HeyBub wrote:
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

In some sprinkler systems, when one goes off, they all go off.
Better to be wet than blown into the ocean.
None that I ran into in 9 years in the fire service. Although I did
not do inspections so did not have to run the numbers, it would seem
that if they did all go off, you'd lose too much water pressure and
they would be close to useless.

Where water pressure may be inadequate, auxillary pumps are installed as
part of the system.

You probably never inspected a munitions bunker, a Minuteman Missle silo, or
similar. In my town, near the ship channel, is a WW2 Ordnance Depot. It has
hundreds of munition bunkers that have these overhead water pipes.

Aside:
The San Jacinto Ordnance Depot was sited on 5,000 acres and is comprised of
these bunkers. Each bunker is about 150' long and 50' wide, and 20' high,
made of concrete with 6-ft walls in the shape of a Quonset hut. Each bunker
it topped with about ten feet of dirt. Between each bunker is a mound of
soil higher than the bunker.

These bunkers are arranged in rows with VERY small thick steel-doored
entrances (~3x6 ft) that face each other across a "street." The "street" is
more like a concrete pad with a railroad track down its center. The bunkers
are on either side of this 100' wide "street."

Over the years, since 1941, the dirt and mounds between the bunkers have
been overgrown with a pine forest and assorted shrubbery.

You'd think the valuable land - on the Houston Ship Channel - would have
been converted to something other than storage warehouses for honey. It
hasn't, and I suppose the reason is the enormous cost to demolish these
bunkers. For sure you can't blow them up!


And each one of those bunkers likely has a blowout plug in the top or in
the back wall, designed to be weaker than the door, and to vent the
pressure wave from an explosion away from the other bunkers. Any crew in
the bunker would be a writeoff, of course, but they didn't want the
whole yard going up.

As to linked sprinkler heads- I'm no expert, but I thought they just
linked heads within the local firewall perimeter- ie, that wing or floor
or whatever. No need to flood the whole building for a small fire.

--
aem sends...