Owen: What exactly do you object to if the fire official is trying to verify the delivery of adequate fire flow? What water company or muni-utilities department is providing the water? Have they exercised any hydrants in the subject neighborhood in the past... I dunno, TEN years? Can you, sitting at your keyboard, verify that the required fire flow is available and there are no closed sectional valves in the neighborhood? That the ancient 6" that was installed right after WW2 isn't bleeding residual pressure during a fire flow event? We have at least 6 water companies just in San Diego County that have utterly failed to maintain and improve their systems as development adds density to their service areas so now they use velocity limits as a hair-trigger benchmark and they require developers to put in sometimes hundreds of feet of new 8" to replace their aging infrastructure so they don't have to put it in next year's budget. What do you think is worse, a $500 flow model or a $500,000 section of new main?
Instead of just sniping at a non-problem, trying called the FPO who's made this ruling and ask them if they're aware of issues with that water company or perhaps that zone of the water company's system. Advise your clients on future projects that this charge might be imposed. Proactively call the water company to find out if they have archival flow tests or models that might satisfy the fire official. Yes, it's $500 and will apparently take two weeks (that's a separate issue and BS IMHO). And yes perhaps it's unusual to see this request on an SFR, but we have to prove fire flow on every project, so maybe-just-maybe this fire official knows something about the water system in question. Steve Leyton, President Protection Design and Consulting T | 619.255.8964 x 102 | www.protectiondesign.com 2851 Camino Del Rio South | Suite 210 | San Diego, CA 92108 Fire Protection System Design | Consulting | Planning | Training -----Original Message----- From: Sprinklerforum [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Owen Evans via Sprinklerforum Sent: Monday, June 14, 2021 6:54 AM To: Travis Mack via Sprinklerforum <[email protected]> Cc: Owen Evans <[email protected]> Subject: Fire Flow Test for SFR Has anyone had an AHJ require a fire flow test for a single family residence situated in a metropolitan area? Not for the purpose of calculations but to ensure the municipal water delivery system could handle the 500 gpm required (1000 gpm per California Residential Fire Code minus a 500 gpm credit for having fire sprinklers). This is a waste of time and money. It takes approximately four weeks to get done by water company, at a cost of $500. Has anyone argued against such a requirement, and how? I tried but was met with “because I wear a badge and I say so”. The general didn’t want to argue with AHJ, he decided to pay to avoid any further delay. Owen Evans Sent from the all new Aol app for iOS _______________________________________________ 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
