Alt Title: What You Need to Know About Fire Safety for Office Pods
Fire safety in your office is essential. At a minimum, you need smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and fire extinguishers in easily accessible locations according to state and local building safety codes. However, just having these pieces of equipment isn’t enough. You also need an automated fire suppression system, an escape route, and a plan your employees will follow if they need to evacuate.
When you have office pods, safety gets a little more complex. Office pods present unique fire safety hazards, but it’s not hard to make your pods safe. If you have fully enclosed or partially enclosed office areas in your building, here’s what you need to know about fire safety.
Office pods require their own fire suppression system
Whether a fire is happening outside or inside of an office pod, that pod needs its own fire suppression system. If there’s a fire inside of a pod, the fire suppression system you have in the outer building isn’t going to help. The only way you’ll extinguish a fire inside your office pod is through its own fire suppression system.
Since offices are susceptible to different types of fires, including Class A and Class C, the ideal suppression system will be one that releases clean agent gas or a dry chemical suppressant.
The most common type of fire you may experience in your office pod is electrical. Usually, electrical fires are caused by short circuits that create intense heat and end up catching nearby materials on fire, like insulation or drywall. The biggest problem with electrical fires is that they can’t be extinguished with water, and if anyone tries to use water, they can get shocked since water conducts electricity.
An electrical fire can be put out with an ABC fire extinguisher, which is something you should definitely have on hand in every pod. However, don’t rely on your employees to put out a fire. Sometimes people aren’t willing to stick around to fight a fire, even if it’s small. Many people will just get up and leave, and that’s understandable given that fire is dangerous. Also, sometimes fires are already too big to fight manually by the time they’re noticed. Since you can’t predict any of these factors, it’s best to install an automatic fire suppression system inside your office pods.
Pod enclosures can prevent occupants from being alerted to emergencies
While working inside of a pod, whether it’s attached to the building or free-standing in the middle of the room, the occupant is far less likely to know when there’s an emergency happening outside the pod. If the fire alarm goes off in the main building, there’s a chance they won’t know.
When you have a fully enclosed pod, chances are slim that the occupant will hear the fire alarm outside. If that pod is soundproof, it’s less likely and may even be impossible.
If the pod is only partially enclosed and has a wide open side wall, it’s possible that an occupant will hear the fire alarm, but if they have any type of hearing disability and they rely on visual cues, like strobe lights, the other walls can block their view of those visuals.
The best solution to this problem, regardless of what type of office pod you have, is to install individual fire alarms in each of your pods that connect with the alarms on the outside. This is something you’ll need to hire a professional for, but it’s worth doing for the safety of your employees.
Employees may not know they’re creating fire hazards
If you walk around any office building, you’re bound to see small space heaters, personal appliances, messy cords, and devices being charged on practically every desk. You may even see some frayed cables or cables with electrical tape wrapped around them. This all seems fairly normal, but it could be a fire hazard.
Where office fires are concerned, the following are the most common causes:
· Overloaded circuits
· Frayed cables
· Faulty electrical equipment
· Aftermarket phone chargers
Often, people use extension cords for space heaters on the same circuit as all their other equipment, which overloads the circuit and is one of the biggest fire risks.
Cheap phone chargers are another fire hazard because they overheat far more easily than branded cables. Most people never even unplug them – they just leave them in the socket and use them as needed.
Another activity that causes office fires is when people use cooking equipment at their desk. It may sound strange, but people do all sorts of things at work if they can get away with it.
Your employees likely have no idea they’re creating a fire hazard just by going about their daily life at work. It’s critical that you perform regular inspections, create safety policies for everyone to follow, and enforce violations.
Need an office pod fire suppression system? We can help
Office pods present unique safety risks to your business, and it’s not enough to rely on a simple fire extinguisher in case of an emergency. Since there’s a risk of electrical fire, sprinklers aren’t going to work, either. You need a custom solution for fire suppression that will extinguish any type of fire that may occur inside your office pod.
Our unique, all-in-one, patented fire suppression systems for office pods are rated to extinguish Class A, B, and C fires in a matter of seconds. Equipped with our proprietary ABC powder, it only takes about 5 seconds to extinguish a fire. Once the powder has been deployed and the fire is out, the non-toxic powder can be easily cleaned.
We have several systems available that can work with your pods. We even have a solution that doesn’t require electricity, making it easy to integrate with any existing office pod design.
To protect your building, office equipment, and employees against fire, call us today at (888) 232-7334 or fill out this form to get a quote for your office pod fire suppression system.