Overview

New Fire Station Design Standards. A fire station is part of the critical infrastructure for a community, so one should give careful thought to the use of the station and design. Tennessee has no minimum laws, rules, or regulations on the construction of a fire station except that the building must. Fire Station Use and Function PURPOSE: The purpose of this policy is to outline the Alton Fire Department’s approach to establishing working conditions and standards for Fire Stations and Staff interaction with the public at these facilities. Fire Stations are designed and intended for the sole purpose of housing Fire Department personnel.

A fire station supports the needs of the fire department and the community in which it is located. It must accommodate extremely diverse functions, including housing, recreation, administration, training, community education, equipment and vehicle storage, equipment and vehicle maintenance, and hazardous materials storage. While it is usually only occupied by trained personnel, the facility may also need to accommodate the general public for community education or outreach programs.

Fire stations will vary somewhat in design depending on specific mission, i.e., the types of emergencies that will be responded to or the types of fires that will be fought. Usually, the facility differences relate to the size of the firefighting apparatus and facility location. The location of the facility is largely driven by the need to minimize response time. For example, aircraft rescue firefighting (ARFF) stations provide fire protection to flight lines and aircraft and are located adjacent to the runways on airport property. Similarly, stations with hazardous waste response teams are located near likely spill sites, etc.

Building Attributes

A. Space Types and Building Organization

Major fire station functional areas include the following:

• Apparatus bay(s): This is where the fire fighting and emergency response vehicles are stored.
• Apparatus bay support and vehicle maintenance: These industrial spaces are where the vehicles and other fire fighting equipment are cleaned, maintained, and stored.
• Administrative and training areas: These include offices, dispatch facilities, and training and conference rooms.
• Residential areas: These include the dorm rooms, day room/kitchen, and residential support areas such as bathrooms and fitness spaces.

The two primary drivers for facility layout and functional space adjacencies in a fire station are the following:

1. Ensure that internal response times can be met (time for a firefighter to reach the apparatus and be ready to depart).
2. Separate the diverse and sometimes conflicting functions such as industrial maintenance spaces and residential spaces.

Sample adjacency diagram for a fire station.
Developed by DMJM Design, Arlington, VA

Apparatus Bays

By placing the apparatus bay between the maintenance and support functions and the residential and administrative functions, both primary layout goals can be accomplished. Some of the adjacencies shown above may be accommodated through a hallway rather than a direct entrance/exit from one space to another. This is particularly true with the apparatus bay and the day room as many facility spaces require an adjacency with these two spaces.

This approach to the layout can also accommodate expansion of the apparatus bay on the other side of the support and maintenance areas, although care must be taken to ensure that internal response times can be met after any expansion.

Sizing the apparatus bay is critical, and it should be designed to accommodate variable vehicle sizes. Typically, the entire room is sized based on the bay size for the largest vehicle in the fleet or the largest anticipated vehicle. Bays also include vehicle exhaust removal systems, compressed air and power drop lines, and hot and cold water connections. Bay doors must also accommodate the largest vehicle and include a manual means to open in case of power failure. Ideally, the site will accommodate drive-through bays.

Sample functional layout for a fire station.
Developed by DMJM Design, Arlington, VA

Apparatus Bay Support and Vehicle Maintenance

Apparatus bay support functions include cleaning and maintenance areas for the firefighter's self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), protective clothing, fire extinguishers, and other equipment. It also includes storage areas for firefighting gear and equipment and secure storage for medical supplies. Some of these areas are specialized spaces for disinfecting protective equipment and for maintaining and recharging the SCBA in a clean environment. See also Light Industrial space type.

Agent storage is typically provided in a single-story structure separate from the fire station building. It should be located along the drive leading into the Apparatus Bay for ease of loading and unloading of fire fighting agents. In some cases, it may be attached to the main structure.

A vehicle maintenance bay may also be included in a fire station. It is a dedicated maintenance area for the fire fighting apparatus and includes a heavy-duty lift and all utility connections required for large vehicle maintenance.

