Smoke damper for open-ended corridor?

[Yikes]

I have a 3 story type V-A apartment building that is nearing completion, and we just discovered that the mechanical engineer did not provide combustion air to the laundry room (gas dryers) or to the adjacent water heater room (200,000 btu gas water heater). Oops!

It would seem to be a simple thing to retrofit some louvers into the corridor wall with a fusible link damper to borrow the required combustion air (what CBC 716.5.1 calls an “air transfer opening”). My problem is that CBC 716.5.4.1 says I need a listed smoke damper (for practicality, a combination smoke+fire damper). The building has double-loaded corridors that are open on the ends and in the middle, meaning that outside air blows through the corridor. There’s even a light and air well (open to the sky) about 20 feet away from the laundry room, so there’s lots of fresh air circulating naturally throughout the corridors.

Question: in an open corridor situation how would you provide smoke detection to trigger the smoke damper, if the corridors are so open / naturally ventilated that smoke would not build up to actuate a detector?

Or is there some exception that I don’t know about that would eliminate the need for smoke dampers in open corridors?

 

[High Desert]

You're protecting the corridor from the other parts of the building so a fire in the laundry room for instance, would activate it.

 

[Yikes]

So the smoke detectors would be located on the ceiling inside the laundry room, and inside the water heater room, but NOT in the open corridor. Is that correct?

 

[mtlogcabin]

So the smoke detectors would be located on the ceiling inside the laundry room, and inside the water heater room, but NOT in the open corridor. Is that correct?

yes that is correct