What Dornstadt’s fire department has in the ground

Essen­tial site com­po­nents dis­ap­pear into the ground when fire depart­ments build. It is eas­i­er for all par­ties involved in the con­struc­tion when the equip­ment installed under­ground comes com­plete­ly from a sin­gle source. This was the case in Dornstadt.

There had nev­er been such a deploy­ment order before: Relo­ca­tion. From the old sta­tion to the new one. The new sta­tion is locat­ed in St. Flo­ri­an Weg, but above all it is con­ve­nient­ly sit­u­at­ed. With quick access to those sec­tions of the A8 and B10 that belong to the oper­a­tional area of the Dorn­stadt vol­un­teer fire department.

Togeth­er with four oth­er dis­tricts, Dorn­stadt forms a com­mu­ni­ty asso­ci­a­tion just a few kilo­me­ters north of Ulm. Each sub-com­mu­ni­ty has its own fire depart­ment. The fire depart­ment in the core vil­lage of Dorn­stadt had moved into a tem­po­rary domi­cile in 1977, and the pro­vi­sion­al arrange­ment last­ed for more than 40 years. But now there is the new build­ing. “On July 03, 2021, the time had final­ly come and we could move into our new­ly built fire sta­tion,” the 41 fire­fight­ers rejoice on their website.

In the new build­ing, there are box­es for the five emer­gency vehi­cles and the res­cue boat, as well as a wash hall and a work­shop area. The mem­bers of the fire depart­ment have access to a recre­ation, fit­ness and train­ing room, sep­a­rate chang­ing areas, offices and a con­trol cen­ter for coor­di­nat­ing operations.

Heat in the new fire sta­tion comes from an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly pel­let heat­ing sys­tem. It points to the site’s under­ground infra­struc­ture, which deserves spe­cial atten­tion. This is because all sorts of things lie beneath the pave­ment of the open spaces: the pel­let bunker, of course, a fire­fight­ing water tank, and final­ly a light liq­uid sep­a­ra­tor with down­stream sam­pling shaft. In addi­tion, there is an infil­tra­tion trench for the rain­wa­ter that accu­mu­lates on the dri­ving surfaces.

Get­ting all this from a sin­gle source — in addi­tion to the indi­vid­ual com­po­nents, also plan­ning ser­vices, instal­la­tion, leak test­ing, com­mis­sion­ing and instruc­tion — was def­i­nite­ly a relief for the devel­op­er, plan­ner and con­struc­tion com­pa­ny. As a result, speedy process­es around the rel­e­vant trades in all phas­es of the con­struc­tion project can be booked as a prof­it, as can lat­er the syn­er­gies in the main­te­nance of the installed sys­tems by their man­u­fac­tur­er Mall (Donaueschin­gen).

For the envi­ron­men­tal­ly safe pre­treat­ment of the wash water from the vehi­cle clean­ing, an ABKW sep­a­ra­tor of the Neu­tra­Com type — Sys­tem A with gen­er­al approval and inte­grat­ed warn­ing device — as well as a Neu­tra­Check sam­pling shaft were installed. Espe­cial­ly for this project, Mall had tak­en over all ser­vices from dimen­sion­ing and plan­ning to design draw­ings and exe­cu­tion. The task of the sep­a­ra­tor is to retain the light liq­uid com­po­nents in the waste­water before the treat­ed waste­water flow enters the sew­er system.

The vol­ume of 9.25 cubic meters of extin­guish­ing water for oper­a­tions and drills is stored in a rein­forced con­crete tank, which is cast in the same joint­less man­ner as the tank struc­tures of the sep­a­ra­tor and sam­pling shaft. The Mall Ther­moPel pel­let stor­age tank, which is accom­pa­nied by the CaviPro seep­age shaft, is no dif­fer­ent. The lat­ter infil­trates the con­den­sa­tion water that accu­mu­lates in the neck of the shaft above the pel­let store, which has a capac­i­ty of 15 cubic meters.

Not only the equip­ment, but also the prop­er­ties of fire depart­ments, res­cue ser­vices and THW should cor­re­spond to the cur­rent state of the art. This nec­es­sar­i­ly includes stan­dard-com­pli­ant drainage solu­tions for new build­ings and con­ver­sions. For waste­water gen­er­at­ed dur­ing vehi­cle main­te­nance, EN 858 in com­bi­na­tion with DIN 1999-100 requires the manda­to­ry instal­la­tion of a light liq­uid sep­a­ra­tor. Extin­guish­ing foam pro­duced dur­ing exer­cis­es must not be allowed to enter the sewage sys­tem or water­ways. This neces­si­tates liq­uid-tight sealed sur­faces and col­lec­tion con­tain­ers with suf­fi­cient reten­tion vol­ume. It’s con­ve­nient when all this and much more can come as a com­pact pack­age from a com­pe­tent part­ner with many years of experience.