Consider a taller building where city pressure only gets water up ¾ of the 
height. Start your pump with a flow switch and you are going to have a heck of 
a water hammer.

I did think about using flow switches to start the pump on a system where they 
are 3 dry valves and there is less than 15’ of pipe with water pressure in it. 
4 years ago I could not find anything that said there had to be a jockey pump.



Best regards,
Charles Thurston                          [email protected]
MYRTLE BEACH FIRE SAFETY GROUP
A Division of Pye-Barker Fire Safety
1445 Cannon Road
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
(843) 916 - 8787
(843) 839 - 3473 facsimile

[cid:[email protected]]

From: Sprinklerforum [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Bruce Verhei
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2018 10:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: No Jockey Pump

So why do we use jockey pumps? Wouldn’t one of Mike H’s flow switches alway be 
cheaper?

Best.

Bruce Verhei

On Aug 29, 2018, at 19:05, Larry Keeping 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
NFPA 20 has never mandated jockey pumps.

Back in the cycle for the development of the 1999 edition, in response to 
Proposal 20-36, the Committee Statement confirmed that “A pressure maintenance 
pump is not required by the standard. …”

For the 2016 edition, some text was added, for the first time, to clarify that 
pressure maintenance is required for pressure-actuated fire pumps, but a jockey 
pump is not necessarily required to accomplish the task. Section 4.26.1 (c) 
allows “Another approved means that is not the main fire pump”. And again, the 
Committee Statement confirmed “… a pressure maintenance pump may not 
necessarily be required and that other forms of pressure maintenance may be 
used. …”.

Larry Keeping



From: Sprinklerforum 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
 On Behalf Of Thomas Reinhardt
Sent: August-29-18 5:15 PM
To: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: No Jockey Pump

Hi group,
Found a 50 yr. old fire pump at a business that didn’t have a jockey pump. Am I 
missing something. Thanks

Tom Reinhardt
Fire Inspector/Plan Reviewer
Skokie Fire Department
7424 Niles Center Road
Skokie, IL 60077
Office: 847-982-5342
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

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