Mark, The water supply requirements specified in Fire Code 507 and Appendix B are provided by any means "approved" by the fire code official. Generally speaking, fire departments seek a "reliable" water supply. In most instances the public water utility is the only means of a reliable water supply.
The fire flow requirements specified in Appendix B refer to the amount of water available, at fire hydrants, for fire fighting purposes. If a single fire hydrant cannot achieve the required fire flow fire code officials will typically permit simultaneous flows of multiple fire hydrants. The caveat here is a limitation on how many fire hydrants the fire code official will allow to be flowed. Generally, one hydrant for fire flows less than 2000 gpm, two hydrants for greater than 2000 gpm, and three hydrants for greater than 3000 gpm. I'm not aware of any AHJ that allows more than three fire hydrants to be flowed. If private on-site fire hydrants are required to supplement available public fire hydrants a fire pump may be necessary to provide the correct gpm. I hope this clarifies the issue for you. Galen Taylor Fire Prevention Engineering County of Los Angeles Fire Department 323-890-4339 [email protected] ________________________________________ From: Sprinklerforum [[email protected]] on behalf of [email protected] [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 6:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: A Poll of the Experienced Over this weekend I'd like to ask the opinion of those forumites experienced in the reading and understanding of the "International Fire Code" on the topic of "Fire Flow" described in Chapter 5, and further prescribed in Appendix B. Is the available flow rate and residual pressure referenced, intended to describe these values of the municipal or private water supply available to the building site? Or, the minimum output of any fire pump associated specifically with the automatic sprinkler system in the building? Any takers? Questions? Clarifications? Thanks for any answers. Mark at Aero 602 820-7894 Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkler.org _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkler.org
