England · West Midlands · fire protection
Smoke vents in Sedgley
Sedgley (West Midlands, England) has a published usual-resident population of 31,224 in 2019. Source: ONS towns 2019. That figure is residents, not a count of blocks with smoke vents. Deprivation band on the same file: High Deprivation. Coastal classification: Larger non-coastal towns. ONS records population change of 0% between 2001 and 2019 for this built-up area. Classification on that source: Medium. Workplace profile in the ONS towns file: Residential.
Rain sensors lose to a fire input
Comfort mode may shut a vent when it rains. Smoke mode has to win. On a visit we simulate the fire-alarm contact and watch whether a wet sensor still holds the stair vent closed. If it does, the panel logic or the sensor wiring is wrong, and the roof hatch is not a smoke vent until that is fixed.
Shafts are a sequence
A smoke shaft works only if the inlets and the outlet open in the combination the design states. Opening the head vent while every lobby damper stays shut is not a pass. We do not enter a shaft that has no safe access, and we write “not accessed” rather than “satisfactory”.
Automatic opening vents are life-safety smoke control, so this sits with fire protection and is quoted across the UK. Population figures are the published resident counts named above. They are not a survey of vents in Sedgley.
