Automatic sprinkler for your stilling area

[still crazy]

I was reading thru the safety forum and looking hard at the fire issues, that what us sprinkler fitters do.

I have a residential sprinkler system in my home. It make me feel very safe as well as peace of mind about my family.
It would be easy to add a single sprinkler head attached to your domestic water system over the area where you distill.
With about 15 psi of pressure you get 12' X12' coverage. If you were to ever have an incident you could stand back and let the sprinkler do the fire fighting.
You might get some water damage but a mop is better than a total loss.
Residential heads are designed to use a smaller droplet pattern, a mist, they can be obtained with different temp ratings so you don't have a accidental discharge.
I won't go to deep on here but if anyone has questions on this please feel free to PM me.

[ArcticTern]

i'm just curious thar' SC..
would water act as an extinguisher of an ethanol based fire? as water is to a cooking oil flame? or even gasoline?

AT

[olddog]

Water dilutes ethanol, so the answer is yes, whereas gasolene is an oil based spirit where the answer would be no

[still crazy]

Recently brother Red Nose had a fire while stilling from my reading of his account this was not from his lack of safety but from "unforeseen circumstances".
This should highlight to us all that IT CAN HAPPEN TO ME. Luckily he was safe and he contained the damage.

As a follow up I have left over heads from some old jobs, they are viable just I can't use a 2001 marked head in a 2010 installation.
I will offer anyone who will send me a request a free head if they can't find one. Send me a PM.

[Coyote]

I have to agree

In a past life I installed and inspected fire systems

After I got the lights in the 8' X 16' man cave
the next thing to get installed was 2 155 degree
wet pipe fire heads, Halon just seemed like overkill

The man cave is an old walk in cooler, setting 10 feet away from
the next building. Metal walls,metal ceiling, SS counter tops,
the only exposed wood is the floor.
Safety is not just a great word it should be a way of life

For those of you distilling in the garage or kitchen just a garden
hose and a single head hanging from the ceiling could save your
house or your life - Or more importantly the life of a loved one.

I read this thread and had to ask myself Why TF did I not post this before
Sorry guys I should have

Coyote

[still crazy]

Little more info on this
You only need some 1" iron pipe for 2 heads and if your using 1 head you can get away with 3/4" iron.
Grab a 10' or 10'-6" piece from any supply house with threads on each end. (TBE)
get a 1" x1/2" T & 1"x 1/2" El or a 3/4" x 1/2" El as your application requires
Get a garden hose adapter to the size of your feed pipe
2 pipe hangers should suffice to hang your pipe
a garden hose splitter and a washing machine hose to feed your feed pipe will allow you to use the other outlet for your coolant water
leave the water pressure full to the side that feeds your sprinkler(s)

1 head will cover approx 144 sq.ft. (12'x12') area

Residential style heads will provide a spray mist of water when activated. This presses down the oxygen and gases of the fire.
Alcohol is aqueous while petroleum is not that's why when a oil tanker ruptures we get oil slicks or a gas/petrol station will have special chemical tanks for there use.

[Barney Fife]

Good information! But why a 1" pipe? Wouldn't 1/2" be enough, since you're feeding it via the home's system, which is likely to be 1/2" throughout? And why not copper?

And what's the difference between residential heads and commercial/industrial? I see the latter ones on fleabay all the time, but rarely see residential ones. I assume the sellers steal them from their place of work and sell them on fleabay, but is there a functional difference?

[still crazy]

1/2" pipe creates a friction loss and as the head has a 1/2" orifice or less it is better to reduce friction loss where ever possible
In the trade the smallest size pipe we use to feed a single head is 3/4 copper or plastic 1" for iron due to the differential of friction losses.

The commercial heads are designed to provide a min. design density of .10/gpm per sq.ft. so if your head cover 120 sq ft you will need to provide 12 gpm per head when your dealing with min design areas of 1500 sq ft you can see this gets serious water we do design up to .3gpm/80sqft over 5000 sqft areas love those big fire pumps
http://www.reliablesprinkler.com/pdfs/p ... nklers.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The residential heads require only less gpm and are designed for life safety and the orifices are designed for more of a small droplet spray pattern.
http://www.reliablesprinkler.com/pdfs/p ... s05gpm.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[HookLine]

Good thread.

I can't find it, but pretty sure we had a member a while back who was a fireman, and I think he said that the way to deal with ethanol fires is a medium spray of water aimed a couple of feet above the base of the fire, about in the middle of the flame. Anybody can remember who that was so we can check his advice?

Safety is not just a great word is should be a way of life

Absolutely. Safety is an attitude and culture as much as any specific practices.