Administrative and Training Areas

Administrative areas include standard offices and conference and training rooms. The area will also likely include additional specialized spaces such as the chief's office with sleeping and shower facilities and computer training/testing facilities for firefighter continuing education. Some stations may include a highly specialized dispatch room for receiving emergency calls from the public.

Residential Areas

The day room accommodates kitchen, dining, and living/recreation functions. It is often separated into subspaces for those three functions, but an open design may also be effective to encourage interaction between the spaces. The dining space may also double as training or meeting space and might include provisions for audiovisual equipment.

Sample day room layout for a fire station.
Developed by DMJM Design, Arlington, VA

Dorm room design can vary widely from station to station and department to department. Each firefighter is provided with a place to sleep, work, and store personal items. Careful consideration should be given to the location and design of the area to ensure response times can be met. See Emerging Issues below for more information on dorm rooms.

Other residential areas include a laundry room, a physical fitness room, bathrooms and showers, and possible additional recreation spaces such as an outdoor patio and game room.

B. Design Considerations

Key design goals and considerations for fire stations include the following:

Promote Occupant Quality of Life

Fire stations are occupied 24 hours a day, seven days a week by personnel in continuous 24-hour shifts. Therefore, ensuring a comfortable living environment for the firefighters is paramount:

• Provide ample natural light.
• Provide individual dorm rooms, if budget allows.
• Provide ample recreation areas and separate noisy areas (such as a game room) from quieter areas (such as a television room).
• Avoid institutional and unnatural finishes, textures, and colors.

Maintain a Safe and Healthy Environment

As above, due to the continuous occupation of the facility by firefighters and the presence of hazardous materials, special attention must be given to designing the facility to accommodate equipment and operational strategies to both protect the occupants and maintain a healthy environment. Consider the following critical elements:

• Provide a secure facility for both personnel and materials such as controlled medical supplies and hazardous fire suppression agents.
• Use non-toxic building materials and improved maintenance practices.
• Ensure good indoor air quality and abundant natural light in the residential and administrative areas.
• Ensure good ventilation of industrial areas such as the apparatus bay and prevent contamination of clean spaces such as the SCBA maintenance areas.
• Ensure that equipment, furnishings, and finishes do not contain asbestos or lead.

Ensure Flexibility

As fire fighting technology evolves, fire stations need to evolve as well. Consider the following areas:

• Plan for potential expansion, both in the apparatus bay area and the residential areas.
• Ensure appropriate product/systems integration.
• Design for the changing nature of work.

Emerging Issues

One emerging issue in fire station design is the additional attention given to firefighter quality of life. As noted above in design considerations, one way to promote quality of life is to provide separate dorm rooms for each firefighter. Typically, each room is shared between firefighters of different crews/shifts so that the room is never occupied simultaneously. Individual lockers are provided for each firefighter. A bed, nightstand, and desk are shared.

Some departments are taking this one step further and providing separate beds for each firefighter. Wall-beds, also known as 'Murphy-beds,' are also becoming a common alternative. These combine the qualities of an individual bed with added space savings.

Three sample dorm room layouts for a fire station.
Developed by DMJM Design, Arlington, VA

Relevant Codes and Standards

Standard federal and state building codes apply, as appropriate. There are also numerous codes and standards that apply to the staffing and operation of a fire/rescue department; key standards include the following:

• Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS), ISO Mitigation (Insurance Services Office)
• NFPA 403: Standard for Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting Services at Airports, National Fire Protection Association
• NFPA 1500: Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program, National Fire Protection Association
• NFPA 1581: Standard on Fire Department Infection Control Program, National Fire Protection Association
• NFPA 1710: Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, National Fire Protection Association
• NFPA 1720: Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments, National Fire Protection Association

Department of Defense

• DoD Instruction 6055.6 DoD Fire and Emergency Services (F&ES) Program

Additional Resources

Organizations

Christopher Kehde offers answers to burning questions about single-story, multi-story and mixed-use stations.

