On a thread discussed earlier, where I was told to "just do the job according to the specs", but instead insisted on an underground description--which ended up being described and drawn and submitted by myself (because the sprinkler contractor was not budging, the gov't AHJ was "too busy to get into that level of detail", and the architect and GC were happy to be cutting corners). The other item on that job which was outstanding was the use of existing mains. They were about 25 years old. I asked for a reduced C-factor and got the same response as my request for a full water supply description. Seeing how I would have been following the "yellow brick road" I am glad I did not enforce that request for a reduced C-factor. However, since the existing mains were to be exposed, I asked them to inspect and tell me what the size of the nodules/corrosion was, and to send me a picture. One can do a calculation and back out a C-factor, one can also make an estimate of the C-factor using nodule/corrosion height and a Fanning-friction factor. The reference to the Ff can be traced from comments in the 13-Appendix.
I got fired from that job, immediately after the suggestion to "take some pictures." Was the request over the top? Definitely in comparison to the "standard of care", but does this issue touch on system performance? If pipe was hanging exposed, I suppose someone should have taken advantage of that. Why not look after the client's (government's) interests, after all, these buildings are expected to have lifetimes spanning several generations. The replacement consultant was hired to rewrite this job's specs; something I offered to work with the AHJ on for free, after reading those specs. One of the specs read, "check to see if there is earthquake bracing." Yes, I endorse inspecting old pipe for appropriateness of C-values. scot deal excelsior fire engineering _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://fireball.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
