How to Ensure Your Fire Sprinkler System is Compliant

A fire sprinkler system is crucial to keep your residential or commercial property, and those inside it, safe. But a sprinkler system needs to be designed and installed with certain safety requirements and regulations at the forefront of the process in order to provide proper, and legal, protection.

Pyrotech Sprinklers are here to help you ensure your fire sprinkler system is compliant and passes inspection. This guarantees the best possible protection against damage, death/injury and legal liability.

What is a fire sprinkler system inspection?

Sprinkler systems are an effective form of combatting fires in commercial buildings. Their installation is crucial in preventing the spread of fire, stopping smaller incidents from turning into major ones.

A fire sprinkler inspection is a thorough assessment of your building’s sprinkler system to check that its design and functionality meets requirements and will adequately prevent the spread of a fire.

This includes looking over individual components visually, as well as running specific functional tests to check for correct water pressure and coverage. This way, you can be sure that your sprinkler system activates effectively during a fire.

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How often should a fire sprinkler system be inspected?

A fire sprinkler system should be inspected at least annually, if not more frequently. This should be enough to ensure that all components are still functioning as intended in most cases. However, you might require more frequent inspections depending on the building type or location.

For example, fire sprinkler systems for care homes might need quarterly flow switch testing, and might warrant regular thorough inspections too due to the vulnerable nature of its residents, and increased risk material.

It’s often legally required that the inspection is carried out by a third party, independent of the building, and installer.

Fire sprinkler system compliance: Regulations

Maintaining compliance with fire sprinkler system regulations (such as the BS 9251) is not only legally required, but also drastically improves safety of property and lives. These British Standard guidelines place responsibility on building owners and businesses based on the type of building. These guidelines might disclose the need for your system to have:

Specific minimum flow rates
Minimum durations
Adequately spaced nozzles for total coverage

These guidelines are mainly relevant to residential building types.

Another relevant guideline which often needs to be followed are the BS EN 12845. As opposed to the above standards, BS EN 12845 specifications relate to industrial or commercial buildings, covering design, installation and maintenance of sprinkler systems in these properties.

As a business, the first step is to seek fire sprinkler system installation from experienced professionals (such as Pyrotech Sprinklers), who will ensure that your fire safety system is designed and installed following legislation closely.

After this, you and/or your business is obligated to continue contributing to safety by organising at least annual inspections, to ensure that no parts of the system have become faulty.

The importance of fire sprinkler system compliance

The importance of sprinkler system compliance is three-fold:

Saves lives – Sprinkler system regulations are designed to prevent the spread of fire in a range of building types. The primary reason for this (except for in buildings solely used for storage) is to protect human rights, whether it’s a sprinkler system for student accommodation, residential apartments or any other building type, sprinkler systems decrease the chance of death by fire drastically.

Protects equipment/property – Sprinklers protect your property, and the equipment within it from a fire breaking out/spreading. In almost any case, this is very important, but it’s even more important in large storage warehouses or facilities holding lots of important data/documents.
Ensures legal compliance – Being legally compliant means, in most cases, you can’t get into legal trouble if a fire does break out. Doing your due diligence means you’ve done what you can to reduce this risk, and this might save you from financial trouble. Legal compliance also increases your chance of a successful insurance claim in the event of an accident.

Consequences of a non-compliant sprinkler system

A non-compliant sprinkler system means you run the risk of being legally liable for loss of life and damage to property. Not only may this mean losing your business and falling under financial strain, but you’ll have to live with the guilt of your ignorance to guidelines costing people their lives.

A compliant sprinkler system is a must, and is worth the investment every time. Even if there isn’t a fire, being found not following legal guidelines could land you in serious financial trouble through fines.

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Types of fire sprinkler systems and their compliance

Here are the different types of sprinkler systems, and how they comply with certain building regulations.

Wet Pipe Sprinkler Systems – A more common system, wet pipe sprinklers are permanently full of water so that fire can immediately flow out as soon as a fire breaks out.

They’re extremely reliable and best suited for compliance in areas where pipes aren’t likely to freeze, such as offices and schools.

Dry Pipe Sprinkler Systems – A system for buildings where freezing is more likely. Dry pipes are full of pressurised air or nitrogen which, when the sprinkler head is triggered by a fire, is released.

The resulting decrease in pressure lets water start flowing into the pipes and through the sprinkler head. Whilst this causes slightly slower activation, this is the only way to effectively prevent pipes from freezing in cold temperatures.

Dry pipe systems will allow for legal compliance and protect perfectly in areas such as libraries, server rooms, or other commercial properties where water damage would be severely damaging.
Pre-action Sprinkler Systems – Sprinkler systems which contain elements of wet and dry pipe systems. Typically filled with pressurised air instead of water, and most suitable for environments where water would cause damage.

Activation is a two-step process, where sensors detect the fire, activating a pre-action valve which allows water to flow into pipes. After this, each sprinkler head needs to be triggered by heat individually before water is released. This adds increased protection against unintentional activation and means your museums, libraries and data centers can be protected thoroughly, as well as being legally compliant.

As experts in designing and installing fire sprinkler systems (as our project portfolio suggests), Pyrotech Sprinklers are here to help you become, and remain, legally compliant as a business or building owner. Get in touch with us today for more information.