Hope your week is going very well. This week I'd like to open a short series on standpipes. Today's article is a basic overview of some basic requirements associated with standpipes used for fire suppression. Basic components of a standpipe for fire suppression. Purpose Standpipes are used to support manual firefighting efforts by delivering water to hard-to-reach areas of a building. The intent of a standpipe system is to avoid having to distribute and connect hundreds of feet of hose for a single interior attack by firefighters. Hard-to-reach areas of a building aren't confined to one direction. Buildings which are very tall (highrises) or are deep underground, or are very wide by nature could all have portions of the building which would be difficult to reach. Applicable Codes & Standards In the US, the International Building Code (IBC) and International Fire Code (IFC) are often the first stop for standpipe requirements. While the two codes mirror each other, the International Building Code requires standpipes based on:
Once it has been determined whether a standpipe system is required or not, the IBC and IFC defer to NFPA 14 to prescribe how the system is to be installed. Class of Standpipes Standpipes can be classified in several areas. The first is the class of standpipe, which relates directly to the hose connection type and the intended user. Based on 1-1/2 inch hose failures and the associated testing that goes along with them, 1-1/2 inch hose stations are much less common today. I've found many situations with sprinklered buildings where hose stations have been removed as they are no longer required and are a burden for testing and maintenance. Here are the standpipe classifications, with Class I being by far the most common in the US today:
Types of Standpipe The other defining description for standpipe is when water is delivered, and at what relative pressure. Types of standpipes include:
Components of a Vertical Standpipe Standpipes are not always vertical standpipes, but for multi-story buildings they are the most prevalent and are the topic of discussion this week. Flexible Coupling
Isolation Valve
Penetration Clearance
Pressure Gauge
Riser Clamp
Standpipe Hose Connections
Want to follow the rest of this series, or know someone who might be interested? Subscribe here. A few times each month I get questions about various parts of the website. This week I thought I'd introduce myself and the process around here a little more with the most commonly asked questions about the site: Who Does the Sketches? Originally when I started the website I did all of the illustrations posted on the blog. I started sketching during our architectural studio courses in college and even still run an online art shop selling minimalist sketches on Etsy. Starting in late 2017, however, I realized I was able to focus more on blog content if I hired help for the illustrations, which was when I brought in an artisan Diana who is both an architect and an illustrator. She does most of the fantastic illustrations you see around the website now. An example of one of the sketches by Diana, an illustrator and architect who compiles many of these images. How are the Illustrations Completed? The illustrations are simply created using a tablet and Adobe Photoshop. The typically thick outlines with thinner interiors is fundamentally a method used in architectural renderings that is commonly taught in architecture school. The color function is typically a combination of digital brushes that offer texture to the piece, and the font used in all of these illustrations is actually a custom font I created many years ago based on my handwriting (a far more tedious and difficult process than I ever would have guessed). How Much & When Do I Work on the Website? A couple months ago I met a client for lunch who received a blog post via email as I was in the parking lot walking up to meet him. He laughed and asked if I pressed the send button while parking. Fortunately, the blog content, daily questions, toolkit updates, and just about everything else on this site doesn't have to be posted live. I get up between 5 and 5:30 am every day of the week to write and develop resources until my kids wake up around 6:30. All in all it's roughly 6-8 hours a week to put together what you see here, and certainly not written and sent at 11:00am while I'm working my day job. Why Do MeyerFire? First, fire protection is way too important of an industry to take casually and not care about. You didn't get into this field to be a casual observer and neither did I - people in fire protection are regularly far more passionate about the trade than what you'll find in other disciplines like mechanical and electrical engineering. Not a knock on them - but us fire protection folk or a pretty tight-knit and passionate group. I'm fortunate to have experience working for large and small companies, and I've found that overall the fire protection industry is comprised of many small outfits - contractors, engineers, designers - and one of the best ways I can bring value and positively impact the industry is by connecting smart people and good ideas. That's what this website is all about. I once heard a presentation on more regulation and oversight will rule out bad fire protection design & installation. I don't think the problem is with regulation - I think it's with education. The