Two questions regarding the dissolution of the Light Hazard classification for Offices:
Are office buildings burning down because they were designed for Light Hazard? Are there any full scale fire tests that indicate the need to change Occupancy classification? If the answer to either is yes, then ok..if not then why bother? I am just curious because when the sprinkler criteria was changed and the minimum 7 psi was included for the listing and usage of residential heads, one of the prominent engineers in the country stated "it isn't like the buildings were burning down". I thought that was profound myself. Greg McGahan Operations Manager Living Water Fire Protection 1160 McKenzie Road P.O. Box 877 Cantonment, Florida 32533 (850) 937.1850 | Fax (850) 937.1852 | Cell (850) 554.3231 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 3:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Mech/Electrical room classification (wa Existing PipeScheduledSystem Water Supply) Agreed about the office thing. Recent client wanted to try and convince me that they didn't need sprinklers in the office because their building was all concrete. I said that's nice but a fire will most likely start INSIDE your concrete building unless you get hit by a meteor, which will probably still result in a fire inside. I have noticed some jurisdictions requiring a minimum design criteria of .15 for office areas. The Light hazard classification for office environments needs to go away. It's just not realistic when it comes to fuel loading and potential hazards. In most industrial environments the chance for fire is usually far less than in most offices. Reason being the factory environments have stricter rules on housekeeping and storage than most offices. Don't see a lot of overloaded power strips in manufacturing plants either, boxes of rolled plotter paper on plastic, printer and copy machine toner, etc...... But we digress, back to the mechanical room................... Craig L. Prahl, CET Fire Protection Specialist Mechanical Department CH2MHILL Lockwood Greene 1500 International Drive PO Box 491, Spartanburg, SC 29304-0491 Direct - 864.599.4102 Fax - 864.599.8439 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ch2m.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Cahill Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 4:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Mech/Electrical room classification (wa Existing PipeScheduledSystem Water Supply) About the same funny as where I'm sitting right now and I suspect you are too. I'm a room with a lot of class III materials, stored up to 6' high, some in solid piles and harder to burn, some rolled paper easy to burn, about 20 lbs of exposed non-expanded plastics and about 5 lbs of non-exposed expanded plastic, more electrical violations than I like to admit but some how it's light hazard because I call it an office and our mech room is OH by tradition and few boxes of holiday decorations. Maybe we should start calling mechanical room's offices. They are less hazardous than where I'm sitting even with the decorations. With modern odd names and more from other cultures all electrical rooms are now labeled as Electa's office and the mechanical room is Phan's office. BTW I've also just always done the OH thing in mech/electrical and let's throw in kitchens. Also, thanks to those pointing out the mixed hazard stuff and 400 sq.ft. Never noticed that before and I don't have a good or bad excuse. Chris Cahill, P.E. Fire Protection Engineer Sentry Fire Protection, Inc. 763-658-4483 763-658-4921 fax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mail: P.O. Box 69 Waverly, MN 55390 Location: 4439 Hwy 12 SW Waverly, MN 55390 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:39 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Mech/Electrical room classification (wa Existing Pipe ScheduledSystem Water Supply) Mechanical room and no storage, now that's funny. Where else is there to put all the holiday decorations and the last 10 years worth of business records, I mean like why let all that open space be wasted? No way could I see any justification for either one of these rooms being considered LIGHT Hazard. Must have been politicians that came up with that ruling. ;) Craig L. Prahl, CET Fire Protection Specialist Mechanical Department CH2MHILL Lockwood Greene 1500 International Drive PO Box 491, Spartanburg, SC 29304-0491 Direct - 864.599.4102 Fax - 864.599.8439 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ch2m.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Sornsin Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 3:21 PM To: '[email protected]' Subject: RE: Mech/Electrical room classification (wa Existing Pipe ScheduledSystem Water Supply) Oooh! Good one! I my experience, we have done it that way out of tradition. Maybe because electrical/mechanical rooms can be combined; many mechanical rooms have fuel fired equipment; both kinds of rooms often become storage rooms (rightfully or wrongly). If some engineer doesn't specify it, one can certainly argue in many cases that these rooms may not warrant protection beyond light hazard. But I always spec them OH; as a contractor we designed them that way, too. The ND members of this forum are all too familiar with the ND Dept of Health making them change their non-ordinary temperature heads to ordinary because "the mechanical room is really an air handling room with no storage and thus warrants light hazard protection and ordinary temp heads." Never mind the additional sprinklers, additional density, potential for future storage, and lack of human occupancy. "Those head must be changed!" Mark Sornsin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fletcher, Ron Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Existing Pipe Scheduled System Water Supply Out of curiosity where do come up with electrical/mechanical rooms being OH? Ron Fletcher Aero Automatic Sprinkler Phoenix, AZ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thom McMahon Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:15 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Existing Pipe Scheduled System Water Supply We need to be careful in our use of words here. This building is a light hazard occupancy. All light hazard occupancy buildings will contain some areas of Ordinary hazard, such as kitchens laundry rooms, or electrical/mechanical rooms. These areas do not change the classification of the hazard for the entire building, or the hose stream requirements. While these areas must be protected per their specific hazard for density, if your largest OH II area is only 600 Sf then you only provide OH II density for that 600 SF area, and any smaller areas of the same hazard. Usually this is done by reducing the spacing per head to like 75 Sf per head with 5.6K will give you 0.20 at just about 7 PSI. So for your 600 Sf you would calc 8 heads unless your Light hazard area required more than 8 heads, or was more remote, with the same number of heads. Now because this was installed pipe schedule, you need to know if OH pipe schedule was used in the OH areas? Actually you need to Hydraulic the entire system to ensure the loss from the backflow will allow it to work per NFPA 13, 2007 8.17.4.6.2. But as far as your question goes "The Occupancy is Light Hazard" for the use of 11.2.2.1 so 15 Psi and the 30-60 Min. duration is OK. Thom McMahon, SET Firetech, Inc. 2560 Copper Ridge Dr P.O. Box 882136 Steamboat Springs, CO 80488 Tel: 970-879-7952 Fax: 970-879-7926 Timothy: You must design for Ordinary Hazard in the Ordinary Hazard areas; Light in the Light Hazard Areas. There is no "overall building design approach"; the building is not Light Hazard unless ALL areas of the building are light hazard. Mark A. 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