I once found a drawing done by a counterpart who drew sprinkler lines, located heads, sized the pipe, located the hydraulic remote area and drew hydraulic nodes on the drawing. When I asked some questions like how did you come up with the 3.5" and 5" pipe sizes he asked why, those were standard sizes used in mechanical process design, so what was wrong? Then I asked about the hydraulic nodes and remote area and where the calcs were, (I knew what was coming) he said they didn't do any calcs. I pointed out that it would be pretty hard to successfully size pipe on a gridded system & determine the exact remote area without running calcs since he had very little if no design experience. I also mentioned that since it was a dry system he couldn't grid it. He also didn't have any water data, again I pointed out how that could cause a problem with doing calcs. I got a somewhat defensive response. Fortunately the document was never actually released.
I've been corrected by MPE's (some of them actually own their own copy of NFPA 13) on how a sprinkler shop drawing should look. I have challenged their position based on the fact that I HAVE produced innumerable shop drawings as a contractor and they have produced ZERO. Yet since they are the PE they obviously must be right. Had a fire chief who was acting as the AHJ for the county tell a client they didn't need to sprinkler their electrical room be cause he didn't like it. Unfortunately for the client, their specific condition was going to require sprinklers in these rooms and there was no way to get around it. This same guy gave them directions to disable other systems because he didn't' feel they were necessary. And I'm sure we could all go on and on and on. Yes, the level of ignorance is huge. All you can do is educate every time the opportunity arises and hope for the best. 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 George Church Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 7:59 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: The Engineering Problem (RE: another fire -thiswillbeinteresting) Be serious. I love calling an engineer and asking if they know the water supply. When they say No, I ask where the fire pump goes and if its elec or diesel. When they ask why a pump is needed, I ask how do you know if we need a tank or pump or not if you don't know the water supply? Reality is that no matter what the White Paper says, we deal with ignorance daily. The bigger question is, who checks the checker- especially when you know the ignorant PE is as bad as the ignorant inspector (ignorance meaning lack of detailed knowledge needed, nothing further. I'm ignorant of a lot of things myself). Guess it's a good thing there are tons of safety margins built into all the codes so a crappy job still works just fine, no one will die..... glc -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Duross Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 7:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: The Engineering Problem (RE: another fire - thiswillbeinteresting) Did anyone notice a surge in MEP firms performing hydraulics in the past few years? Tom _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field) _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field) _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
