sector, this calamity can be sufficiently controlled by the installation of the vents to get rid of the excess heat and smoke well in advance. However, a controversy has arisen over the efficiency of fire sprinkler technology in fighting a fire in a building that is fitted with the vents. Many fire protection experts claim that the sprinkler fire fighting technology is likely to be ineffective in bringing a fire under control in such buildings. Though the validity of this claim has not yet been proved, the smoke vents have proved to be a success when combined with other methods of fire fighting.
These vents are of two major types which are the drop-out vent and the mechanically opened vents. The drop-out vent is also known as the drop out panel and it comprises of plastic which shrinks when exposed to high heat. This in return slows down the heat and eventually subdues it. The mechanically opened vent is powered by an electric motor, springs or pneumatic actuator for it t be functional.
Due to the large and complicated nature of industries, automatic smoke vents are specially designed to cater for the model building codes which can be used together with fire sprinkler methods so long as their installation does not encompass the use of the suppression mode.
The smoke vents comprises of three main parts: the exhaust ventilator which is necessary for the removal of the smoke to be effective. After the smoke is removed, the smoke barriers ensure that the smoke remains within the confines of the building. The barriers divide the roof into different smoke zones which enables them to sufficiently limit the spread of smoke to other parts of the building. Finally, the inlet ventilators functions to bring in fresh air so that it can replace the removed air. This is important in ensuring the efficiency of the smoke vent system as it can easily be de-pressurized leading to its breakdown.