Fire Protection- Sprinkler System

September 7, 2008

If you have been in a city such as New York or Los Angeles you have probably noticed a trend of high rise buildings due to the scarcity of land in those urban areas. By law high rise buildings are suppose to be constructed so that no part of the building is more than 30 meters away from a staircase. However, with the advancement of science and technology, new fire protection systems are being developed that allow buildings to require staircases no more than 45 meters.
Sprinkler systems are the most widely used and oldest form of automatic fire extinguishing systems. The reason these are the most widely used fire extinguishing system is because they automatically generate a fire alarm and put out the fire. Below are a few of the forms of sprinkler systems:
Wet Sprinkler System- This system consists of pipes that are kept filled with pressurized water. As soon as the sprinkler head opens water is sprayed out. This is the most widely used system.
Pre-operation Sprinkler System- This system has a primary side filled with pressurized water and a secondary pipe filled with compressed air. If a fire occurs, the fire detector uses the fire signal to open the pre-operation water flow detector unit which causes the primary side to launch the pressurized water to flow to the secondary side. Once the pressurized water enters the secondary side it operates a pressure switch which generates a fire alarm. The decrease in pressure in the primary side causes the pump to operate and spray water once the sprinkler head opens by a heat sensor.
Open Sprinkler System- This system works by using open sprinkler heads that have no heat sensor, so the water is sprayed from all of the sprinkler heads when manually operated. This system is used when you have high ceilings that create the possibility that the flow of normal hot air might open sprinkler heads that are not over the fire source.
Dry Sprinkler System- The dry sprinkler system has two sides to its pumps. The primary side is filled with pressurized water and the secondary side is filled with pressurized air. This system works when the air pressure in the secondary side drops and the sprinkler head opens and then the water flow detection unit opens and releases the water.
Fire protection is very important when it comes to building safety and anyone of the sprinkler systems above should be considered when constructing a high rise building.

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