A daily touch of reality & insight when it comes to your fire and life safety.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Dry System Inspection Issues
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Sprinkler vs No Sprinkler
Most of the time, the sprinklers actually extinguish the fire completely, before the fire department even arrives.
If you DON'T have a fire sprinkler system, when the fire department arrives, they WILL BE discharging AT THE VERY LEAST, 100 GPM from every fire hose that they are using. That's minimum. Per hose.
When you see water being sprayed from an elevated ladder truck, that will be discharging anywhere from 250-1,000 GPM of water onto the fire and building. And your building, and all of its contents, will be completely destroyed. Forever.
Lets go through two scenarios.
Scenario #1 - You Do Not Have a Fire Sprinkler System
1:00 am - Your entire family is sleeping. A fire starts in your basement (BTW-worst place to have a fire).
1:02 am - The fire starts to grow, burning all of the plastic storage bins full of papers and clothes that you have surrounding your heater, where the fire started.
1:05 am - The smoke from the fire reaches the old battery operated smoke detector at the top of the basement stairs, but does not signal, because you took the battery out of it.
1:10 am - The fire is growing bigger, and has started to penetrate into the first floor, when smoke from the fire finally reaches a smoke detector that operates.
*** TEN MINUTES HAVE PASSED SINCE THE FIRE HAS STARTED ***
1:11 am - You get out of bed to see why the smoke detector is going off only to find your family room filling with smoke.
1:12 am - You run back upstairs and wake your spouse and children screaming that the house is on fire and you all need to get out.
1:13 am - You collect your family and run out the front door, leaving it wide open (which inadvertently provides a whole lot of draft and fresh oxygen to feed the fire).
1:14 am - You realize that you haven't called 911 yet, so you call them (thankfully you remembered your cell phone).
1:16 am - The 911 center starts to dispatch the first fire department. Because of the alarm in your voice, they automatically send a "Full Response" for a working fire.
1:19 am - The first chief goes on radio responding from his house (Volunteer Fire Company).
1:20 am - You see flames inside your first floor windows. The fire has been burning for 20 minutes.
1:25 am - The first fire engine goes on radio, as they are leaving the fire house.
1:26 am - The chief arrives on scene. He makes sure that everyone is out of the house. Then calls for a second alarm, because there are flames breaking through every window on the first floor, and there is now smoke puffing out of the second floor windows.
1:30 am - The fire engine arrives on scene. You can hear many more sirens in the distance.
1:31 am - The chief declares that this is going to be a defensive operation, and that no firefighter is going inside the house, since all of the occupants are out. The fire has had too much burn time. The house will be a complete loss, no matter what the efforts are.
1:33 am - The first water is being put on your house. The fire is now coming out of every window that you can see. Your house, your pictures, your most precious belongings....gone.....forever.
Less than an hour ago, you were sleeping comfortably in your bed. Your family safe and sound. Life was good.
Now, there are 35 firefighters in your front yard, back yard, in your driveway, on your street. You count five streams of water being sprayed onto your house. Three are from hoses, two are from elevated ladders.
Lets do some math. Each hose is flowing 100 gallons of water every minute, for a total of 300 GPM. Each ladder is flowing 500 gallons of water per minute, for a total of 1,000 GPM. For a GRAND TOTAL of 1,300 gallons of water being dumped onto your fire engulfed house. Every minute. This could go on for 30...45....60 minutes!! 30,000 to 70,000 gallons of water over that time period.
Scenario #2 - You DO have a Fire Sprinkler System
1:00 am - Your entire family is sleeping. A fire starts in your basement (BTW-still the worst place to have a fire).
1:02 am - The fire starts to grow, burning all of the plastic storage bins full of papers and clothes that you have surrounding your heater, where the fire started.
1:03 am - The sprinkler head that is in the vicinity of the origin of the fire, actuates. Just one. Not every sprinkler head (that's only in Hollywood)
1:04 am - The smoke from the fire reaches the old battery operated smoke detector at the top of the basement stairs, but does not signal, because you took the battery out of it.
1:04 am - Your fire alarm signals, because there is a device that actuates when water is flowing from one sprinkler (this is called a water flow alarm switch)
1:05 am - You wake up, and go downstairs to investigate why your sprinkler bell is going off. You open the door to the basement, and you see smoke (yes - there is still smoke- sprinklers aren't magic)
1:06 am - You run back upstairs and wake your spouse and children telling them that the sprinkler system is going off, and there is smoke in the basement.
1:07 am - You collect your family and run out the front door, leaving it wide open (which inadvertently provides a whole lot of draft and fresh oxygen to feed the fire, if the fire was still burning).
