4 Things Your Customers Might Not Know About Sprinklers
As major legislation sparks a new era of building safety in the UK, we turn to construction and fire safety professionals to help us to understand the changes that are coming to our homes.
Prepare for the incoming pressures of busy retrofitting schedules and new development changes, with the answers your customers are going to need. Answer their questions about how fire sprinkler systems really work, with BlazeMaster CPVC.
Do We Really Need them?
For many years, government advice on keeping safe from fire in the home has been clear; install a smoke detector. At least one on each floor of the home. While smoke alarms perform an essential task of warning families of any hazards that have emerged in the house, they cannot get to work to extinguish a fire. Without regular maintenance and testing, many alarms stop working, having been forgotten about.
The moment a BlazeMaster sprinkler head is activated, the fire is being tackled. This greatly reduces the threat of the fire spreading to other rooms and floors of the house.
Are They Good Enough to Extinguish a Fire?
A popular misconception about sprinklers is their ability to fully extinguish a fire. Are they only there to slow down the spread of fire, or can they eliminate the threat of a domestic outbreak of fire completely?
This was put to the test, in a European study. Over a ten year period in which building fires were recorded, 98% were fully extinguished by sprinklers alone. Of these, 60% were extinguished from the activation of just four sprinkler heads.
Don’t They All Go Off at Once?
The dramatic image of an outbreak in which hundreds of employees flee an office building in what looks like a thunderstorm, when every sprinkler in every room activates simultaneously is, surprisingly, quite inaccurate.
BlazeMaster Fire Protection Systems trigger only when they need to. In other words, when a sprinkler head’s sensor bulb identifies a temperature of 68 degrees C or above, that specific sprinkler head activates and water is released. no other sprinkler heads in the system are triggered, leaving the rest of the building’s occupants safe and dry, while the sprinkler heads that are required, get straight to work.
What About Water Damage?
Not only is water triggered in extremely localized areas where it is needed, leaving the rest of the building unaffected, but the room in question is under far less threat of water damage too.
A sprinkler system uses up to 90% less water than the water required to extinguish a fire using a firefighter’s hose. A hose distributes 600 litres of water per minute; an activated sprinkler head will disperse only 60 litres in that time. Accurate activation in the right place at the right time, means less water is therefore required. Property damage from water is reduced by as much as 85%, when sprinklers are in place and able to get to work instantly.
Learn More About the New Legislation
As of November 26th 2020, Fire sprinklers will be mandatory in all high rise occupancy over 11 meters tall. Your customers will have a lot of questions; be ready with the answers.
For more information on the major upcoming changes to building safety legislation, read our article, A Welcome Change to UK Fire Safety.
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