Chief Fire Officer Mike Farrand celebrated a home sprinkler system in his new house on 17 July 2009.

One of the Fire Service's key national strategies is that all new homes should have a home sprinkler as this is one of the best ways to reduce the risk and tragedy of house fires. Home sprinklers can now be installed as part of well-designed domestic plumbing, and smoke alarms still provide a vital role as these provide the earliest warning of a fire.

When Chief Fire Officer Mike Farrand began plans to build his new house 18 months ago, he knew there was one safety system – a home sprinkler – he couldn't do without.

An Arapawa region fire engineer was keen to support one of their own and to show how easy it is to have a home sprinkler installed. The fire engineer supplied Mike with a completed home sprinkler design, based on Mike's architectural floor plans, and designed and installed to Fire sprinkler systems for houses, NZS 4517:2002 (this Standard is currently being revised and the new version is expected to be published in early 2010).

The key feature of the home sprinkler design was that it was just domestic plumbing – and a plumber completed the entire installation. As the home sprinkler is all interconnected, whenever a tap is opened and flows as normal, Mike knows his sprinklers are ready to work too, as this water has come past the sprinkler heads installed above. This provides daily feedback to Mike that the sprinkler system is fully operational.

Demonstrating the home sprinkler system

Mike was keen to showcase his home sprinkler initiative. An industry demonstration was held on 17 July 2009 at his house and the commissioning flow test of the home sprinkler was witnessed by over 40 guests. The guests included fire personnel, building inspectors, fire scientists, fire engineers, insurance assessors, water engineers, and plumbers.

The home sprinkler system – technical details

The supply pipe coming in from the street main (which was upgraded to be 40 mm in size rather than the standard 25 mm) provides water to all the plumbing fittings in the house, be they domestic taps or sprinkler heads. The sprinkler heads are connected to a 28 mm Polybutylene pipe that loops around the centreline of the ceiling on both floors, while the domestic taps are connected to either a 16 mm or a 22 mm Polybutylene pipe as normal.

The flow test exceeded expectations with a result of 80 litres per minute (L/min), when the sprinkler heads only required 55 L/min.

Mike also has a smoke alarm in almost every room.

Summarised from an article by James Firestone, Fire Engineer at New Zealand Fire Service, National Headquarters.