How Do Sprinklers Work?

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Virtually all fires start small but they all grow very rapidly. If a fire can be detected soon enough and fought immediately it will take surprisingly little water to control it. But if it is allowed to grow unhindered it will render a room unsurvivable within 2 minutes.

Normally without sprinklers the first you know about a fire is when a smoke alarm goes off
or someone spots the fire. A call has to be made to the Fire Brigade who can usually respond within 15 minutes. When they arrive it then takes a couple of minutes to set up their equipment and so the fire has had some 20 minutes from the initial alarm to really get a hold. Thus a small fire has become a major one.

With a residential sprinkler system if any of the sprinkler heads detects a fire it immediately starts to spray water on the fire and an alarm is sounded to warn occupants to escape. Residential sprinkler systems usually put out the fire but should this not happen the system will control the fire and slow its growth and reduce toxic fumes. And so the Fire Brigade will have a much simpler task when they arrive and very much less damage will have been caused. Most importantly the occupants will have had time to escape.

A residential sprinkler system is designed to use just enough water to control the fire. Typically a residential sprinkler head discharges 42-60 litres of water a minute compared to a fireman's hose at 1000+ litres a minute. This in itself minimises water damage and can turn a potential disaster into just an inconvenience.

A room protected by sprinklers can often be back in use within a couple of hours. Conversely most houses which sustain major fires are never occupied again and are demolished.