Evaluation of Passive Fire Safety Precautions of Pre-School Education Buildings

 

Preschool education buildings require more caution for safety than the other types of school buildings due to their users. Fire safety is one of the most critical issues in the safety of buildings. Turkey fire legislation don’t have any specific provisions regarding to pre-school education buildings. However, these buildings whose occupants need others’ support have to be detailed in the legislations. The aim of the study is, to contribute to the realization of fire safety precautions in pre-school education buildings. Within the scope of the study, performance criteria for passive fire safety in pre-school buildings were developed by utilizing national and international legislations. Two typical pre-school building designs were selected from the Ministry of National Education project archive and were evaluated according to developed performance criteria. According to this evaluation it is concluded that, typical pre-school building designs are not sufficient enough in terms of passive fire safety precautions. The insufficient performance criteria of the typical designs are; number of floors, location of the classrooms in the building, compartment areas, building materials, exit numbers, fire exit widths, classroom door directions, escape windows, architectural conditions that require the detection-warning system and the sprinkler system.