There are always one or two headlines in daily papers about people killed in blaze. It is a great concern. These lives could be certainly saved by proper fire protection. The average death toll in the world is 10.7 people per million residents. This figure is different in various countries, e.g. it was only 2 in Switzerland and 18 in Finland by 2007. The fact is that one person is already too much.
Countries are trying to improve policies for fire protection. They change building regulations for materials used in construction, tighten regulations for electrical, other fire hazard equipment manufacturing, etc. United Kingdom, some states in USA, Norway, Sweden and other countries started adding mandatory install of fire suppression systems in all new residential buildings. That gradually decreased the number of deaths in, for example, USA.
As the systems are getting cheaper, lower insurance costs for buildings with automatic fire suppression systems and of course increased safety of their loved ones, people are more and more consider installation of these systems as an option.
Design of these systems is a bit of a headache for fire system designers because calculations and drafting of these systems takes a lot of time and effort. It also increases the cost of the system. However, standards by which these systems are designed are somewhat simple and repetitive.
As more and more buildings are designed by using BIM software it became possible to automate sprinkler design by using tools like Smart Sprinklers by AGA CAD.
Smart Sprinklers lets choose configuration, distribute sprinklers in space, and automatically connect them to distribution/main pipes. After that Smart Sprinklers automatically calculates route of water and choose pipe diameters by defined standards.
That is a very useful, versatile and helpful tool for Autodesk® Revit® which helps designers in their daily work and hopefully saves lives, as it makes fire suppression systems more accessible.
Have some questions about Smart Sprinklers? Don’t hesitate to contact us here. Thanks!