more resources and helpful material we can share around the industry the better off we'll all be. As JFK said, "a rising tide raises all boats." How Long is MeyerFire Going to Continue? You got it, this site is going to self destruct in August. Just kidding - I have long-term and sustainable plans to continue writing weekly while continuing PE Prep material as well as developing improvements to the Toolkit and other resources. Being that I've scratched about 5% of my list of future ideas, there's plenty of work still to be done. Is it Profitable? There was a local SFPE golf tournament last year where I had the privilege of golfing with a local colleague who had purchased a PE Prep Guide in the prior year and passes the PE Exam. I was excited to meet him in person and he felt the same - however he said he was disappointed that (1) I was younger than he was and (2) I didn't roll up in a Mercedes with how expensive the book was. Despite the high cost of the PE Prep Guide, most of the profit I use to roll forward and invest into development of other tools. I still do all of the website editing, tool development, writing for the Prep Guide, and blog development, but I hire help for illustrations, industry research, software development, and marketing. For all of the time I put in "blogging" has paid about or a little less than my day job on an hourly basis, but the impact of this endeavour has been far more valuable than just the financials. Also, despite working with contractors in a land full of Ford F-350s, I drive a Corolla. Who is Joe Meyer? I used to say I'm just a guy typing away in his basement in the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately I got a major promotion a few months ago and now type out of the first floor office. The best part of this story is that this office is also not in my parent's house. I live in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, with my beautiful wife, three kids and a dog. We have a four-year-old, two-year-old, and a four-month old - so as you can imagine our home is very lively. I first became interested in fire protection engineering while studying architectural engineering at the University of Kansas. A guest speaker came into one of our freshman introductory courses and the industry sounded very appealing - good career prospects, expertise in a niche, and most important fighting to help save lives. I turned that piqued interest into a couple different fire protection internships and later studied under the University of Maryland's Master of Engineering in Fire Protection program. After school I worked at a large MEP firm in Kansas City, Missouri, with a leading group of 40+ fire protection engineers and designers. I've since moved to run fire protection design for a small 35-person MEP, Structural and Fire Protection firm in St. Louis. My experience and education to date does not make me an expert in the field. I believe there's something to learn from everyone every single day. For me, this blog and website are about two things - the first is to connect & empower people in the industry so that all of us in the industry benefit, and the second is to chart some of my own journey in trying to understand more about fire protection all the time. Thank you for supporting this effort! Meetup at the NFPA Conference & Expo If you're attending NFPA's Conference in San Antonio in two weeks (June 17th-19th), be sure to stop by booth 460 and say hello. Some great colleagues at Engineered Corrosion Solutions (also headquartered in St. Louis) have graciously allowed me to hang out in their booth during the Expo so that I can meet people like you. Let me know you'll be there by dropping a line at jdmeyer@meyerfire.com or commenting here. I'm excited to announce a new addition to the Toolkit that has been in development for a long time - the NFPA 13 Edition Translator. 2019 Changes With the major restructuring changes in the 2019 Edition of NFPA 13 - it has been difficult for me to flip straight to the content I'm used to doing. From the feedback I've heard I'm not alone on that learning curve. As a result, a couple weeks ago I released the first version of the translator, which takes any numerical section from the 2016 or 2019 edition, and returns the matching section from the opposite edition. Full Tool Now Available This full version is quite the powerhouse. With over 130 hours of research included, it can now take any numerical section from any edition of NFPA 13 from 1999 through the 2019 edition, and returns the matching section throughout it's history. A quick search on the edition translator shows the history of the section and where it appears. Why? Why could this be helpful? If you work across multiple jurisdictions or your local jurisdiction just updated to a new edition of NFPA 13, the shift in organization can be frustrating. If you use the free versions of NFPA 13 that are supported by NFPA, then this tool could help you quickly navigate equivalent sections. Probably the most common use I have is finding the back-history of where a section first appeared and where to look for it in past editions. This comes up occasionally for projects when there's disagreement about a particular section of code and searching for the back-history and any clarifications in future editions is very helpful. Available Now If you're a Toolkit subscriber, you can download the