S 1.47 Separate fire zone

Initiation responsibility: Top Management

Implementation responsibility: Planner

It is extremely important to define fire zones in a computer centre to protect it against fire. The effectiveness of reliable fire and smoke zones has been demonstrated impressively in numerous major fires.

The requirements regarding the fire walls and the size of the fire zones in computer centres should be higher than the requirements in relevant standards such as the regional building codes and DIN 4102 "Fire behaviour of building materials and elements".

The purpose of a fire wall or fire zone is not only to protect the building and the people in it, but also to protect its inventory and its availability. Therefore, it is not only necessary to prevent the fire from spreading due to the effects of the flames and hot smoke, but also to prevent thermal radiation and the spread of cold smoke.

Even the thermal radiation level permitted according to DIN 4102 may have a disastrous impact on the building infrastructure, especially in the heat-sensitive IT Department. For this reason, several fire and smoke zones should be established in the construction project that are as large as necessary and as small as possible.

Regarding a computer centre, it must be examined if additional internal fire zones must be created. If a separate fire zone is necessary for the core units (IT rooms, data media archive), the walls, doors, and any openings needed in the walls and ceiling should meet the F90 fire resistance requirements.

In addition to the constructional aspects of standard DIN 4102 that must be taken into account, the humidity in computer centres, server rooms, and data media archives should be kept below the maximum relative humidity limits stated in standard EN 1047-2, section 4.1, table 1.

If the computer centre fire zone contains office units that are directly related to the operation of the computer centre, for example, F30 walls and T30 doors between these offices and the core area of the computer centre are adequate inside this fire zone. These offices must be monitored by the fire alarm system in this case. Office units not directly related to the operation of the computer centre should be assigned to other fire zones.

It must be ensured in the planning and in the operation phases that no specific fire loads are present in any of the rooms inside the computer centre fire zone.

Review questions:

• Are the premises divided appropriately into fire zones?
• Do the fire walls and the fire zones meet the objectives of protecting people and the building as well as its inventory?