I have an odd situation on a military job I am doing right now where we are adding sprinkler protection to 100,000 sqft of office space in a 3-story building that has been built in three phases over the past 25 years of non-combustible construction. We are planning on using CPVC piping for this application to hopefully make the retrofit less labor intensive. That's all pretty straightforward but the problem arises from the fact that the base communication department has been steadily adding lots of non-plenum rated cable on top of the drop ceiling into a non-combustible return plenum ceiling space above the first and second floors. The space above the ceiling varies in depth from 4-5 feet with 16" deep fire proofed steel joists spaced 3'-9" OC in some areas and 7'-6" OC in other parts. As a result, the military has recognized the life safety risk of this and allows two options per the latest UFC-3-600-1, which are to either replace all of the illegal cable over 5 years (impossible for us) or sprinkler above the ceiling. So we are adding sprinklers above the ceiling. I'm a little confused on a couple of things, and hope to get some guidance from anyone who has run into similar situations:
1) Can you typically still assume the ceiling space is non-combustible and use CPVC piping if there is some non-plenum rated cabling in there? 2) What is the best approach for sprinklering a ceiling space this deep - standard K5.6 brass uprights spaced at a normal light hazard 225 sqft/head? Thank you very much in advance for any thoughts on this, Steve Kowkabany, P.E. Fire Protection Engineer Neptune Fire Protection Engineering LLC 216 Seagate Avenue Unit B Neptune Beach, FL 32266 904-652-4200 Phone 904-212-0868 Fax _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
