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The Fire Sprinkler Advantage  ~ November Seminar

The title “Design Advantage with Sprinklers” told it all.  Our presenter, Gene Endthoff, speaking for the National Fire Sprinkler Association, was here to tell us why any building that we designed could afford a sprinkler system.  And he illustrated his points very well.

Our November 15th seminar started with several illustrations of the effect of fire on a structure, including a demonstration of the speed at which fire ignited a room fitted out with the same type of rigid foam insulation that was in the nightclub that burned in West Warwick, RI.  Fire spread up the wall and across the ceiling in less than one minute.  There were a few movie clips showing a sprinkler system easily extinguishing fires that started in the same way.  Well, we knew that sprinklers were a good thing already.  Gene’s approach was to compare buildings designed with and without sprinkler systems. 

There were a couple of comparisons of schools and office buildings.  For many buildings there are choices to be made about the Construction Type.  Should we choose 1A or B, or 2A or B?  This is a function of the area and the height we desire, the larger the building, the more hours of fire protection required for the major elements (as cataloged in NYSBC Table 503).  Gene showed how buildings built without sprinklers needed to be built to a higher fire rating, or with more fire separations than buildings built with sprinklers.  In his clear example of a school building, he showed how significant savings could be had if sprinklers were used:  first, the fire areas could be increased; second, the fire ratings could be reduced by an hour for most elements in Table 503; and third, he explained how the design changes would affect the cost of the building.  We were reminded that sprinklers in a building usually allow an extra story in a building and increased floor area.

A good part of the afternoon was spent learning how to use the manual that was provided to all participants.  The manual had some charts that illustrated the maximum building areas and heights for sprinklered and unsprinklered buildings (the charts had all of the numbers for all of the building types and construction types with the math already completed – a real time saver).  

There were sections of the manual that listed all of the advantages built into the code for sprinklered buildings for each different occupancy.  (And there was a review of the advantages for the IBC 2000, IBC 2003, BOCA, and NFPA 5000.  The manual is useful for multi-state practices.) 

O.K.  I’ve read the few paragraphs above, and it seems dry.  Can we really get excited about learning how to read our building code better?  Well, two days after the seminar we were able to use the manual in the office.  We're renovating an existing factory building of 65,000 s.f. that is divided into three fire areas.  It is Type 2B construction.  If we have two occupancies, F1 and F2, there should be a three hour separation.  We have 8” cmu as the fire wall.  We don’t know what the cmu is made from, so we don’t know if the rating is any better than the two hours allowed for regular 8”cmu (the 3-hour and 4-hour ratings are for 8" cmu made with different aggregates).  Will we have to break up some of the block and have it analyzed to see if the cmu is better than 2 hr rated?  If it only 2 hr rated will we have to increase the rating by adding 5/8” fire code gypsum wall board or 3/4” stucco to the wall (at great expense)?  Well, we don’t have to worry about the matter for our analysis; the fire separation requirement is reduced by one hour if the building is sprinklered.  The 2 hour wall was fine.  The manual had a list of the advantages of having a sprinklered building for every type of occupancy.  This one-page list covers all of the advantages and bonuses that one would have to search for throughout the code.  Well, I saved at least an hour of research and I taught two of my staff how to streamline their research when performing code analyses.  So, this must be why they call it continuing education.

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