Sprinklers in schools

[Ken Taylor]

We appreciate the other potential savings, Chris but it has tended to be the immediate balance sheet that interests the 'purse holder' as the pre-allocated funds are insufficient to meet the additional immediate costs. As to what happens if the major fire occurs, it may well be someone else that has to address the issue and, in that event, there will be a stronger and more politically demanding case to find the repair/replacement money - from another source and, presumably, at the expense of someone else's project.

[Chris Houston]

I can't argue with any of that!

[ianmoore4102]

I am begining to resarch a dissertation on how the future direction of school design will affect fire protection system design.  Can anyone point me in the direction of current reading materials, research and statistics.

[BHCC]

We looked at fitting sprinklers in one of our schools only to be told by the water company that they could not guarentee the correct pressure required. Due to the size of the school it was nort an option to install a tank as it would of had to of been quite a size.
Until the water companies pull their finger out i fear this will happen quite a lot.

[Chris Houston]

My experience is that they never guarantee water pressures.  Still, seems a wasted opportunity not to have installed it, surely better than nothing?

Are you aware of the new(ish) BASA rules for sprinklers in schools, I think they did relax the water tank sizes due to this common problem.

[kurnal]

BHCC did you research the actual tank size required? They are usually reasonably small for the lower hazard installations- the tank size is related to the size of the design sprinkler controlled fire- in other words the depth of water together with the assumed maximum area of operation of the sprinklers, probably in the range of  10 - 50 cubic metres  as per table 9 of BSEN12845