Home Fire Sprinkler Save

Oct. 13, 2009 – My story isn’t that different from most victims who’ve had a fire in their home, but here it is in my own words…

On Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009, my husband and I were at home while two workers put the last coat of sealant on our stained concrete floor in the living room. We did not know this but the sealant was combustible. At 2:00 p.m., it caught fire. It ignited because the power and gas were not shut-off in the living room or the house.

In less than one second, a flash fire erupted and streaked across the entire floor. The room was engulfed in flames. There were shouts and screams, and in less than 10 seconds, the fire detector sounded its alarm.

The sprinklers in the living room and nearby hall started, and put out the blaze almost immediately. The room had burned so hot and fast that the frames to the patio doors are inoperable. The walls, ceiling, and drapes were badly scorched, but not burned because of the sprinklers. The damage to the house from the fire was very minimal.

Smoke damage was the worst part as black smoke had rolled all throughout the house. The fire ignited the protective plastic on the walls that the workers had put up to contain smells and deadly gases in the living room. The water damage from the sprinklers was unfortunate, but easily repaired.

It took just four days to dry out the walls and carpet. The soot that blew through the AC ducts was far more extensive.

We will need to repaint every wall, rewash every piece of clothing, and wipe down the interior and exterior of every cabinet. All of the furniture, drapes, and blinds are filthy from soot, which has taken many weeks to repair.

My heart goes out to anyone who has survived a fire. It’s terrifying, it’s fast, it’s surreal. And it could have been deadly. If there had been no sprinklers, we would have possibly lost lives and definitely lost our entire house. The fire would have gone on for several minutes, growing and growing in size and power. The fire department would have destroyed the rest of the home to put out the blaze with their axes and water hoses.

An eight-day stay in a hotel was chaotic but easy compared to losing everything. And we came very, very close to that.

For anyone who thinks that sprinklers in a residential home are an unnecessary luxury at best, at worst a costly annoyance, please consider this: My husband could have been trapped in that blaze; and the workers could have died as well. However, the sprinklers were just outside our living room.

Sprinklers work. Sprinklers save lives. Sprinklers save property. I am grateful they are in my home and will be in every home I ever purchase from now on.

I do not work for a fire protection company. I am an interior designer, wife, and mother of two.

Sincerely,
Anne M.
Las Vegas , NV
A customer of Western States Fire Protection Co.

USS Lexington Fire Sprinkler System

Western States Fire Protection Co. installed a wet pipe fire sprinkler system and stand pipes in the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas. The project took 120 days to complete and over 400 fire sprinkler heads were installed.

The USS Lexington, a World War II-vintage aircraft carrier, was commissioned in 1943 and set more records than any other carrier in the history of naval aviation. The ship participated in nearly every major operation in the Pacific Theater and spent a total of 21 months in combat. The ship’s planes destroyed 372 enemy aircraft in the air and 475 more on the ground. The ship sank or destroyed 300,000 tons of enemy cargo and damaged an additional 600,000 tons. The ship’s guns shot down 15 planes and assisted in downing five more.

In 1992, the USS Lexington was officially retired and signed over to the city of Corpus Christi to serve as a museum to preserve, for the enjoyment and education of future generations, the nation’s longest serving and most historically significant aircraft carrier.

In the above picture is a silver colored stand pipe on the exterior of the ship. There are hose pipes attached to the standpipe in the event there is a fire on the outside of the ship.

In order to run the fire sprinkler pipes, holes had to be cut in the steel walls throughout the USS Lexington. Due to the historical significance of the ship Western States Fire Protection Co. had to coordinate with museum staff the location of each cut.

A backflow preventer is a double check valve assembly that uses a reduced pressure principle to prevent the backflow of polluted water into the water supply. Often times chemical additives, such as anti-freeze, are in the fire sprinkler system.

Western States Fire Protection Co. is proud to have played a role in making the USS Lexington a safer place to visit. It is a valuable national treasure that played a significant role in the nation’s defense for nearly 50 years and is a memorial worth preserving to help us remember the heroism and sacrifice of those who have served their nation.

Parts of this headline rely on extracts from www.usslexington.com which are reproduced here by permission of The USS Lexington Museum on the Bay.

Fire Protection Systems for Winspear Opera House

Western States Fire Protection Co.’s Dallas team will design and install the fire protection systems for the Winspear Opera House located in Dallas, Texas. Systems include standpipes, wet, dry, and preaction fire sprinkler systems with 2,543 sprinkler heads along with special noise and vibration requirements for the installation of piping. Western States Fire Protection Co. staff worked two years to obtain this contract.

The Winspear Opera House will be part of the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts located in downtown Dallas. This center is the largest cultural initiative in the history of Dallas and the southwest with a fund raising goal of $275 million. The opera house is designed in the classic Italian horseshoe configuration and seats 2,200. Performances are planned to begin during the 2009/2010 season. The London firm Sound Space will develop the acoustical design and the acoustics will be engineered specifically for performances of opera and musical theater. The design is intended to be the standard upon which all 21st century opera houses will be measured.