1:08 am - You realize that you haven't called 911 yet, so you call them (thankfully you remembered your cell phone).
*** ONLY EIGHT MINUTES HAVE PASSED SINCE THE FIRE HAS STARTED ***
The fire company gets dispatched, comes out, and they don't even need to fill their hoses with any water. They bring a small, 2 1/2 gallon fire extinguisher with them into the basement. But they don't need it, because the sprinkler system extinguished the fire. The Chief and the first crew of firefighters already turned the sprinkler system off. They turned it off at 1:20 am. Twenty minutes after the fire had started.
Lets do some math. One sprinkler head actuated. It was discharging 10 gallons of water per minute. It flowed water for twenty minutes. 20 minutes x 10 gallons per minute equals 200 gallons. The sprinkler discharged 200 gallons of water from the time it first operated, until it was shut off by the fire department.
Scenario #1 - Your life is pretty much ruined. For a long time anyway.
Scenario #2 - You are going to be inconvenienced for the night. And you have some leg work to do...get the water and smoke removal experts in. Get the sprinkler contractor out to fix the sprinkler head that saved your house, and possibly your life. Get through your insurance claim. But you'll get through it. Rather easily.
This is not hyperbole. This is not an exaggeration by any means. This is the truth. 100% true.
Don't wait until it's too late.
321FireProtection.com
(484)321-FIRE
Monday, January 11, 2016
The fire company is right next door. We have nothing to worry about.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
And the job goes to...the lowest bidder?
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Just trying to rip you off.
I walked into the fire pump room, in the basement of a 14 story high-rise apartment building. I was with the property manager, a potential new client. They were shopping around for a new fire protection contractor.
Before we even opened the door, I knew things weren't good. There was a small stream of water coming from under the door to the pump room. "Is that normal?", I asked.
"Yeah. The pump leaks a lot. It's okay."
When we passed through the door, I saw a fire pump that was only 7 years old, that looked like it hadn't been maintained in 25 years. Does that even make sense?
There was water pouring out of the pump packing and the pump sleeve. The packing glands were cranked in WAY too tight and completely out of alignment, and water was still pouring right through. The stuffing box drains were clogged, so the water was overflowing, and dripping down the side of the pump casing, causing a slimy, rusty trail to show the exact route of the water.
The entire pipe network in the fire pump room was completely wrong:
-Valves were in the wrong spot.
-Pump sensing lines were not installed in the correct part of the system.
-The test header assembly was in the wrong spot.
-The pressure relief valve was in the wrong spot.
-The pump controller was not where it should be.
-The diesel engine batteries were between the pump and the far, inside wall...making it nearly impossible to service and replace them.
-The pipe that attached directly to the suction side of the pump was arranged wrong.
-The oil filter hadn't been changed in 6 years.
And that was just at my first glance. All I could say was "Wow. You have some serious issues here."
After explaining some of the things that I saw, the potential client was very happy that I had pointed these things out to him. He told me that he thought there were some things wrong, but his previous contractors (plural) never told him any of this. They would come in once a year, and do their test & inspection, and he would see them the next year. No questions asked.
I explained to him the importance of maintaining his fire pump. A diesel fire pump is required to be run once every week, for 30 minutes. The pump at this location only had 2.6 hours on the hour-meter. Just over 2 1/2 hours in over seven years. And that includes the original commissioning/startup. That was probably 2/3 of the registered hours. Do the math: this pump should have, at minimum, 182 hours, just with a weekly pump run. "Wow. You have some serious issues here."
I told him the truth. Just by looking at the condition of the pump, we would have to pull it all apart to see what was going on inside of the pump. And experience tells me that we are going to have to replace some of the parts inside of the pump. Plus we will have a qualified diesel mechanic perform the proper maintenance on the Diesel engine; and a qualified fire pump control technician overhaul the fire pump controller (which also was never maintained, cleaned, or serviced).
The total bill would be anywhere from $5,000 to upwards of $25,000, depending on what we find.
We didn't get the job. I was told that we were trying to rip them off.
In reality, we were just being honest. Maintaining a diesel fire pump isn't cheap. When you wait, and let things get out of hand, it's down right expensive. If this potential client hadn't waited until it was too late, then these costs could have been spread out over the years. If it is properly maintained from day one, then some of the issues could be avoided completely.
I wouldn't want to be an apartment dweller, thinking that I am protected by a fire sprinkler system, not knowing that the systems main piece of equipment might not work.
Pay me now or pay me later. But paying later might come in the form of settling lawsuits.