We asked a random sample of people what their perception of fire sprinklers were for domestic use and this is a sample of their responses:
1. Do they go off by mistake?
Each sprinkler head is individually activated and only activates when the temperature below it reaches a predetermined level - around 68 degrees centigrade.
2. If I want to test my smoke detector I press a button but how do I test a fire sprinkler?
You can’t test an individual sprinkler head once installed for obvious reasons but all heads are individually tested during manufacture. The water pressure and flow requirement of the system is calculated at the time of installation and this can then be verified from a test point in the system.
3. How can you prevent false triggering?
Only the direct heat from a fire can activate a sprinkler head.
4. Are fire sprinklers more effective than smoke alarms?
Statistics show that your chances of surviving a domestic fire are approximately 60% if the property has smoke detectors fitted. This rises to around 95% if the property has a domestic fire sprinkler system installed.
5. Do they exist in other countries?
They are popular in North America, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe.
6. Don’t they do a lot of damage to furniture and fixtures ?
Obviously, they do considerably less damage than a fire would do if left unchecked.
7. Wouldn’t they have to be set to only go off in the rooms that were on fire and not the whole house?
Sprinklers would be a good idea if they only went off in the room where the fire starts.
These two questions arise from the assumption that all the sprinkler heads are activated simultaneously. This is an understandable mistake to make but they are activated individually.
8. I would worry about accidental activation when smoke/heat drifts from the process of cooking.
Again, this person is confusing smoke sensors with heat sensors which are used with sprinkler systems. The heat generated by cooking and open fires will not trigger a sprinkler head because they are placed in a position that takes heat sources into consideration. There is a 1 in 16 million chance of these heat sensors false triggering
9. Aren’t most people killed by smoke rather than fire?
This is true however in most cases the fire would be controlled at an early stage resulting in less combustion. Also the water droplets considerably reduce the amount of smoke emission.
10. Isn’t the water damage as bad as fire damage?
There are plenty of statistics available to prove that water damage is considerably less than that of the fire.
11. If water goes on a fat fire, won’t it make the fire worse?
The last thing anybody should do to a fat fire is to introduce water to it. However the deluge of water that is delivered from a sprinkler head can cause a slight increase in combustion initially followed by a complete extinction of the fire as the flames are starved of oxygen by the quantity of water.
12. If the sprinkler system were to go off while I was on holiday, how long would it go on for?
This is a good question. In fact, all residential and domestic fire sprinkler systems have a control circuit which activates sounders in the property. In addition to this, there is a sounder and strobe mounted on the outside of the building which is labelled fire and will alert anyone to the fact that there is, or has been a fire in the property.
