"That doesn't belong there"

Your photos are great! The "loop" where is the round wight "used to be" is interesting. I'm still trying to picture how it worked, doesn't make a lot of sense.

As for the pull ring release, it is not designed to reset with ease but if it takes more effort than a 100 pound stagehand/stage manager/scared performer or choir member or.... to pull it, it is wrong.

You say there is a lot of tension in the system without the round weight, I'm trying to picture that. Without the round weight, there should be no tension in the release line. If there is tension from another source, what is it?

The H&H braille winch should have a clutch bar/lever that is held up by the tension in the release line. This clutch bar should be set at about 30-40 pounds. The line then travels to a release lever or pull ring and then up to the grid, across and back down to the opposite side pull ring and then to the round weight to provide the tension to hold the clutch bar in the engaged position. The system can be rigged to place the winch, round weights and pull rings in various positions in the relationship, but all the elements still should be there. If the round weights are removed, what is producing the tension??

The wire guides look fine but the lack of an enclosed smoke pocket is a major issue. I really don't understand how that has passed muster so far.
 
If I had to guess, I'd say the tension in the line is from the pull rings being installed a couple inches too low. It would've been manageable for one person to put the pull ring back on the pin had the pin been two inches higher.

I'm willing to bet the lines to the pull rings being pulled so tight compensates for the lack of a round weight.

Traditionally, the round weight would be on the other side of the stage, but due to an enclosed fence area on that side of the stage for our concert grand, they could not put a round weight there (at least not near ground level), and thus they settled for rigging it on the same side of the stage as the braille winch.

As for how we get away without smoke pockets, the local fire inspectors don't know much about theatres. They know a lot about assemblies, but not particularly theatres. They understand the low level stuff like sprinkler systems and aisle widths and such, but a deluge soak curtain is the sort of thing they didn't know about until our facility was built. Then there are weeks like this last week where the guy performing the inspection is new and has not the slightest clue about how fire protection in theatres is setup.

Both of our usual inspectors were recently moved to active duty in Afghanistan so the local fire department had to outsource our annual inspection to a fire marshal to a neighboring jurisdiction. The neighboring AHJ's visit to our facility was far more of a tour than an inspection; he wrote us up on a stack of chairs someone had inadvertently rolled in front of a fire exit during our off-week and one other easily corrected thing. When he spotted the costume shop the high school had setup in the orchestra pit, he said, "I'm not too sure about this, but I'm not going to write you up for it, primarily because I don't know what it is I would be writing you up for. I'll have to do a little research and get back to you about this."

On top of the all of the combustible costumes being located in the pit, the costume ladies had also plugged in a coffee pot, several irons, task lights, and sewing machines all into the same cord. He was less than thrilled and had good reason to be. As I pointed out to our costume ladies later on, it's a room they've put a lot of combustibles into that's without sprinklers.

I really like our local AHJ because they've worked with us on a lot of different unusual events throughout the city, but I've had two experiences in the last six months where the fire marshals from neighboring jurisdictions (rural areas without many assemblies) came to inspect an assembly and knew far less about how to inspect those situations than I did.

The one who showed up to a bar on New Year's Eve didn't even walk through the room; he glanced around and without thinking twice said everything looked fine and that he was happy; the AHJ I usually work with commented on that facility when I brought it to his attention and said he was not pleased with it but it wasn't until after he decided to dispatch someone to inspect that he discovered it's just barely beyond his jurisdiction. Had the city dispatched the inspector to that bar instead of the neighboring village, I know it would've been a very different outcome.

Then there was this guy last week filling in for our guys that are doing a tour in Afghanistan; he was more interested in our operations and in the tour than he was concerned about performing an inspection. It was a learning experience for him on how a facility like ours operates, which didn't stop him from noticing a couple low level violations, but I would never expect him to recognize a fire curtain, smoke pocket, or fusible link, much less understand how the entire system works and what triggers it versus what will not trigger it.
 

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