Hi folks. I have a bit of a problem. I have done a procedure in the event that one of our "in rack" sprinkler heads gets damaged. As there will be a limited number of people who are likely to damage the head I suggested that we have these people trained to switch off the valve and drain the system. All they have to do is turn two valves. Here is the problem; we would be relying on the person that causes the damage to turn off the valve and the powers that be think that they will be out of the door with the rest of the people when the alarm goes off. It would be quite easy for a PPT operator to move his truck out of the way and do the "wasn't me guv" routine. The person that causes the damage knows that they have caused the fire alarm to go off, so if they were to stay in the building when the alarm goes off I can't see there being a problem. If we go by the evacuation procedure we would not go back into the warehouse until we had the all clear from the FRS- and the warehouse would be flooded. Has anyone come across this problem and solved it?

Andy, we have in rack sprinkers, our procedure is that if there is an activation then the Duty manager, Maintenance & key personell are all trained how work the pump and valves to drain down the Zones and then notify our insurers of an impairment of the system. It seems to work for us, with regards it was not me gov, i guess that comes down to trust and honesty. I would question if the person who caused the activation would be best placed to react to this.

It can do as many wet pressurised systems are monitored and have pressure possibly flow sensors which are integrated into the fire alarm system. I would encourage the perpetrator to own up, but, bearing in mind the difficulty of some of the manoeuvres that FLT drivers have to undertake I don't think I would be looking to blame them. If you have on site maintenance then they should easily be able to identify the source of the activation and assess for any real issues. Many large factories will have 2 levels of alarm activation anyway, alert and evacuate. If you have this could you not have the sprinkler system set to alert rather than evacuate? If you don't could you review your alarm systems and FRA to alert on activation rather than evacuate?

A single in-rack head will allow quite a large volume of water to discharge before anyone could get to the relevant stop/drain valve, probably resulting in wet stock down to ground level in that bay and also adjacent ones to a lesser extent. I suggest therefore that speed of response may be not too critical. Also agree that a sprinkler alarm (without accompanying detector activation) is more usually treated as "investigate" than evacuate unless the fire load is such that a very rapid escalation can be anticipated. As to whether the FLT driver can be expected to run to the valves, as said above, it all depends on the culture of your oirganisation. If they're likely to be blamed then expect them to disappear, although wet truck and overalls may be a giveaway.