Lego Fire Station Pdf

As property values and population densities continue to rise, many fire and rescue departments are considering options to minimize their building footprint and maximize the development potential for available sites. Architects are regularly asked to compare single-story and multi-story fire stations and, as such, this article provides answers to many of the trending questions related to single-story stations, multi-story stations and mixed-use facilities.

Why go vertical?

Multi-story fire stations are often found in densely populated urban centers, where property values are high and construction projects of all types look to maximize the development efficiency by maximizing the number of stories. As development growth expands into the suburbs and once-rural areas, the property values increase with the demand for land. Similar situations arise where fire and rescue departments must optimize the development potential of their limited financial resources. This may lead to “going vertical.”

Is a one-story station better?

Many fire and rescue departments with both single- and multi-story fire stations prefer single-story stations when feasible. Response time and firefighter safety are central to all decisions in fire station design, and a single-story station places all occupied spaces for the responding personnel on the same floor level as the apparatus bays, avoiding the need for vertical response via poles or stairs.

Another key factor is the relative cost of vertical construction. A single-story, four-bay station is typically cheaper than a two-story station with the same program, due in part to the additional construction costs related to stairs, poles and elevators.

How do we know if a one-story station will fit on our site?

Early in the design process, you and your architect will prepare a Program of Requirements for your project. This program document will provide a room-by-room description and square footage of each space in your proposed building, and will tally the square footage into a total building area.

The program should also account for key site design requirements, such as the number of parking spaces, building setbacks, landscape buffers, easements, utilities, storm water management strategies, additional on-site amenities (training areas, emergency generator, etc.) and whether the station will have bi-directional or back-in bays.

The program and building area can then be used as the basis for site studies that will analyze the proposed site (or sites) relative to the programmatic requirements and the viability of achieving the program in a one-story station.

Case Study #1: Fairfax County, VA, Fire and Rescue Station No. 19 – Lorton Volunteer Fire Department

Fire Station Design Thesis Pdf

The suburban site for Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Station No. 19 – Lorton Volunteer Fire Department is 3.25 acres, and the project scope calls for the existing fire station to be replaced by a new 23,000-square-foot station on the same site. Based on an agreement between the County and the volunteers, the new facility will be constructed and owned by the County, and the volunteers will have dedicated space in the facility.

Based on the site size and program square footage, it may seem that a single-story station would fit comfortably on the site. However, as the program was developed and the site was analyzed, several key factors ultimately steered the project toward a two-story solution:

1. The project was on a corner site, which resulted in two street fronts and increased building setbacks on two sides of the property. Also, due to adjacent residential properties, there were significant landscape buffer requirements.
2. There was a Resource Protection Area (RPA) on the northwest corner of the site that impacted the buildable area of the site.
3. The new facility would include a new 3,200-square-foot community hall that required 70 additional parking spaces.

What initially seemed like a generous site was quickly filled by building program area, parking, zoning required landscaping and additional site amenities, including a fuel station, extrication pad and back-up generator. These combined factors resulted in the need to build vertically to maximize the development area.

In the design solution, the bunks, lockers and showers were located on the second floor over the kitchen, dining room, dayroom and administrative spaces. The bays and community hall are high volume, single-story spaces.

What about response time?

Response time and responder safety are central to all decisions in fire and rescue station design. Assessment of turnout time, as the portion of response time that occurs within the station, takes into account the distance traveled from regularly occupied spaces to the bays and also takes into account the complexity of the response path. The response path should be clear and direct with as few turns as possible. In multi-story stations, the response path will include vertical response via some combination of stairs, poles and, in some stations, slides. Proper location of these elements within the station can provide highly efficient access to the bays. With proper consideration, appropriate turnout time can be readily achieved in either single- or multi-story station designs.

What program areas should be on the upper stories?

If your site assessment suggests that you will need to go vertical to meet your programmatic requirements, you will need to carefully consider which program areas will be located on each level. Key programmatic adjacencies should be considered as this will define groups of spaces that will want to be located together on the same floor.

