Safety Curtain Minimum Fall Time

[Ike]

Having said that a lot of asbestos ones are still in use. In my experience the only thing that tends to have to be replaces is the smoke seal bag thingy at the bottom (don't you love it when you forget the word your looking for?!) as thats the only bit where release of fibres is likely. In fact the three irons I've worked on have all had their fair share of asbestos.

[mikienorth]

Big signs on the stage side of my current iron : Danger, may contain asbestos!

They are still used for projection, the current one is painted with a big white patch for a screen area, and a slogan below. The one at my old venue was just white, again used as a screen.

Really nice non projector paint job at Eastbourne Devonshire Park mind. I'll try and find a pic of it...

 

Oh, and there's plenty we don't know, it just always works out that there's someone who does, who's happy to share...

We're all learning.

[David Ripley]

When the Haymarket, Basingstoke was refurb'ed in the early nineties we had a two part iron that had a piece of council funded art on it. It was a highly idealised view of Ye Olde Basingstoke which was painted at Victor Mara's then wallpaper pasted on.

 

A few years later we had a particularly unpleasant director in and one of her requests was that we paint the iron black as it wasn't currently in keeping with her 'vision'

 

She eventually changed her mind when we pointed out that we would need council permission and it would probly cost a minimum of £20,000 to remove the cloth, repaint, strip the paint and reapply the cloth.

[paulears]

The asbestos safety curtain was the single critical design flaw that led to the Wellington Pier Theatre in Great Yarmouth being demolished. It was a great venue, plenty of seats, but not enough height to fly properly - The safety curtain was asbestos and rolled into the roof space. Over the years, as each turn rubbed on the turn below, it shed a fine powder into the roof space. The airflow let it liberally coat everything up there, where it built up and up. The council leased the building to various people over the years, the last being Jim Davidson - and the council let him try to make some money out of it. In the end, he gave up and the lease was taken over by another company, at which point the asbestos 'infestation' was discovered - Very odd nobody had noticed before. The building was coming up for it's 100th birtday, but wasn't protected in any way, so the cost of repair was outweighed by the possibilities of making any money - so down it came. It is eventyually going to be rebuilt as some kind of entertainment centre, but my money is on bars, nightclub, amusements - but no performance facilities. Rather a shame what asbestos can do. I don't know of any other rolling asbestos curtains still in use. Our theatre, owned by the same company have plenty of asbestos in the building, including the lining on the iron, but this is all safe, and has labels everywhere. In fact, my problem with the cut-off socapex recently was done as part of the asbestos protection process.

[David Ripley]

The Hexagon in Reading has (I presume) a rolling safety curtain to go with it's 5 ton, temporary prosc.

 

I don't know if it was asbestos when I was there in the late 80's (probably) nor if it's been replaced.

 

The whole false prosc thing was a lovely shade of brown and frankly terrifying when you had to put it in or out

 

David

[mikienorth]

The Hexagon has still got a false pros, but I don't recall seeing a safety curtain, I'll ask around though, I know someone who will be able to answer that.

[Rowan]

My memory's a bit hazy, but I'm sure that our license stated that the Iron had to have "SAFETY CURTAIN" written on it in a certain size.

 

 

Another note, the whole thing about the iron having to be raised in a certain time. I seem to recall being told that a well known west end theatre had an iron that didn't raise properly and that the duration of an interval was determined by the time it took for two crew to manually hand wind the iron back up. Does anybody know if this is true? I have a feeling it was Drury Lane, but I'm not sure.

 

As a test, we decided to hand wind our iron once. Fifteen minutes later, we decided not to do it again.

[Dominicg]

My memory's a bit hazy, but I'm sure that our license stated that the Iron had to have "SAFETY CURTAIN" written on it in a certain size.

 

This is indeed true. The iron must show the words "Safety Curtain" somewhere on the audience side. There is a lovely iron in the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford where a banner saying Safety Curtain is held up by two angels. Across town at The Priestley there is a no expenses spared, Safety Curtain on a green background.

 

Leg Source: http://www.humbersidefire.gov.uk/business/licensingact.asp

 

This may just apply for Humberside although I do believe most councils are very similar.

[hookiefreak]

Another note, the whole thing about the iron having to be raised in a certain time. I seem to recall being told that a well known west end theatre had an iron that didn't raise properly and that the duration of an interval was determined by the time it took for two crew to manually hand wind the iron back up. Does anybody know if this is true? I have a feeling it was Drury Lane, but I'm not sure.

 

Hi,

 

Drury Lane does indeed require the crew to manually wind the curtain out. It doesn't take too long considering the pros height, they've obviously had lots of practice! It's also not an 'iron' as such, it is a painted safety curtain although I'm not sure of the differences.

[paulears]

My memory's a bit hazy, but I'm sure that our license stated that the Iron had to have "SAFETY CURTAIN" written on it in a certain size.

 

This is indeed true. The iron must show the words "Safety Curtain" somewhere on the audience side. There is a lovely iron in the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford where a banner saying Safety Curtain is held up by two angels. Across town at The Priestley there is a no expenses spared, Safety Curtain on a green background.

 

Leg Source: http://www.humbersidefire.gov.uk/business/licensingact.asp

 

This may just apply for Humberside although I do believe most councils are very similar.

The note you have linked to also has this at the very top.

These guidelines are issued to assist local licensees to provide suitable and sufficient fire safety measures in licensed premises for applications under the Licensing Act 2003. They do not replace existing legislation relating to Health and Safety.

 

So just good practice, I guess, however - most of this refers to the old licences which don't exisit anymore - most people just carried on with the iron folk lore because although perhaps outdated, it didn't really cause any issues, and waving your safety activities at the audience must be a good thing - I thnk?