Coopers smoke containment system at new Wembley

A Coopers Fire and Smoke Engineeering product story

Edited by the Buildingtalk editorial team Apr 24, 2006

The new Wembley Stadium, currently under construction, is being installed with Coopers fire and smoke containment systems.

Wembley Stadium, the new home of our national sporting events currently under construction, is being installed with Coopers fire and smoke containment systems.

The imposing structure situated on the site of the original stadium with its capacity of 90,000 is twice the size in area as the old stadium and contains five concourse levels.

Effective fire and smoke control was a key factor right from the very early design stages.

In the basement level - B1, four Coopers FireMaster fire barriers have been installed in front of the main lift doors.

These are designed to activate automatically in the event of an alarm to completely seal off the lift shaft area and prevent fire spreading to the upper levels.

The concourse on level S0/S1 is protected by a Coopers SmokeStop 2 hour smoke containment system.

Five runs each containing four rollers with barriers of approximately 20m long x 3.5m drop split into two sections have been installed into the ceiling void.

Once again the complete configuration is connected to the central fire alarm control system that monitors the whole complex.

Similar smoke protection is provided by barriers located in the concourse and the hospitality area on level S2 - eight barrier runs in the concourse itself 10m wide x 12.5m drop, plus two smaller units in the hospitality area.

The concourse on level S5 however presented Coopers with a very different design problem.

The ceiling on this level has a slope of about ten degrees, so the headboxes had to be 'stepped' in three sections to accommodate the variation in height, which involved the installation of special steelwork.

All three sections of the barriers are conjoined and set up to drop as one unit.

This has been achieved by the integration of the 'intelligent' SmartSystem drive control unit designed to allow highly accurate variable speed descent.

Coopers engineers are working alongside the installation contractors on a day-to-day basis to ensure that all the fire and smoke containment systems are fully tested and commissioned ready for the Stadium opening some time in 2007.