The fire protection thread spilled over into the rec.autos.antique group, and
this note appeared from John De Armond (who publishes Performance Engineering
Magazine.) It's not brief (80 lines) but I thought it was good info, so here
'tis:
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From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond)
Subject: Fire Protection (was Re: Rolls Ghost in Barn Fire)
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 94 09:15:08 GMT
REILLY@ADMAIL.FNAL.GOV (Rob Reilly) writes:
>Anybody want to start a thread on fire protection?
Sure. Having lost my house and shop to fire 3 years ago and having a friend
lose his race engine shop to fire last year (insurance claim is almost $1mil,
not to mention what wasn't insured) has made me quite sensitive to fire
protection.
The best and most reliable thing to do is exactly what commercial concerns do
-install sprinklers. If you're a DYI-er, which I hope everyone here is,
adequate sprinkling can be installed rather cheaply. There's even a NFPA
standard on how to do it. NFPA-13 through 15 covers water sprinkler systems.
NFPA-20 covers fire pumps and NFPA-22 covers water tanks. These are available
from NFPA, Batterymarch Park, Quincy, MA, 02269. The book store at Ga tech
also stocks them so I'd expect most engineering colleges to have 'em. These
standards are very complete.
Even if you can't afford to do a to-code job, adding a few sprinkler heads in
high risk areas is easy and inexpensive. The latest code even allows plastic
pipe in residential settings. You can simply tap into your water supply and
plumb the heads in. You could cover a typical 2 car garage-type shop with 4
to 6 wide angle heads. You can also install individual heads over point source
hazards. For example, I have a head over my gas furnace in the attic, another
one over our kiln area (my wife and I do artistic glass), one over my glass
blowing bench and another over my welding bench.
If you have a large shop to protect or are on a well, you will probably have
to plan for some sort of water resevoir. The standard industrial setup is a
large ground level tank with a firepump, typically backed up with a generator
or an engine-driven backup pump. This is probably too much to expect for us
(though it could certainly have been justified in that barn mentioned above.
100 gallon bladder-type wellpump tanks are fairly cheap. Several of these on
a header will provide more than adequate flow.
Another important feature is to have a high capacity hydrant and hose
available OUTSIDE the building. By high capacity, I don't mean a fire
hydrant. A 1" hose fed by a dry-stand hydrant (the kind where the valve is
below the frost line and the exposed part is normally dry - used extensively
on farms and gas stations) is enough. I was asleep in my house when it caught
fire and even though my basement shop was fully involved when I woke up and
got out, I could have extinguished it with such a setup. The fire department
extinguished the fire using only part of a 500 gallon tanker and a 1.5" hose.
If you install a hydrant, install it on the water feeder OUTSIDE the house and
also install a quarter turn shutoff valve on the house feeder downstream of
the hydrant. This is VERY important. By the time I woke up (slept through the
smoke alarm), the fire had burned through the hoses on the washing machine and
as a result, the hose I dragged around to the fire had zilch for pressure.
Had I been able to isolate the house, I could have had a fighting chance.
Next, consider installing interconnected smoke alarms. Home Depot sells a
First Alert model that is combination battery and AC operated. They are all
wired together using ordinary 2 wire/ground Romex and signal through the
"ground" lead for up to 7 alarms. The alarms were 12 bux each last time I
bought some. When one goes off, they all do. This is a very cheap way to get
a very early warning on a shop fire when you're elsewhere on the property.
Finally, consider interlocking energy centers in your house/shop with heat
detectors. Things such as the furnace, washer and dryer, air compressor, and
so on. What this involves is installing a rate-of-rise heat detector that
trips the power source to the appliance. Fenwal makes an excellent line of
detectors. I posted a fairly detailed description of how to do this several
years ago. Awhile after that, I got a note from someone who had followed my
instructions and the system saved his house. His clothes dryer motor had
caught fire while he was gone and the heat detector had tripped, removing the
energy source from the motor. A little smoke damage was all that resulted.
These fires are rare but then again, so are fires in CRTs, the source of my
fire.
I personally HATE dry chemical extinguishers after having had to clean up
after an engine fire. I have CO-2 and halon extinguishers in my shop for
class B fires and a hose for class A. I'd vastly rather clean up a watery
mess than the aftermath of a dry chemical discharge.
That's my 2 centidollar's worth :-)
John
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John De Armond, WD4OQC, Marietta, GA jgd@dixie.com
Performance Engineering Magazine. Email to me published at my sole discretion.
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