A proper fire protection system is crucial for businesses. But, how much do we understand about the fire protection systems? And which fire protection system best suits our organizational needs. Why do we need a fire protection system?
To begin with, what is even fire protection?
Fire protection refers to measures taken to prevent fire from becoming destructive, reduce the impact of an uncontrolled fire, and save lives and property.
As per the fire triangle, three key elements must be present at the same time in order to produce fire viz.
- Enough oxygen to sustain combustion
- Enough heat to raise the material to its ignition temperature
- Some sort of fuel or combustible material.
In order to extinguish the fire, any one or more of these elements must be removed.
Businesses invest millions of dollars in manufacturing, IT hardware, infrastructure and employees. Imagine how critical it is to maintain a safe workplace. Fire can literally cost a lot of money even for a short period of time. This downtime also leads to lost revenue, dissatisfied customers and damage to the business reputation.
A fire protection system detects the fire and protects the building, its occupants, and valuables.
It is important to understand the functionality of fire protection systems. Systems work in different ways, but all have a common goal to detect a fire and protect the building, its occupants, and valuables. A common fire protection system is a smoke detector and a sprinkler. If a fire sparks, smoke sets off the detector causing the sprinkler system to activate. The water protects against the spread of fire. While this is an effective method, when dealing with certain critical equipment or special hazards, automatic fire suppression systems using clean agents are a better choice. These systems detect and suppress fire while leaving no residue.
Clean agents like FM200 and NOVEC came into picture after halon was declared ozone depleting and environmentally hazardous.
Inorder to determine the best system for your business, you must consider the following points:
- The facility you are protecting
- Compliance with standards and codes
- Think about your facility’s future needs, not just its current needs.
In a nutshell, there are two kinds of fire protection systems:
- Active Fire Protection: Active fire protection means using a system that reacts in case of a fire. Examples of active fire protection include sprinkler systems and special hazard fire suppression systems.
- Passive Fire Protection: Passive fire protection breaks the building into “compartments” and prevents the spread of fire through the use of fire-resistance rated walls and floors. It utilizes fire doors to help further compartmentalize the structure and dampers to prevent the spread of fire and smoke throughout the ducts of the building. Passive fire protection may also refer to the use of non-flammable materials during construction.
Passive fire protection is about containing the fire while active fire protection is about stopping the fire.
To decide which fire protection best suits you, contact our experts at Fajer Fire and Safety Technologies.
Talk to an expert today: Email at info@fajerfast.com
Visit our website: www.fajerfast.com
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