Smoke Damage to HVAC Ductwork
Customer: Multinational Investment Bank
Location: Canary Wharf, London
Service Illustration:
Contamination Profiling
Background:
The Customer suffered extensive fire damage in the electrical and mechanical plant room, located on the roof of the 16th floor, housing the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. The fire generated intense heat; buckling steelwork, damaging electrical bus bars, melting architectural aluminium louvers and smoke logging air handling units (AHU’s)
Issues:
Whilst the physical damage in the plant room was easily identified of greater concern to the client was the potential spread of smoke in the HVAC ductwork. If smoke was found in the ductwork large parts of the building would have to be closed to facilitate decontamination causing very significant inconvenience and financial loss.
DFA Activity:
DFA carried out a detailed visual inspection of the affected structure, AHU’s and HVAC ductwork followed by chemical swab analyses, to determine the level of any corrosive chloride contamination produced by burning PVC insulation on electrical cables. From these activities a detailed contamination map was prepared that revealed that the HVAC ductwork serving the building was free from soot deposits and harmful chloride deposits. The AHU’s were found to have trapped the contamination in their filter units and thus were the only parts of the HVAC system that required detailed decontamination.
Benefits of using DFA:DFA were able to categorically prove that the HVAC ductwork did not require decontamination thus allowing the Customer to avoid extensive business interruption
