How to Use the Clean Agent Estimator?

MeyerFire University | TL104.08

By Joe Meyer, PE

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RESOURCES

TL501 SERIES

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NOTES

• Notes Page [PDF]

TL501 SERIES

1. What is the Sprinkler Database?
2. How to Use the Obstruction Calculator for Beams?
3. How to Use the Obstruction Calculator for Soffits?
4. How to Use the NFPA 13 Translator?
5. What is Driving Design; the K-Factor or Density?
6. How to Estimate Clean Agent Quantities?
7. How to Calculate a Domestic Demand?
8. How to Select an Optimal K-Factor?
9. How to Quickly Calculate Friction Loss?
10. How to Analyze Fire Pump and Water Supplies from a "Big Picture" perspective?
11. How to Determine Fire Flow with the IFC Method?
12. How to Quickly Estimate Hydraulics for a Sprinkler System?
13. How to Estimate a Water Storage Tank Size?
14. How to Calculate Hanger Spacing by Weight?
15. How to Calculate the Size of a Trapeze Member?
16. How to Summarize Notes for Fire Alarm and Suppression?
17. How to Calculate Thrust Block Size?
18. How to Quickly Classify Combustible & Flammable Liquids?
19. Calculate the Volume & Air Compressor Size for a Dry System?

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi, and welcome back to our series on tools from our MeyerFire Toolkit package. So today we're covering the Clean Agent Estimator, which is an estimator tool for the amount of clean agent that we would need to cover a space. 

So what we're looking at here is the calculation that's based on NFPA 2001, and it incorporates a few things. One is the required concentration that's based on the agent type and the hazard of the space. And then two is the volume of that space. So what we're doing here is first selecting the agent type, which is FM 200 or Novec. There is a third agent, which is FE 25, but that's less often used. And nowadays we even see less FM-200 than we used to. So our default here is Novec 1230. There's a few other classifications for this. There's different trade names like Sapphire and other things, but Novec 1230 or the FK-5-1-12 are the designations for that agent. 

And then we have the hazards. So class A, B and C, these are all defined in NFPA 2001. And then we have the concentration. So this is a baseline concentration. It's a minimum concentration, but these we can override this setting with anything that we want, if we wanted to override it. 

Most of the time, I just keep this as a no override function so I'm pulling the concentration as the minimum from NFPA 2001. And then over here on the right side, we can adjust the length of our space manually by doing these tickers or you can just double click there, enter it directly in and go right to the exact dimensions of what we need. And here we have the height of the space. This is really the height of the protected volume. So let's say we have server room and the server room has racks that go, let's say eight feet in height. It's pretty tall, but we wanna protect up to eight feet in height. Now the space could be 16 feet tall, but the space that we wanna protect that volume that we wanna protect only goes of 8 feet. 

So in that case, we can just enter eight or do the down tick until we get to 8 feet. The temperature over here, we can adjust the temperature for the space. If it increases, we're going to need less agent. So typically we wanna be conservative and go the lowest ambient temperature that we are gonna experience in that space. That's just a setting of that space function and then any fixed volume. So this is a cubic foot measurement that is accounting for any fixed portions of the space where agent cannot infiltrate. 

So this can be adjusted all the way down to zero to be ultimately conservative or I guess down to two cubic feet, or if there's large volumes or there's chairs or something fixed in place that we know is gonna take a volume then we can adjust this setting over here. 

And then from here, what we're getting out of this is the net volume of the space, the specific volume, which is the look up function from NFPA 2001 for the agent, and then what the minimum agent weight that we're going to need. 

Now, depending on the agent and how it's packaged, we can then look up what our cylinder capacities are and determine how many cylinders we're gonna need and what the diameter of those cylinders are that can help us determine how much space we're gonna need for our clean agent in the space. As a rough guideline, this is a minimum calculation for agent that we're gonna need to protect this space. 

Lastly, you can hit this print function or go to this report and see how those calculations work. So there's a few references in here specific to NFPA 2001. Our volume calculation, how that's being calculated, and then our approximate agent weight at the end. Again, hitting this print function will give us something that's a little bit more PDF friendly, and we can size that according here. 

Now, if you get any kind of dimensional issues with this, you can always set the scale to be whatever you want here. So if you need to set that back, say it's 75%, something like that, get it all the fit on one page, that might be a little bit easier. 

But as overview, that is the Clean Agent Estimator Tool. That's a part of our MeyerFire Toolkit Package. We've got a few more to cover, so I'll see you next time. 

I'm Joe Meyer, this is Myer fire university.