latest version of the Toolkit, including this edition translator, here. I've made it easier to download updates for Toolkit users. You can access the latest version and quickly download it at www.meyerfire.com/download. No sign in required. Find this interesting? Consider sending to a friend or colleague who might find it helpful. It's always a bit of a wild ride between March and May around here publishing the new edition of the PE Prep Guide. Each year I go through all of the prior year's feedback, make the updates I want, and then wait for the official SFPE list of required references to make any changes and publish. Good & Bad News The good news is for 2019 that the books are here a whole month earlier than I was anticipating - thanks to SFPE's early posting of the 2019 required reference list in early April. If you order a copy with our current sale, we'll get it headed your way in less than 24 hours. The bad news is that SFPE has also just revised the required reference list again just last week, well after their usual April posting and also after I sent the 2019 edition to the publisher. I guess this isn't really bad news at the latest update just took NFPA 25 from the 2014 edition to the 2014 OR 2017 edition, and NFPA 92 from the 2012 edition to the 2012 OR 2015 edition. The 2019 Edition is now the 4th and largest edition of the PE Prep Guide. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this change was based on recent feedback SFPE gathered about introducing older standards to the exam than what they've previously used. I'm guessing it was in good faith to not force examinees to go hunt down older versions of these standards while not materially affecting this exam. Regardless, this week I was happy to receive the largest shipment of books we've ever had (a FedEx Freight semi-truck dropped off a 480 pound pallet of books at our home Thursday) and we've already shipped over three dozen books in the last 24 hours. An annual tradition around here is pre-packaging the shipment of books as they come in for quick turn-arounds. This year we received our largest shipment to date - a nearly 500 pound pallet of hardcover books. PE Guide Growth If you're in the hunt for the PE Exam this year, you might consider getting a copy of the PE Prep Guide. Last year over 2 out of every 3 examinee had the 2018 edition in hand, and many of the last 1/3rd had prior editions of the guide. It's quickly becoming the go-to resource for the Fire Protection PE Exam and is well beyond what I could ever have hoped would happen when I put the first guide together in 2016. Weekly Exam Prep Series If you already have the 2018 Edition, you might consider the Weekly Exam Prep Series. It's a 20-week set of mini-exams that simulate the pace and difficulty of the actual PE Exam, with a bank of on-demand questions as well. For the numbers we're still gathering from last year's users of the Weekly Exam Series, we're having tremendous success with those who are taking the exam for the 2nd or 3rd time with a pass rate double the average of all repeat examinees. Check it out especially if you're a repeat examinee. The feedback and growth for the Weekly Exam Series has also been great - there's already as many people signed up for this year as we did all of 2018. Thank you for the feedback and interest so far - I can't wait to get these books out to everyone and get the summer of study rolling. Any questions/concerns - I'm always here at jdmeyer@meyerfire.com.
There was a webinar a couple weeks ago on the storage occupancy chapters of NFPA 13, given by David Hague, Principal Engineer with NFPA. It was a great overview of updates to storage protection based on research by NFPA.
Changes to NFPA 13 - 2019 Edition One of the interesting topics he brought up was the major change with the 2019 Edition of NFPA 13 - the re-organization of the entire standard. The changes for 2019 Edition is intended to better assist casual or infrequent users of the standard. For many of us that are very used to the traditional structure of the book, this major change feels awkward if not frustrating as our go-to sections are scattered in new areas. That being said, I like the concepts behind the re-organization and I appreciate the committee's proactivity in making such a huge change happen for the benefit of the user - even if it's a disruption to those who use the standard all the time. Like David said in the webinar, I'm confident I'll appreciate the new layout in time with more use. Adapting to the Updates with the 2016-2019 Edition Translator For those that are still struggling with the changes like myself, I created a quick tool to bounce back and forth between the 2016 and 2019 editions of NFPA 13. Just enter any code section below, and it'll then kick back the matching section from the other edition. It's a two-way tool so it also works by searching from the 2019 as well. New Full-Version Next Week I'm close to finishing an expanded tool as well, where you can lookup any section number and get back matching sections from the 1999, 2002, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019 editions. This expanded tool will debut in a Toolkit update next week. As you can imagine, this took a ton of research and I'm very excited that it is all finally wrapping up for your use. Don't see the 2016-2019 tool below? Click here to see it. Have a great rest of your week!
