Playing host to thousands of sports fans each year, Surrey County Cricket Club's ground, The Kia Oval, is now home to a state of the art Apollo fire detection system. 

 

Over 150 years old the Kia Oval, which traditionally hosts the final test match of the English season and saw W.G. Grace score a century on his debut for England, is a 23,000 capacity ground. Following the re-development of the Vauxhall End, TVF (UK) Ltd undertook the design and installation of fire detection systems into The Pavilion, Lock and Laker Stands at the Pavilion End, which also houses the exclusive Kennington Club, committee rooms and museum. Apollo was the obvious choice for TVF when choosing an open protocol system that could protect one of the most distinctive stands in international Cricket. 

 

The installation, engineered to suit the environment, consisted of a hybrid of Apollo's Discovery hard-wired and XPander radio ranges, working in conjunction with an Advanced control panel in each stand. With 20 zones for each stand, over 200 optical detectors were installed along with 30 call points and in excess of 30 loop interfaces/XPander radio devices. 

 

John Baker at TVF explains some of the challenges behind the installation: "The Pavilion End is an iconic part of the Kia Oval. It's traditional rooms are packed with history. As such, Apollo's wireless detector range, XPander, was the obvious choice allowing us to install with minimum disruption to both the members and the decor. There are also a number of more functional areas in the Club, such as the kitchen and plant rooms, where we were able to fit Discovery products."

The installation at the Pavilion End follows on from TVF's installation of Apollo Discovery call points and detectors in the Lock and Laker Stand eighteen months earlier. This experience has put TVF in a good position to understand the unique demands of this environment.   

 

John continues: "Any venue hosting a variety of large-scale events needs a robust and accurate fire detection system. As such, we have installed a system with double-knock detectors (alarms are only sounded if two detectors are activated helping to minimise false alarms) and one that links to other gates in the ground.  In addition, there are lamp buzzers in key areas allowing for operational match day crowd management to ensure a controlled evacuation, should one ever be needed."