Electrical supply to Residential and Sprinkler Pumps

Hi, appreciate that this post is some months old and the design decision has long since been made.

However, in my opinion the sprinkler supplies for the commercial and resi would need seperate supplies. Each of the Tenants will receive the energy bill direct from the energy supplier. in addition to this, the Landlord will run two service charge accounts that wil include energy recharge for what would be deemed to be 'common parts' for areas that the Landlord manages outside of the commercial units and flats.

Energy associated to the residential sprinkler system will be recharged to the flat Tenants, and the same for the commercial system. In any case, residential Tenants are not likely to entertain energy recharges that are acrued from anything that is outside of the residential demise. That also applies to power and lighting associated to common parts that the com/resi each have exclusive access/benefit. 

Hello Mark:

As a homeowner with my own shallow well and electric sprinkler pump, there in Florida, there are local and State laws concerning when ones lawns can be watered.   The power to run the  pump is usually connected through a programmable timer.

Peter Brooks

This may be to late but I missed it the first time around.

The first thing to note is that the electrical designer cannot put a finger on the keyboard unless they know what the Fire Strategy is for the building. This will be determined, or should be determined by the Fire Engineer.

Then in this case the mechanical engineers wil specify the pumps and the lift engineer will specify the evacuation lift.

Then the electrical design engineer will need to have access to and read and know about the following standards.

BS7671 and in particular Chapter 56.

BS 9999 for commercial  buildings and BS 9991 for residentail buildings.

BS 8519 for the resilence of safety service supplies.

There are also other relavent standards depeding on the particuar project being designed.

Then get the data from the mechanical engineer and the lift engineer in the form of data sheets for the loads especialy around the load profiles in terms of starting and running currents.

Having done the design you make a Technical Submittal to the Fire Engineer for approval.

I have inspected Safety Services for clients post installation and have never seen an even  near compliant one. Most of them are seriously non-compliant and would not work safely if they were required to do so. 

The peoplle desining the installalations have no idea what standards they should be using and complying and/or could not care less, the people installing them are eand the people inspecting and testing them are mosly un-qualified and/or corrupt. The client does not know what to expect and is only interested in the cost. This leads to the safety and lives being put at risk, the prime example being Grenfell Tower!

JP

Yes, Myself and John had this conversation around 3 years during the construction of 4 blocks of flats. I was the 'lowly' Installer, and thought this was totally wrong, and John confirmed it. Approx. 70 flats in each block, 5 or 6 storeys high. Sprinkler system throughout the public access corridors and communal areas, with a two person lift, both fed from the 'Essential Services' DB. The only trouble is, this was fed from the main incoming supply, and had no back up generator or batteries for use during a power disruption.

John confirmed it should be fed from a separate, independent supply, preferably not from the same HV/LV transformer, and/or backed up by a generator or batteries. My thoughts were conveyed to the Sites Management, who were totally uninterested, thus they were surely breaking the UK CDM Regs by installing a safety system that could not be relied on in an emergency. This wasnt a small Company, they had national Contracts.

Interesting.In the wider conext of resilience for life safety systems for residential / mixed use schemes, we occasionally see problems in that regard. As John quite righly points out, amongst other things, ignorance is likely to be an issue here. Design decisions are often left with the D&B Contractor which in my expereince can be an issue. Sounds like you got the right advice early on, pity that the Contractor did not act upon the advice.

Interesting.In the wider conext of resilience for life safety systems for residential / mixed use schemes, we occasionally see problems in that regard. As John quite righly points out, amongst other things, ignorance is likely to be an issue here. Design decisions are often left with the D&B Contractor which in my expereince can be an issue. Sounds like you got the right advice early on, pity that the Contractor did not act upon the advice.