Things are back - now that the PE Prep season is (mostly) passed, I'm turning attention back to a backlog of fun fire protection tools and ideas to share with you.

Today's tool comes from an idea sent in by Gerald Ebeling, Owner of 3D Fire Design in Texas.

It's a new Domestic Demand Calculator - it can turn fixture counts over to a domestic demand in gpm or L/min - or you could hand count plumbing fixtures and calculate a domestic demand yourself. It works with the 2002 through 2019 editions of NFPA 13R and with both US and SI units.

Things are back - now that the PE Prep season is (mostly) passed, I'm turning attention back to a backlog of fun fire protection tools and ideas to share with you.

This week is a new Domestic Demand Calculator - it can turn fixture counts over to a domestic demand in gpm or L/min - or you could hand count plumbing fixtures and calculate a domestic demand yourself. It works with the 2002 through 2019 editions of NFPA 13R and with both US and SI units.

Why Calculate Domestic Demand? 

For a combined service entry serving both fire suppression and domestic water needs, the flow through the combined main will include flow that is already happening on the domestic water side. Faster water movement will create more friction loss.

When a combined service is 4 or 6-inch and there's only a couple restrooms - the demand for a fire sprinkler system will likely be far higher than the domestic will ever need.

However, for smaller residential systems, the domestic demand could be as much if not more than the sprinkler demand. A combined service that serves both these purposes will need to take the domestic demand into account. 

There is a workaround for this though - automatic domestic shutoff valves can direct flow to the sprinkler system and automatically cutoff domestic demand during a fire event. If these are used, NFPA 13R says that domestic flow doesn't need to be considered.

In all other cases, NFPA 13R states that domestic flow through the combined portions of the main do need to be considered and calculated for a fire sprinkler system.

The New Tool

The Domestic Demand Calculator will be included in the next update of the downloadable MeyerFire Toolkit. For the next couple months, I'll leave it up on the site for free access for everyone. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Thanks and have a great week!

What a weird year for 2020.

Last year I thought this would be somewhat of a wild year for Fire Protection PE Prep - with the major computer-based changes, references changes, and question styling changes. That prediction ended up being too modest as we've had a total of 12 changes to the exam references (either removing, adding, or changing year editions) that shook up the prep space.

Yet, that of course was hardly the biggest shuffle this year. For the first time, the Fire Protection PE Exam is getting a second day in January (January 12th, 2021) due to limited capacities (re: Covid) in the testing centers on the original October 22nd date.

For those who are preparing for the exam and are in the PE Prep Series, all of the access for those exams are now extended through January 2021.

Thoughts on 2020 Prep Season
If you know someone taking the exam this year (...or in January), send them some flowers or ice cream or chocolate... if they're like many I've spoken with they probably feel like guinea pigs with all the changes, plus the uncertainty of actually being able to take the test, all on top of the normal uncertainty of whether all the preparation over the summer has been enough. That's rough.

Around here there's been so many changes due to the exam. The Prep Series was pretty much overhauled, as was the 2020 PE Prep Guide. Just this year over 150 questions were written or re-written to match the new exam specifications. 

Along with those overhauls comes the pain of errors in those questions. I've been thankful for the loads of input and feedback since I first wrote the guide in 2016. Each year up until now the number of errors and tweaks found in the books has gone down... up until the 2020 edition. It's discouraging on my end when we find errors in the material, but that's nothing compared to the frustration for an examinee that doesn't have reliable content. My goal when I started the Prep Guide was to continually improve it year over year, and try to be as open and transparent as possible when it comes to getting the material right. 

If you have a Prep Guide and haven't seen it yet, I've posted errata and have made updates to it throughout the year. It's located here: www.meyerfire.com/errata

I very much appreciate the feedback from examinees, especially with so many changes to the guide and online content this year.

Next Year & Continuing the PE Prep 
Helping with PE Prep materials has been extremely rewarding for me. I saw a positive review online the other day that said the value of the materials is well beyond the cost. The review mentioned they hope I don't raise prices to match other content out there...

I got a good laugh and am very happy to report that I have no intent to raise prices for future years.

The whole goal here from getting into PE Prep a few years ago was to be sure that there is quality, affordable content for Fire Protection examinees. It was extremely frustrating to me when I took the exam that the materials were so expensive and that there just wasn't a lot of great content at the time. My whole goal here it to try and mend that gap with helpful material that is reasonably priced. I certainly hope that's the case now and the case going forward.

Frequently Asked Questions on Scoring Correlations
I've gotten maybe half a dozen questions asking about how close question difficulty comes into play, and how a score on a MeyerFire exam compares to scores on the actual PE Exam. 

There's a ton to discuss here, but I'll try and pick off a few key points. First, is that with the data I've compiled, the average score for an examinee across the 20-weeks of the PE Prep Series is typically close to the raw score on the actual PE Exam. Meaning - if someone has averaged a 7.5 out of 10 on the PE Prep Series questions, they tend to score roughly 75% on the actual exam.

Historically I've connected these points from examinees who have reported their scores back and matched it up with the different data points taken in the PE Prep Series.

In general, exam day will feel closer to a new PE Prep Series exam or the full-length exam in the Prep Guide than it will to the 4-hour review exam or the 8.5-hour review exam in the Prep Series. In both of those longer online exams, the questions are review-only and you've already seen content that is the same or similar. There's a noticeable boost to your score on those review exams that aren't reflected in the PE Exam.

Also, just because we typically see a matching range on average Prep Series scores to the actual exam doesn't mean that it is always the case. There are always exceptions here both ways (people scoring much higher than the Prep Series, and people scoring lower).

All that to say - regardless of how you've tested so far - don't be discouraged by your scores. Go into exam day with confidence that you're going to give it your best effort and just see what happens from there.

The Blog
Oh, where has Joe been for the last few months? Other than question writing and posts on the Daily Forum page - I've been working on an awesome project that has just debuted - if you haven't seen it check it out here.

My hope in the coming weeks as the PE prep settles down is to hop right back in and continue to work on some new tools and tool improvements around the website going forward. 

Hope you and yours are safe and healthy and that you have a great week.