Sprinkler systems may provide general fire protection in ordinary buildings, but some fires don’t extinguish when you douse them with water. Plus, in some instances, water damage may be just as detrimental as fire damage. If your building has special hazards or delicate inventory requiring protection, you need a fire suppression system that employs foam, dry chemical agents, or clean agents to extinguish fires without water. This ensures your fire protection methods don’t inadvertently damage the very items they’re intended to protect.
Here’s a look at five of the most common scenarios that benefit from special hazard fire suppression systems.
Auto Body Shops
If you own an auto body shop in the Mid-South, you keep highly flammable paints on hand to meet your clients’ requests for touch ups and custom paint jobs. Any fumes, leaks, or spills from these chemicals present a fire hazard. Are your customers, employees, and property protected from this dangerous fire threat?
At State Systems Inc., we recommend the MONARCH fire suppression system for auto body shops. This pre-engineered dry chemical system uses industrial-strength suppression methods for faster, more thorough fire extinguishing power than any other dry chemical agent in the industry. This suppression system meets multiple NFPA standards that apply to auto body shops, including:
- NFPA Standard 17 for dry chemical extinguishing systems
- NFPA Standard 33 for spray application using flammable and combustible materials
- NFPA Standard 34 for dipping and coating processes using flammable or combusting liquids
Flammable/Hazardous Chemical Storage Facilities
Facilities designed for hazardous materials storage must meet stringent safety standards set on the federal and local levels. In addition to handling, labeling, and storing chemicals properly to reduce the risk of fire, your facility must also feature a fire protection system in case a blaze breaks out.
For this type of special hazard, we recommend the MONARCH fire suppression system. This dry chemical system meets NFPA Standard 17 for dry chemical extinguishing systems and NFPA Standard 30 for flammable and combustible liquid codes, both of which apply to chemical storage facilities. MONARCH provides 24-hour protection with heat detectors, alarm bells, manual pull stations, and agent tanks available in various sizes to meet your facility’s needs.
Aircraft Hangars
The characteristics of aircraft hangars pose a unique challenge for fire protection systems. The large, open floor area contains high quantities of flammable jet fuel, plus aircraft wings and fuselages that obstruct both fire detection and suppression efforts. Without the proper fire protection, a few hundred gallons of ignited fuel could destroy an entire facility and threaten the lives of anyone inside the hangar.
You can choose from a number of fire suppression options, but usually, a combination of fire pumps, FM-200 clean agent systems, and sprinklers provides the protection an aircraft hangar needs. Because so much complexity is involved with a large design area and potentially long distances from equipment rooms to discharge points, it’s important to leave the design and installation to a qualified life and safety professional like State Systems Inc.
Libraries, Archives & Art Galleries
These types of buildings house precious artifacts and delicate documents, many of which have survived hundreds of years or longer thanks to painstaking precautions. If you own or manage a library or similar facility, you must carry on the same level of protection your predecessors offered to the archives you store.
For optimal protection, we suggest the ANSUL Sapphire clean agent fire suppression system. This employs 3M Novec 1230 fire protection fluid, which looks and acts exactly like water when it comes to extinguishing an ordinary blaze, but it doesn’t cause water damage in the process. ANSUL Sapphire is environmentally friendly and nontoxic to humans, making it an excellent replacement for older Halon fire suppression systems.
Data/Computer Rooms
There’s no question that electronics and water don’t mix. If a fire breaks out in your data or server room, sprinklers might save the room itself, but the delicate computers are bound to be destroyed.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) fire suppression is ideal for data rooms and other circumstances where water or foam would do more harm than good. This form of clean agent fire suppression doesn’t leave behind water, foam, or dry chemical residue. It simply smothers growing fires by replacing the oxygen in the air. At State Systems Inc., we install and service Kidde and Ansul CO2 fire suppression systems.
Install a Special Hazard Fire Suppression System Today
In addition to the five scenarios listed here, other buildings that may require foam, dry, or clean agent fire suppression systems include cell sites, laboratories, museums, process control rooms, telephone equipment rooms, historical buildings, and more. If you think your building requires special hazard fire suppression, please contact State Systems Inc. to learn more about the equipment we install and service throughout the Mid-South.
