Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 15 subscribers
  • Views 442 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

climate change and weekly testing of sprinkler systems

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
hello,

i was wondering, while the world is trying to move in the direction of zero carbon, why do insurance companies still insist on weekly running of large diesel powered engines being run every week on sprinkler systems?

this seems illogical. they won't take the risk if you want to remove the sprinklers, they cannot produce anything in law that says this needs to be done this often, only that this is an industry standard?

i can understand how these industry standards get drawn up, but how to promote change?

thank you
  • 0
    It sounds very logical to me.  They have decided that a sprinkler system is useless if the pump doesn't work.  And if the sprinklers don't work, that means a bigger claim if there's a fire in the building.
  • 0
    grubbym:

    hello,

    i was wondering, while the world is trying to move in the direction of zero carbon, why do insurance companies still insist on weekly running of large diesel powered engines being run every week on sprinkler systems?

    this seems illogical. they won't take the risk if you want to remove the sprinklers, they cannot produce anything in law that says this needs to be done this often, only that this is an industry standard?

    i can understand how these industry standards get drawn up, but how to promote change?

    thank you


    The world will never be zero carbon. Carbon is essential to life on earth. Perhaps you are referring to CO2? And that is also essential to life and plant growth.


    Also, if a fire is prevented by a sprinkler system, the result will be an elimination of "carbon" that you are concerned about.


    Z.


  • 0
    Ignoring the green or otherwise sidetrack, the question, is how do you decide than a weekly test is good, and once a month is not enough, and once a day or once an hour would be excessive.


    The answer I suspect relates to the simultaneous chance of a pump failure, and also a fire occurring that required the pumps, in the interval between one test and the next. Clearly the longer the interval, the greater the risk.  

    The choice of a week may well date from a time when such engines were more unreliable, and fires more common, a lot of guidance does, but folk are very resistant to any change if it sounds like 'increasing a risk' even when it does not.

    Now I have no idea of the real risk, but I guess asking how often is a failure detected during the test would be a good start to estimating the true risk of adjusting the test interval.


    Things that have to be more reliable, are tested more often, the batteries in some medical kit are monitored continuously for example and issue a low battery warning with several hours remaining.

    Things that are quite safe, like cars, well an annual MOT test is enough, and not even that for cars that are more than 40 years old and not likely to be used much, or farm machinery that does not go much on the public road.

    Mike.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Don’t blame the insurance companies. The testing of firewater/ sprinkler systems is governed by national requirements e.g., in the USA its NFPA-25 Standard for the Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance of Water­ Based Fire Protection Systems, Australia its AS-1851 Routine service of fire protection systems and equipment.

    NFPA requires that diesel pumps are tested each week and run – without flowing water - for 30 minutes – electric pumps weekly for 10 minutes.  By contrast the Australian Standard requires monthly testing of diesel and electric driven pumps and a run time of 10 minutes minimum.

    Not sure what is required in the UK.

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    While plenty of environmental issues require serious handling, many reputable scientists are convinced that producing more CO2 is not one of them, and the "climate crisis" is far from existing in reality. Therefore, requirements for checking safety critical systems should not be abandoned based on the sin of generating certain amount of CO2.

    If in doubt, feel free to have a look at the list of hundreds of scientists who have signed the World Climate Declaration:
    https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/

Community Rules & Guidelines