Standpipes: Floor vs. Intermediate-Level Landings

This week I'm wrapping up some coverage of fire standpipe systems. In case you missed it, here are the recent articles on this topic thus far:

   An Introduction to Standpipes
   Addressing Egress & Clearances for Standpipe Hose Connections
   Standpipe Connection Location by Code Edition

Whether a standpipe hose connection should be located on a floor-level landing or an intermediate-level landing has been a classic tactical and design discussion in the fire protection community.

Defining Floor versus Intermediate Landings
A main floor-level landing is the horizontal portion of a stairway where the stair risers stop and occupants can enter a floor level, leave a floor level, or turn to walk on the stair itself.

Intermediate-level landings are the horizontal portion of a stairway where the stair risers top and occupants can turn to continue onto the stair.
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Defining floor-level versus intermediate-level landings.

 
Landings offer a resting space when transcending stairs as well as limit the distance someone is likely to fall down a flight of stairs. Stairs that jog back and forth with landings offer some benefits. They help limit the building area dedicated to stairwells, they create a consistent door location on each floor, and they to help break up long stretches of stairs. 

Do hose locations matter?
They do. Hose connection locations have implications on the tactical approach for firefighters, the ease of installation for contractors, the complexity of design for designers & engineers, and the cost implications for building owners.

Standpipes at floor level landings offer a simpler overall installation with design benefits.

Benefits of Connections at Floor-Level Landings
Benefits to standpipe connections at floor-level landings include:

• Avoid Crossing the Stair with Sprinkler Feeds: The main benefit to floor-level standpipe connections may simply be that it avoids the biggest drawback of intermediate-level landings: crossing the stair itself.
  
  Combination sprinkler/standpipe risers with floor-level hose connections can be equipped with floor control valves right above the hose connections. These floor-control assemblies can be easier to access and can run right into the floor-level ceiling it serves. No need to jog vertically to get into a ceiling, no need to run a sprinkler feed underneath and across a stair to get into a ceiling, and no need to carefully evaluate where knee-knockers and head-height issues could be created.
  
  Standpipes with floor-level landings can result in a much simpler overall design and installation.

Crossing the stair with sprinkler feeds from combination sprinkler/standpipe risers on intermediate-level landings can create head-height issues or knee-knockers, depending upon the approach. Standpipe hose connections at main-level landings help avoid these issues.

• Easy to Supply: Supply feeds from the service entry or fire pump are often from the ground-level ceiling space which can tie right into a standpipe with a floor-level landing.
  
  Intermediate-level landings aren’t always located adjacent to rooms with ground-level ceilings. Some intermediate-level landings are located on the exterior of buildings and face away from the building, making it difficult to run a supply main (often 4 or 6-inch) to the intermediate landing.
  
  
• Possibly more consistent hose location: Not all stairs have a single intermediate landing between floors. Stairs added to existing buildings, old buildings, or in unusual assembly buildings like stadiums, arenas and theatres can have multiple intermediate landings, be round, or not have consistent landings. Situations like this can make floor-level hose connections favorable in that they should be easier to find with consistent locations.
  
  
• Shorter Hose Length Runs: One principle not often addressed is the hose length required to reach all portions of a building.
  
  The International Building Code allows AHJs to require additional hose connections when the most remote portion of a non-sprinklered floor is greater than 150 feet from a hose connection, or 200 feet for sprinklered floor (2000-18 Editions Section 905.4(6)). It may not sound like a big difference, but the 15-20 feet of additional travel distance to a hose connection could be just enough to require additional hose connections.​
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Connections at intermediate level landing requires that designers and engineers account
​for the additional hose length needed just to cross the stair. ​

Benefits of Connections at Intermediate-Level Landings
With all the benefits to designers, installers, and overall simplicity, why would intermediate-level landings be considered? Mostly it’s about first responders and the tactical approach in firefighting.
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Connections at intermediate-level landings offer more tactical than design benefits.

​Benefits to intermediate-level connections include:

• Prevent congestion at doorways: During a fire, occupants could egress or queue at stair landings. Floor-level landings could be a congested area at this time that could make hose hookups difficult for first responders.
  
  
• Keep firefighters below smoke plumes: Traditionally, with intermediate-level hose connections, firefighters will connect hose on the intermediate-level connection below the fire floor. As hot gases come through the stair door when people egress, this approach keeps firefighters out of and below the path of rising smoke coming through the door and up into the stair during a fire event.

 
Conversations with AHJs
Regardless of approach, code stipulates a prescribed method but allows the AHJ the latitude to shift the landing location as he or she sees fit. Like other nuances of suppression design, it can be very beneficial to make the call and confirm an approach well before submitting plans.
 
Other Considerations
Here are a few important considerations that accompany standpipe design:
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• Don’t forget the lowest-intermediate connection: NFPA 14 requires standpipe hose connections at the intermediate-level immediately below the floor level. If the ground-level of a building does not have an intermediate-level landing below it, then it still must have a hose connection on that floor level. Otherwise, firefighters would have to climb stairs to reach a hose connection which is opposite of the intended firefighting approach.
  
  
• Roof Access: Where roofs have a slope less than 4 in 12 (a 33.3% slope), the IBC requires a hose connection at the highest landing of a single interior exit stairway serving the roof, or a hose connection on the roof where no exit stairways serve the roof (IBC 2000-18 Editions Section 905.4(5)).
  
  
• Horizontal Exits, Covered Malls, Exit Passageways: While I focused on stair-landing hose connection requirements, there are important other locations where they’re required as well. Reference IBC Chapter 4, Section 905.4, and NFPA 14 Section 7.3.2 (2003-2019 Editions) for all required locations.
  
  

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