Thanks Ron, your rants are almost always amusing and though provoking, this one was no exception. Because of this I've gone back and re-thought the whole concept of obstructions, clouds, etc... and have decided to play a really little engineer. Like George, I only do this for television reality shows, but decided to break from tradition this one time. I am going to only calc two additional heads per line under the clouds instead of all of them. This sort of, but not really, follows the intent for CMSA & ESFR obstructions. More not than so. Neither of which are being used, but since there is no directive for standard spray sprinklers... But I think this will offer a better solution than ignoring the clouds altogether, and it will also help me with the original bid intent.
Bob -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ron Greenman Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 4:58 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Cloud Calculations Now I don't get to do engineering so I have to follow 13 like Steve said. Clouds are like overhead doors or any other horizontal obstruction and 13 says I can ignore an entire tier (least demanding). I can calc more heads if I like but that's jut 'cause I'm guessing I ought to. If I don't it doesn't look right to me but again a guess. Now Todd can engineer a solution and, like he says, there's no testing so any "engineering" he does is voodoo engineering. Very similar to my guess. In my case though I can at least say I did what the genii (yes that's right-genius is singular for genii) at NFPA, the real experts, told me to do. If I'm uncomfortable with that I can suggest the moron that thought clouds looked cool should hire Todd to "engineer" a solution and I'll do exactly what I'm told (for extra dough of course, and particularly if the spec said design to 13, 'cause I didn't add the clouds, the clouds aren't mine, nor the building, nor the solution). Of course Todd is going to say calc both tiers because he has no engineering solution but his parts go on the anvil along with accepting the check. And Todd is not doing bad engineering but is merely unable to actually provide a real engineered solution due to lack of data. His solution then is also a guess but a conservative one. Well, know we're full circle and Bob has chosen that conservative approach and Todd misses his car payment because he's a good guy and told us all his secret. Reminds me of the Dilbert where the dog goes into the jewelry store and announces to the proprietor, "How can you charge huge sums of money for rocks you just pick up off the ground?" The proprietor has a thought cloud, "Damn, he's on to us!" And then in the word bubble says, "I'll give you this free bag of diamonds if you keep your mouth shut." The final panel has the dog walking down the street with a bag of diamonds. All in fun Todd--You know I love you, man. _______________________________________________ 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)
