Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

On 18th April a fire occurred in the Nursery at Dellwood lvlaternity Home, Reading, resulting in serious loss of life. It was concluded at the inquest that the fire started under the floorboards of the Nursery situated above a boiler room. The heating equipment in the boiler room consisted of a domestic boiler placed near a 9 in. brick paritition wall through which the cast iron flue pipe passed at distance of 11 in. below the soffit of the ceiling and 8 in. below a timber wall plate. An experiment was carried out on a mock up representative of actual construction, the nearness of the flue pipe to the ceiling, which was of traditional construction, could have caused the fire.