Fire Protection Systems for High Rise Buildings

Due to scarcity of land in urban areas, the trends of high rise buildings in the form of apartments, shopping complexes, hotels, industrial and institutional buildings, underground and multistory parking towers, intelligent buildings, railway stations linked with tunnels, stadiums and museums etc. are increasing day by day.

Such buildings are required to be constructed in such a way so that no part of any building should remain 30 meters away from the staircases proposed in the building blocks. If building blocks are supported by the water sprinklers, then the said distance from the staircase may be kept as 45 meters. At least, 6 meters wide open spaces are required to be kept open around the building blocks for free movement of the fire tenders.

With the advancement of science and technology, new fire protection systems have been developed to safeguard high rise buildings from the menace of fire disasters. Underground and Overhead storage tank for Fire Protection System with Automatic Pumping sets Jockey pump, standby Diesel driven Pumps, all integrated with the Building Management system. Such fire protection systems are described as below.

Sprinkler Systems
Sprinkler systems are the oldest and most widely used type of automatic fire extinguishing systems. When an unforeseen fire starts, these systems immediately and automatically generate a fire alarm and extinguish the fire.

• Wet Sprinkler Systems
The pipes are kept filled with pressurized water in order to spray out water as soon as the sprinkler heads open, so this is the most widely used type of system.

• Dry Sprinkler System
The dry system water flow detection unit is filled with pressurized water up to the primary side, and the secondary side piping is filled with pressurized air, so when the air pressure in the secondary side drops when a sprinkler head opens, the dry system water flow detection unit opens to release the water.

• Pre-operation Sprinkler System
The water flow detector unit's primary side is filled with pressurized water and the secondary side piping is filled with compressed air. When a fire occurs, the fire detector uses the fire signal it has caught to first open the pre-operation water flow detector unit to cause the primary side pressurized water to flow to the secondary side. This pressurized water operates the pressure switch, which generates a fire alarm, and the decrease in pressure in the primary side piping causes the pump to operate and begin spraying water when a sprinkler head is opened by a heat sensor.

• Open Sprinkler System
This system uses open sprinkler heads that have no heat sensor disassembly unit, so water is sprayed from all of the sprinkler heads of the separate sprinkler head set when manually operated. This type of system is used when the ceilings are high creating the possibility that the flow of hot air might just open sprinkler heads that are not necessarily directly over the fire source and when there is the danger that a fire would spread rapidly.

• Foam Fire Extinguishing Systems
Foam fire extinguishing systems are installed based on the technical standards of the Fire Service Law, etc., and are used to protect parking areas, automobile service garages, airplane hangers, semi-hazardous materials, special flammable materials storage areas, handling areas, etc.

• Powder Fire Extinguishing Systems
Powder fire extinguishing systems extinguish fires faster and more effectively than other chemical fire extinguishing agents.