The bays and all relevant support spaces will be grouped together on the first floor. Dormitory spaces such as the bunks, showers and lockers will typically be grouped together. Likewise, the day spaces (kitchen, dining and dayroom spaces) are often grouped together, as are the administrative office spaces. While all three of these program groups could readily be located on either the first floor or upper floors, the response path from day and night spaces should be considered. Bunks are often located on the second story, as this provides a level of sound separation from more active and loud areas in the station; however, this also requires a waking responder to immediately navigate stairs or a pole as part of the response path. In some situations, all of the program spaces other than the bays and bay support spaces may need to be located on a second floor over the bays. Ultimately, response path, responder safety, program adjacencies and the building footprint will all factor into the decision of which program areas will be located on each floor.

Case Study #2: Charlottesville, VA, Fire Department Fontaine Avenue Station No. 10

The City of Charlottesville built the Fontaine Avenue station in 2014 after more than 50 years without a new station. The City recognized that response times to the west side of the city, including to the University of Virginia, would be greatly improved if a new station was built in that area. Due to the density of development throughout the city, the available sites were limited, and the selected site of approximately 1 acre had a 30-foot-deep ravine slicing through the center from front to back. The extreme site conditions required that a vertical solution be considered from the outset of the project.

The 40,000-square-foot fire station includes underground parking for 33 vehicles, four bi-directional apparatus bays, a two-story lobby with a 9/11 memorial, administrative office spaces, a training room that doubles as an Emergency Operations Center, and extensive scenario training areas both on training mezzanines inside the building and along the exterior facades.

During the design process, the department decided that the kitchen, dining room and dayrooms should be on the ground floor immediately adjacent to the apparatus bays. The bunk and locker rooms were located over top of the apparatus bays, with vertical response via slide poles and stairs on both sides of the bays.

Due to the height of the bays, transfer slide poles were provided from the third floor. Transfer poles divide the vertical travel distance into two pieces, with one pole going from the third floor to a landing, and a second pole from the landing to the ground.

How can we maximize our vertical development potential?

Mixed-use facilities can be a very cost-effective means to maximize the development potential of a site. This concept is regularly applied to commercial developments that may have retail shops on the lower level and residential or office spaces on upper floors. The same concept can be applied to fire and rescue stations. A single- or multi-story fire and rescue station can be located on the ground floors, with other municipal agencies or commercial spaces above.

A variation of the mixed-use development concept can be a public/private partnership, where a private developer coordinates efforts with a municipality to provide a public facility as part of a private development. One scenario could be that the municipality owns an aging fire station in a densely populated urban area. A developer might offer to build a new fire station on the site in exchange for the opportunity to construct multiple floors of commercial space above.

Case Study #3: City of Alexandria, VA, Fire Station 209 – Station at Potomac Yard

The Station at Potomac Yard was the first new fire station built in the City of Alexandria in 40 years. The facility is five stories tall and includes a 22,000-square-foot four-bay fire station, 64 affordable housing units on four floors, 1,400 square feet of retail, and two stories of underground parking.

During review of a 167-acre development plan submitted and prepared by the developer, the City planning reviewer recognized that this large development project would represent a new and significant demand for fire and rescue services. The developer and City negotiated terms whereby the developer donated the parcel of land and money toward the construction of a new fire station. The City then recognized the opportunity to maximize the development potential of the site by constructing four floors of affordable housing above the new fire station.

Design of this mixed-use facility recognized the unique nature of the adjacent functions and special measures were taken to address sound and security issues. To address noise concerns, a double-ceiling system was installed in the fire station. The first level of apartments were built on a floating slab system to isolate sound transmission from the station below, and the residential units were built in a U-shape above the living quarters of the fire station below, leaving an elevated plaza above the apparatus bays. For security purposes, separate entrances are provided for the different user groups, and digital access controls are provided at all fire station entrances.

What’s next?

Fire Station Pdf Free

The design and construction of a new fire and rescue facility is a lengthy and complex process, and awareness of priority issues and key design considerations will help keep your project on the path to success. The answers provided here should serve as a primer for further dialogue with an architect experienced in fire and rescue station design to determine if “going vertical” is the best option for your next station.