FireVu, a CCTV-based, networkable solution, was installed in five large hangars at the Royal Maintenance complex at King Khalid International Airport over a 10-month project that completed in April last year.
Supplied and commissioned by BSS-ME, the application consists of eight cameras positioned around each hangar that is connected to two, four-channel FireVu systems, housing a total of 40 cameras and 10 FireVu units.
Malcolm Gatenby, sales director at BSS-ME, said that the system had been chosen over linear heat detection due to fears that heat detection would come too late for aircraft. Temperatures may have to reach 75 degrees Centigrade before an alarm sounds, he said.
“Initially linear heat detection had been specified in the open roof void of the new hangars as the primary means of fire detection, however this decision changed in preference to the faster and potentially more reliable CCTV-based FireVu VSD.
Every second is crucial
“The large-scale hangars are designed to be able to house aircraft as large as the Boeing 747.
The drawback with a linear heat cable being used in this case is that, realistically, temperatures would have to reach 75 degrees Centigrade on the roof before an alarm would be raised which, with factors such as stratification and temperature layering, can be minutes rather than seconds, with the consequences which flow from this in terms of whether an incident can be tackled before a fire has the chance to take hold.”
D-Tec has supplied its solutions to a number of other sites at the Royal Airwing Hangar complex at the Dubai International Airport in UAE and the Royal Hangar at Seeb International Airport, Oman. An installation is also to go into Jeddah Airport.