Following the interest and popularity of the ceiling-mounted obstructions tool, I've been working on some new tools that cover other obstruction situations which we often encounter. This week's post is a quick demo of the progress for one of these obstruction situations, which is the soffit against a wall condition.
One way NFPA 13 addresses soffits is by shifting a sprinkler away from the wall, which allows water from the sprinkler to throw below the soffit. With only two input values this tool will quickly determine the horizontal distance a sprinkler needs to be located away from a soffit in order to meet NFPA 13 Figure 8.6.5.1.2(b) (2016 Edition). Give this demo tool a quick try and comment below with any concepts you'd like to see added to this tool or the site. Thanks in advance! When I was six years old, I came home from school unexpectedly excited one day. I ran up our driveway, pushed wide the door and yelled to my mom. “You won’t believe it! There’s this place at school where you can go through shelves and shelves of books and pick out anyone you want – and it’s free! They call it a library.” It wasn’t one of my mom’s proudest parenting moments, but in our house, we never pretended to be great readers… or apparently even pretended to introduce kids to a library. I guess I’ll just come out and say it… Both of my parents are accountants. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, the accountants are where my well-rounded sense of humor comes from. But there’s another big benefit to having parents as accountants – and it’s having a love for spreadsheets. I’m not sure if little excel formulas naturally run through my veins or whether it was every family calendar my parents ever created, but one way or another I thoroughly appreciate the power a spreadsheet has. Even if your parents are not both CPAs, there’s a place for Microsoft Excel in your engineering life. Excel isn't just made for your uncle accountant anymore - there's potential any engineer can love. For one, Microsoft Excel is not called the “Swiss Army Knife of Software” for naught. Excel is a blank canvas for any calculation you need to make. You can quickly create and repeat repetitive calculations to speed up and organize your workflow. You can complete reports, forms, create charts, tables, organize content, or use any of a myriad of highly powerful tools. Here are a few of my most often used formulas:
That’s pretty much all of my secret sauce. About 95% of the tools created combine those formulas alongside mathematical operators (like max(), min(), sin(), sqrt(), etc.). One of the best parts about using Excel is that you may already have access to it. If your company has a Microsoft Office suite (or what’s now their subscription model with Office 365), you already have access to these tools. Creating helpful resources is what we’re all about, and Excel is the epitome of giving you, the rockstar designer or engineer, the ability to create and flourish with the tools you need. You didn’t get into the industry to do poor, sloppy work. You came here to help save lives. We shouldn’t have to wait for programmers to create the daily tools we need to do great work. Excel is one way you can organize and validate the great work you do. There came a point near the end of my undergraduate work and at the beginning of graduate school where I realized I needed to create a clean, organized method to show details within calculations. The method I slowly developed needed a single logic path, had to be easy to follow, would thoroughly explain the process, and had to allow the easy repetition of the work. What’s resulted is the standard format that’s used in the PE Prep Guide and on many of the tools you’ll see around this site. Concepts are researched, painstakingly created, tested, refined, tested, refined, beta tested, and refined more. Standard formatting for MeyerFire tools - note the equations and worked examples with references cited. If you’ve followed the blog for a while, you already know the blog, daily forum, and even the PE prep materials are all created to help foster discussion that leads to shared expertise and knowledge. Outside of a few major players and organizations, the fire protection industry is comprised of thousands of thousands of small outfits that welcome this shared expertise. Our industry thrives on the contributions from a wide spread of individual parties. Don’t let me or anyone else douse your enthusiasm to create resources that improve your ability to impact the industry. Keep on keepin’ on. Oh and remember to take your kids to the library. A huge thank you to the nearly 300 respondents to the survey posted a couple weeks ago. I am very appreciative of the feedback provided by so many, and I can promise you I've read every single comment provided by you, and I've already started implementing some changes to the site that were suggested. I mentioned I'd raffle a Toolkit & free 2018 PE Prep Guide (good as a reference book), and I decided to raffle a couple of each. The winners are: Philip Valdez and Stephen Crotts If you're interested, there were a total of 296 respondents to the survey. 87.5% of readers either specify, approve, or recommend products in the industry. Some common feedback for improvement include:
