press the fire Jamison said Water distri bution out of an in rack system is not uni form The sprinkler might be only six inches away from the commodity so you get highly localized water concentrations and at four feet away you ll get no water at all To understand where the water goes Jamison and her team conducted several water distribution tests and performed cal culations using FireFOAM to determine optimal sprinkler placement and flow By the time the team got to large scale testing they had studied nearly everything associated with in rack sprinklers They looked at sprinkler activation water distri bution and suppression activation time and the placement of face and flue sprinklers Early on we tried some sprinkler con figurations that just didn t work Jamison said But by the time we got to the large scale tests I would have been surprised if it didn t work the way we had expected Advancing fire protection FM Global has a long history of working with the National Fire Protection Asso ciation to improve its fire codes including NFPA 13 Eventually the recommendations of FM Global s Data Sheet 8 9 may find their way into NFPA 13 and possibly other fire protection codes Baker and Jamison presented FM Global s findings at the annual NFPA Conference and Expo in June And while the process of improving NFPA 13 will unfold over the next few years FM Global customers will be able to utilize the new protection guidelines immediately Section 1 5 of NFPA 13 indicates that you don t have to implement a protec tion scheme provided in NFPA 13 as long as you use a protection scheme equal to or better than what is offered in NFPA 13 Baker explained All of the research we conducted can be used by our engineering staff on behalf of our clients to assure local authorities that our in rack sprinkler protec tion options meet the intent of this section so they can feel comfortable signing off even though it s not in the code yet vs example of an old configuration example of a new configuration SEE THE DIFFERENCE Research shows that fewer but more powerful sprinklers within storage racks provide more effective fire protection for many commodities stored in ware houses As a result FM Global Property Loss Prevention Data Sheet 8 9 Storage of Class 1 2 3 4 and Plastic Commodities was revised in July 2015 THE BENEFITS n Improved fire protection n Lower cost to install n Reduced vulnerability to damage n Protection for unlimited storage heights n Reduced water usage and environmental impact COST SAVINGS In a 500 000 square foot 46 450 square meter warehouse with an 80 foot 24 meter ceiling height the cost of installing sprinklers pumps and water tanks could fall from approximately US 4 3 million to as little as US 2 6 million according to contractor estimates THE RESEARCH Nearly three years of research conducted by our world renowned scientists and property loss prevention engineers included computer fire modeling at the Center for Property Risk Solutions and hundreds of small intermediate and large scale tests at the FM Global Research Campus ISSUE 2 2015 REASON 17

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