Fire Sprinkler Systems for Microsoft

Western States Fire Protection Co. received notice May 1, 2006 to install a fire sprinkler system in Microsoft’s data storage facility in Quincy, Washington. Microsoft is constructing several large data storage facilities around the country with Quincy as their first stop. Quincy is a farming town in Central Washington, located hundreds of miles from Microsoft’s home office in Redmond. Originally a potato producing community, and town with only two stop lights, Quincy is quickly becoming a silicon community with the new Yahoo facility a mile away from the Microsoft site. The 55 acre site is slated for three buildings, each one approximately 500,000 sq. ft., for a total of 1,500,000 sq. ft. of data storage. Upon completion 30 to 50 people will be employed at the facility. The site was selected for it’s inexpensive land, cheap power and location in a non seismic zone.

The data storage facility is unpretentious looking from the outside, like an ordinary warehouse, but houses rows and rows of server racks that consume unbelievable amounts of power. The site has an electrical substation, diesel generators and batteries for backup power in case the power is interrupted. The site requires 48 megawatts of power which is enough electricity to supply roughly 14,000 homes.

Western States Fire Protection Co.’s first day on site was May 5, 2006. They were handed new drawings and specifications, none of which the project estimator/salesman had seen before. June 1, 2006 FM Global joined the team, further changing the scope of the project. Construction started May 10, 2006 and they started installing pipe July 17, 2006.

Most of the fire sprinkler pipe was fabricated at Vipond Fire Protection in Canada. The 669 Union field crew, headed up by Carl Svarverud, worked day and night shifts in some of the most unfavorable conditions; 100 degree plus heat, dust storms in 80 foot boom lifts, and night work with rented light towers. Work started two weeks after structural steel erection with no concrete slab to work on. Boom lifts were required to maneuver over miles of buried electrical conduits and what seemed like endless buried electrical vaults. With all of these challenges, the field crew beat the estimated field labor hours with safety their number one priority.

Fire Sprinkler Systems for Furniture Mart

Western States Fire Protection Co. has just finished installing a wet pipe sprinkler system in Nebraska Furniture Mart™’s Kansas City, Kansas store. Joe DePriest and his crew of up to five people worked hard to get this project done in less than six months.

The 357,505 square foot warehouse addition from 262,000 square feet to 622,000 square feet provides an additional 3 million cubic feet of storage capacity.

Stretching 80 acres across the expansive crossroad of 1-70 and 1-435, Nebraska Furniture Mart™’s Kansas City addition is truly awesome in size, selection, innovation and convenience. Once final construction is complete the warehouse will grow from 34 to 100 dock doors to handle inbound and outbound freight.

“This expansion is another indication of the strength and regional drawing power of Nebraska Furniture Mart™ and this destination shopping and entertainment area” explains Joe Reardon, Mayor and CEO of Unified Government of Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Kansas.

Western States Fire Protection Co. installed four wet pipe systems with 1630 heads at the roof and four wet pipe in-rack systems with 6897 sprinklers into the high bay building.

Colorado Convention Center Project

Western States Fire Protection Co. installed an automatic fire sprinkler system for the Colorado Convention Center Phase II Expansion. This 285 million dollar project doubled the size of the Convention Center, adding approximately 1,400,000 square feet of new space and transformed the building into a landmark that represents a gateway to downtown Denver. The project was completed in January 2005.

The expansion includes:

• New 1,000-space parking garage.
• New 5,000 fixed-seat auditorium.
• New 50,000 square foot ballroom.
• Existing exhibit hall increased from 290,000 to 600,000 square feet that can be divided into blocks of space according to the needs of the event.
• 23 new covered truck-loading docks, served by their own roadway that completely encircles the building.
• The existing 65,000 square feet of meeting space was increased to 93,000 square feet.

Western States Fire Protection Co. installed 23 dry systems feeding the parking structure, loading docks and over the RTD light rail track & Stout Street. They also installed 25 wet systems feeding the exhibit hall, ballroom and lecture hall meeting rooms; 60 additional fire hose valve stations and 4 separate valve rooms. Approximately 15,000 fire sprinkler heads were added with the expansion project.

Project Challenges

The new design required the city street and light rail train be relocated from it’s existing alignment which was in the middle of the new Convention Center expansion. The city street and light rail train was moved north, to bend around the expansion. This required the Convention Center be built over the top of the light rail in order to facilitate the installation of the overhead catenary power lines, which were anchored to the new building. The work had to take place while the street and light rail line were still in service. Very tight coordination limited the outages to the weekends. Due to careful planning, the rail service did not have any unscheduled downtime.

The fire detection system had to be incorporated into the existing fire alarm panel while not taking the system off line for over eight hours. Western States Fire Protection Co. was able to design and install a new fire alarm panel and make a single point termination from each existing fire alarm device to the new panel, with no interruptions to the facility.
During the first quarter of construction, the owner requested that the parking garage be completed a year early so that they could generate revenue from the parking fees. Western States Fire Protection Co. was able to design and install a temporary life safety and egress path in order to receive a TCO from the City of Denver in order to open the 1,000 car garage early.