I am thrilled with these concepts and look forward to incorporating all of these in greater capacity going forward. Should it be called "preparing" or "prepping" for the PE (Principles and Practice of Engineering) Exam? If you've studied for the exam and spent hours and hours covering thousands of pages of material - it just might feel more like "prepping" for doomsday more than anything else. The required references for 2019 alone now cover 9 different books, 12 volumes and over 6,500 pages. This week I'm covering a review of the 2018 exam and some updates to 2019 for the Fire Protection PE Exam. Discouraging 2018 Results The overall results from all 241 examinees came in December, and the results were not great. Pass rates for first-time examinees fell to 56%, the lowest this decade. The pass rate for repeat takers also fell to 28%, the lowest rate since 2015. These results are published annually by NCEES. 4th Toughest Exam for First-Timers We once again maintain a distinction for having one of the most difficult exams to pass. The 56% pass rate for first time examinees ranks 4th toughest of the 24 different PE disciplines, behind only software, civil (construction), and power systems. The overall pass rate (first-time and repeat takers combined) isn't much better with fire protection having the 7th most difficult pass rate. On a related note one of the adjacent fields where some people working in fire protection get their PE is mechanical and architectural. Architectural used to have an overall pass rate above 80%, but that appears to no longer be the case. The Mechanical PE on Thermal & Fluid Systems has an overall pass rate of 60%, higher than fire protection but not by a large degree. Raw Cut Score about 70% With the popularity of the Weekly Exam Series (a 20-week series of mini-exams for Fire Protection PE examinees), I've gathered significantly better analytics on the difficulty of the actual exam and how well studying translates to passing the exam. We're now able to better estimate the raw cut score (the percentage of questions correct to pass the exam), and how the difficulty of the Weekly Exams compares to the actual exam. From the 2018 exam, we've estimated an overall raw cut score of 69-70%. MeyerFire User Pass Rates The statistic I love and get asked about more than anything is what the pass rates are for people buying the PE Prep Guide and what the pass rates are for people doing the Weekly Exams. In short, it is very difficult to calculate this value now that the Prep Guide has become so popular. Consider this - on the 2018 exam over 2 out of every 3 examinees had the 2018 edition in their hand when they took the exam. Many who didn't have the 2018 edition brought a copy of the 2017. In concept, if nearly everyone has a copy of the book on the actual exam, then it becomes more of a prerequisite to taking the exam than it does a boost only to the person using it. Where I have found differentiation, though, is between examinees who get a copy, study early, and study thoroughly. Somewhat obviously - the best prepared tend to do better on the actual exam. As for pass rates of the Weekly Exam - I'm trying hard to get those exact values. If you used the Weekly Exam Series in 2018, I would be very grateful to hear from you and how the test went. While I've reached out to everyone, I still haven't heard from the following users: Pepe Sylvia, GingerSnap, RoundONE, JT, Ginger, AB, JDB Falcon, onebadshark, MAXCRYPT, Senior, Old Guy, Ryan, Tip Top, na, dot dot dot, and yeass. [if you can't tell, we have a lot of fun on the Weekly Exam Series] If you're one of these people, please shoot me an email at jdmeyer@meyerfire.com. Your input helps craft future editions and support success for others going forward. A Checklist of Resources Are you planning to take the 2019 exam? If so, you'll want to see our list of every resource we know to be available to you. The list includes formula sheets, practice exams, reference materials, Prep Books, Study Communities, and Courses. It's all here: https://www.meyerfire.com/pe-tools.html Changes to the 2019 PE Exam Once again the exam writers can't help but make tweaks between each edition of the PE Exam. While published articles as old as five years ago suggested a narrowing of required references down to just the NFPA and SFPE handbooks, the actual exam references have done anything but condense. For 2019, there's a few notable changes from the 2018 Exam (as published by SFPE):
