Dear Jerrie and others:

Although I am attempting to get additional information on this subject
posted to the list - for its archive, I think those of you interested in
this subject of Sprinkler Systems and Fire Supression should find the
enclosed from our Museum Security Web Site and Disscussion List in
Amsterdam quite interesting.

Kind Regards

Roger Wulff
_______________________________________________________________________
Not being a qualified fire engineer, I have more questions than answers.
I often
refer people to Peter Cannon-Brookes article "Choose Wet or Burned
Objects"
(Museum Management and Curatorship (1993) v12 p325-326) which is a
review of a
conference of the same brilliant title held in Stockholm in 1993.

We have been looking into various options for automatic fire suppression
for our
redevelopment, off site store and new gallery (3 separate projects).  We
settled
on wet pipe sprinklers for most of each building due to a number of
considerations.  The main one is reliability-  most of the mist
systems,and
particularly the Hi Fogg system, rely on a number of things happening-
smoke
detectors and pumps operating at just the right time.  My own conception
of the
Hi Fogg system, which may be mislead, is that it Decisions I make about
things
like this come down to what I call the TLS- Tom's Sleep Factor.  I can
sleep at
night knowing that if there is a fire, God forbid, if the wet pipe
system
doesn't work, nothing else would have.  I can't say that with any other
system.
Note that I live in a climate without freezing winters and we have 24 hr
security presence, VESDA smoke detection and security cameras.  If any
sprinkler
system is called on to operate, it's going to be because its a very fast
fire or
the combina Another factor in favor of wet pipe is a long history of
reliability- over 100 years.  The mist systems don't have that.  Mist
does have
some advantage in that it will, to some extent, "seek" the fire- wet
pipe
systems are subject to "umbrella effect" where if there is shelving
above the
fire, the water will not reach it to cool it and therefore, the fire can
proceed
unhindered.  This is especially a problem in archive type storage.

As to damage, you bet you will have problems if the wet pipe system goes
off.
Lots of water everywhere- but the trade off from my point of view is
just simply
that failure of what is for us a back up system is going to lead to the
fire
fighters coming in risking their lives and causing a hell of a lot of
damage (as
they must) or, worse, they arrive too late and the whole building and
its
contents are lost.

For some small and well contained areas, we have gone to an Inergen
system but
the rooms are surrounded by wet pipe sprinklers so if the gas system
fails, the
fire will be contained within the small rooms (which have 2 hr fire
rated
walls).


Hope this helps- and sleep well.

Thomas Dixon
Chief Conservator
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne Australia

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