If someone is serious about eliminating the required fire sprinklers, let them hire an FPE with fire modeling capabilities to prove that they would not be effective and provide the "Equal" protection required by codes and standards. Their money, their time if it doesn't work out or the AHJ rejects the plan.
Subject: RE: Omitting sprinklers in a high building If the building code considers this an F-2 occupancy and the building can meet the egress requirements without sprinklers, and there are no other code issues that would require sprinklers then they would be correct that you wouldn't need sprinklers. It has nothing to do with building height. Even if the building were 100 feet hight, if a fire were to break out the products of combustion are going where, to the heighest point. Sprinklers may react slower due to the height but at some point they are going to react and will help knock down the gas temps. I've asked the same question and had gotten this answer back from different mfgr engineers. They are the ones doing the design, testing and listings for the sprinklers and I hope they would know. So to say that just because the building is high there shouldn't be any sprinklers is not valid. If the biulding were an F-1 occupancy you'd have sprinklers period. Otherwise you don't meet code. To sprinkler or not to sprinkler is not up to NFPA 13, it's a building code issue. Craig Prahl CH2MHILL/SPB 864-599-4102 _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://fireball.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)
