Tulsa and OKC Fire Sprinkler Systems - The Many Benefits

There are many misconceptions and myths about automatic fire sprinklers. Many feel that all the fire sprinklers in a building will activate in the presence of smoke or that a just having smoke alarm is sufficient for protecting a home or business in a fire. But commercial buildings, industrial companies, and homes have greatly benefited from fire sprinkler and suppression systems in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. For more than a century, they have been used in commercial buildings.

Automatic fire sprinklers in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are very reliable in stopping the spread of a fire in its early stages. With the fire is contained early,  often in the room of origin, the life-saving benefits are tremendous and the reduction of damage significant. Imagine the savings of one small area damaged by fire compared with an entire building. In stopping the fire so quickly, sprinklers reduce the flames, smoke, and heat of the fire, allowing time for occupants to evacuate and greatly reducing the loss of property.

Fire sprinkler heads do not all activate in unison flooding the entire building. Sprinklers are designed and tested to activate individually by the intense heat of a fire, not smoke. This heat usually needs to be between 135 and 165 degrees Fahrenheit for a sprinkler to be triggered. So just steam, burning toast, or smoke will not activate a fire sprinkler. Because the sprinklers are individually activated by a real fire, often just a few sprinklers may be activated when a fire starts in a room, and the sprinkler can effectively contain that small fire before it spreads.

“Roughly eighty-five percent of the time, just one sprinkler operates,” the NFPA noted commenting benefits of residential fire sprinklers.

But are fire sprinkler and suppression systems in Tulsa or Oklahoma City really needed or is a smoke alarm enough? Although smoke alarms are vital in notifying occupants of a fire, they don’t suppress the fire. They may be part of a monitoring system that will notify the fire department, but by the time the fire department reaches the building, the fire may have already damaged much of the property without the help of a fire suppression system.

Some fear that the water damage caused by activated sprinklers will be more than fire damage. But with sprinklers being able to localize and contain many fires, the damage is often not as wide spread as it would be without any fire suppression system in place.

“Any resulting water damage from the sprinkler will be much less severe than the damage caused by water from fire-fighting hose lines. Fire departments use up to 10 times as much water to extinguish a home fire as fire sprinklers would use to extinguish the same fire,” NFPA reported.

There are various types of sprinkler systems designed to protect different building environments, hazards, temperatures, or sensitive equipment and property. These include dry pipe, wet pipe, pre-action, foam, deluge, and water mist systems.

While fire sprinklers are a requirement for many commercial properties to be code compliant, many businesses can see a significant savings in their insurance rates when they retrofit their existing buildings with fire sprinkler systems.

Automatic fire sprinkler systems in Oklahoma are thus a highly effective way of controlling a fire before it gets out of control, saving lives and preventing greater property loss.

(Photo by Viking)

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