Page 218 - THE FIRE STATION

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Waste water produced on the site flows into the sewer network run-
ning under Rue de laTombe below the site. Dependent on where it
comes from, some water is treated before being discharged:
– water from the top-floor kitchen passes through a grease filter
on the second floor;
– water from the basement parking deck is treated in an under-
ground oil separator.
THE BUILDING’S ZONES
The rooms in the new Charleroi fire station are grouped into
four distinct use/occupancy zones:
– A logistics zone (vehicle garage, workshops, storerooms, etc.);
– An administrative zone;
– A zone covering on-duty firemen’s living and sleeping quarters;
– An exercise zone including the building’s surroundings.
These zones, the rooms of which are dispersed over the building’s
five floors with a view to optimising use and emergency responses,
served as the basis for defining the 15 usage zones of the technical allowing air to circulate (necessary for their proper functioning).
systems.
– Level 0: Parking deck and technical rooms/storerooms;
– Level 1: Vehicle garage, storerooms;
– Level 2: Storerooms, offices
– Level 3: Classroom, sleeping quarters, control room, offices, gym,
fitness room;
– Level 4: Canteen, kitchen.
Each zone is connected to the joint distribution networks, though
with facilities to isolate and partition them.
POSITIONING OF THE TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
The positioning of the main radial and orthogonal load-bearing
beams above each other on the five floors makes it necessary
to optimise the positions of the technical rooms to simplify and
streamline the installation of mains networks.The majority of
these rooms and shafts serving as links between the floors are
naturally positioned above each other (in axes 11 and 12) between
the three stairwells located along the central north-south corridor. outside air through contact with the extracted air. All heat recovery
Starting in the basement rooms with their connections to the pub-
lic utility networks, the mains cables and pipes follow the central
corridor (along axis 12) to the following rooms:
– the electrics room housing the low-voltage switchgear;
– the room housing the oil tank for the generator on the roof of
the south staircase and requiring easy access for the fuel supplier; equipped with a variable frequency drive allowing low-flow opera-
– the room for producing hot water for WCs and showers linked
to the solar panels on the gym roof;
– the boiler room, also with an outside door, and an adjacent
room housing the hot water tank.
– the room housing the UPS 2 and the technical control room
(Centrale de gestion technique centralisée or GTC for short);
– the room housing the water softening system and the rainwater
distribution system linked up to the five underground cisterns
mentioned above.
– the room for producing and distributing chilled water in connec-
tion with the condensers placed on the roof.
The four main shafts alongside the stairwells go right up to the
roof, allowing the equipment needing to be installed outside to be
connected up.The input for the clean air needed to ventilate the
rooms is on the building’s west side, above the top-floor canteen
and kitchen, while spent air is exhausted on the opposite side,
above the gym roof.The clean air inlets thus draw in the prevailing
winds while being sheltered from the risk of pollution from
the exhaust fumes of emergency vehicles on the road surrounding
the building.
The roofs over the three main staircases have holes let into them
to take up such outside equipment as the condensers for the cool-
ing systems of computer rooms, extraction vents for the emergen-
cy vehicle garage and the kitchen extractor hoods, the condensers
for producing chilled water and the electricity generator.These
pieces of equipment are hidden behind perforated steel sheeting,
On the individual floors, the ducts for water and heating pipes
from the shafts and technical rooms run along the main corridors,
feeding each zone.
VENTILATION
With the exception of the basement parking deck (not part of the
building’s heated area) and the emergency vehicle garage (where
the large folding doors are frequently open), ventilation flows into
and out of the fire station are controlled mechanically.
Each air-conditioning unit combines air supply and extraction and
has a high-performance heat recovery (> 75%) system as well as
the heating and cooling filters and batteries needed for treating
outside air. Heat recovery systems simultaneously extracting heat
and humidity from the outflowing air are used mainly, though the
units serving the storerooms, the “fitness” zone and the kitchen
are equipped with plate heat exchangers to avoid polluting the
units have a by-pass mechanism.
In the case of a too high level of carbon monoxide being detected
in the ambiant air (> 40 ppm 3), the parking deck ventilation system
is activated. Ventilation is done by a smoke extractor located at
the end of the tunnel at the northern end of the parking deck. It is
tions (12,000m³/h). Air enters into the parking deck via the south
entrance and the central light well.
The building’s different zones are serviced by air-conditioning units
located, for the most part, in the rooms directly above the central
technical zone located between axes 11 and 12.The air-conditioning
units for the third-floor classroom and fitness zone are located in
purpose-built rooms in the zone concerned. Living premises and
offices with a similar function are connected to joint systems able