Here's the year to year changes, with edition, additions or subtracted changes highlighted. The 2019 PE Prep Guide Release
Fortunately this year, SFPE released the required references earlier than in years past. As a result the 2019 PE Prep Guide, which usually would ship in June, will ship earlier. At this time I'm estimating a mid-may shipment of these editions for anyone who pre-orders a copy. Of course if you'd rather get a copy in your hands now, we still have the 2018 edition available. Weekly Exam Prep Series Back for a third year the Weekly Exam Prep Series will kick off June 3rd. If you're looking to get as much regular practice as is available anywhere in a fun exam-simulated pace, then this is for you. See where you rank and get access to over 400 questions with the Weekly Exams. Learn more about the Weekly Exam Prep Series here. 2019 vs. 2020 Exam Big changes are ahead for the 2020 exam. Not only will the Fire Protection PE Exam transition to a computer-based exam, but the legacy of bringing in volumes and volumes of references will go away as well. As we understand it today, there will be a single, condensed reference book with formulas and charts that can be used on the exam - and that's it. It'll be a different delivery, different problem types, and a different reference. It'll be a big change and without a doubt make 2020 examinees feel like guinea pigs in the sense of trying out something new to everyone involved (examinees, the exam writers, and prep material producers). That could be intimidating or could be an opportunity depending upon how you look at it. Know someone interested in taking the PE Exam? Feel free to send them this article today. Related: Are you "prepping" for the 2019 PE Exam? Here's some related past articles on the topic: A 2018 PE Exam Summer in Review Updates for the 2018 Fire Protection PE Exam Thoughts on the 2017 PE Prep Season 5 Tips to Crush P.E. Exam Prep Fire P.E. Exam Ranked 3rd Toughest, 6th Overall Collaborate with Others Studying for the PE Exam
Looking for an opportunity to turn a basic concept into a controversial one on a project? Great! This week I'm exploring the quick-response remote area reduction that's provided in NFPA 13.
Suppress Early, Suppress Less The concept behind reducing the calculated hydraulically remote area in a fire sprinkler system is entirely based on fighting a smaller fire earlier in the development of the fire. There's a handful of factors that contribute to the timing of sprinkler response (a good future discussion), which include the thermal sensitivity, sprinkler temperature rating, distance of sprinklers relative to the ceiling, sprinkler spacing, ceiling height, and dynamics of the fire itself. The reduction in the hydraulically remote area is based upon comparative tests of quick-response against standard-response spray sprinklers. According to the NFPA 13 handbook, the tests demonstrated that the earlier the water is applied to the fire, the smaller the fire and ultimately the less number of sprinklers needed to activate. Not Universally Accepted While the remote area reduction has been included in NFPA 13 for years, it's not universally accepted. Many engineer specifications don't allow the reduction, and design standards for major organizations such as the Department of Defense (UFC 3-600-01) don't permit it either. Why not accept the remote area reduction, if NFPA 13 includes it? Like other elements in hydraulic design for fire sprinkler systems, not using the remote area reduction provides an additional safety factor to the system. Additionally, since the quantity of sprinklers relates to the quantity of water flowing in the system, main sizes are directly impacted by using or not using the quick response area reduction. Building owners may opt to not want to reduce the remote area to preserve reasonable (larger) main sizes and give themselves flexibility on building modifications and sprinkler system changes in the future. Quick-Response Area Reduction Calculator This quick calculator is in part a checklist of prerequisites to reduce the remote area on a fire sprinkler system, in part a method of showing your work, and in part a quick calculator on determining your final remote area size. Don't see it below? Give it a try here. This site is all about helping you shine in fire protection. Want these weekly tools & articles? Subscribe here, for free. |
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+ Unsubscribe anytime AUTHORJoe Meyer, PE, is a Fire Protection Engineer out of St. Louis, Missouri who writes & develops resources for Fire Protection Professionals. See bio here: About FILTERS
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