Can schools do away with pull stations if they are fully sprinklered, or are pull stations still needed? What do you think?
I’ve edited the topic title so that it fits.
As for your question, as usual it depends on local codes, but IMO you should ALWAYS have pull stations, as that’s your way of activating the system manually and there may be other reasons why the building needs to be evacuated and smoke and fire are not present at the time, plus not all panels are equipped with a drill feature.
I do know that sprinklers can replace smoke detectors in some areas…
I’m mainly asking for personal opinion, not what codes say.
Do you even know how a sprinkler works?
Not all fires activate a sprinkler head and can be detected well before a head is close to activation. What if the system is empty for repair, or the flow zone has somehow been silenced or bypassed.
Personally I’m for keeping the pull stations. I’ve heard someone say once though that schools in some places can lack pull stations if they’re fully sprinklered.
However there are reasons for keeping the pull stations. For instance, if a fire started in a trash can in the courtyard.
I think pull stations are important. Like weatherdan said, pull stations are good for reasons besides fire. They shouldn’t take them out of schools just because of the occasional idiot who wants to have 20 minutes of fun.
Pull stations are indeed important. I’ve seen quite a few buildings that do have pull stations and sprinklers but NO smoke or heat detectors.
This reminded me of once a couple years ago on my way back from somewhere, I walked past the middle school near my house and heard an alarm noise that sounded similar to a Wheelock MT. I knew it couldn’t be the fire alarm (the school has a Simplex 4100U voice-evacuation system), and no sooner than when I got close to the main entrance I found out a student accidentally set off one of the Sigcom “stopper”-like covers installed over one of the pull stations (Simplex 4099-9003 T-bar). Some kids thought he had set off the alarm, another though he “pulled the sprinklers!” so I had to explain briefly that pulling the fire alarm does not set off the sprinklers like in the movies and TV.
Just for the record, the school has a mix of sprinklers and smoke detectors throughout the building (addressable TrueAlarms), but the classrooms only have sprinklers.
Anyways, it is good for a building with both a sprinkler and fire alarm system to have some kind of common initiating device for the fire alarm system located throughout the building (mostly pull stations.)
Pull stations are nessasary, sprinklers only activate by the time severe damage to a room has allready occured. If a pull it activated while the fire is still small, people will have longer to evacuate and the fire department would come sooner, reducing overall loss.
WHATTT???
99.9% of that is false…
Sprinklers are supposed to activate during the initial stages of a fire. If extensive damage has already occured, your sprinkler system is a dud. I think some of you are also getting really mixed up with the purpose of these devices as well. A pull station is a manual initiating device used to activate alarms (notification device) that give notice to occupants so that they can evacuate. A sprinkler is a fire supression device that has the purpose of extinguishing a fire so that a major problem can be avoided as well as functioning as a heat detector of sorts.
When you try and compare pull stations with sprinklers, you’re comparing apples with oranges. They simply have 2 completely different functions. Simply put: sprinklers and pull stations can not compensate for each other, they’re very different!
I’m not at liberty to say yes or no on this. But I will say that I have been to multiple schools that only have one pull station, or none that meet the eye. But every school I’ve been to has had sprinklers.
Umm, funny story, think I may have posted this in “Alarms from California” from two years back. Was at a high school taking the SAT, the building I was in, there was a hole in the wall with wiring sticking out where a pull station clearly used to be, and a sign taped above reading, please report all fires to the office. And this was true in multiple locations there. not a pull in sight.
You are not allowed to say yes or no?
That is what “not at liberty to say” means… You are not allowed or authorized to disclose the information you are being asked.
Jake, what I specifically meant to say, but originally had the courtesy not to, was this. To everyone else, I’m sorry you have read this.
I don’t know enough about the function of sprinklers to have a good opinion on this, and I am not going to say anything because anything slightly wrong i post on here or something Jake disagrees with, he has the bad habit a) of bitching at me and b) bitching at me about matters totally unrelated to my opinions and comments on fire alarms.
And jake, its a free country, I can use whatever wording i want, thank you very much.
I don’t think he was intending to be a jerk about it, its hard to tell what someone’s attitude is over the internet some times. I got the impression that he wanted to correct you and make sure that you could feel comfortable saying something, but I’m not him, so he could tell you for sure.
Sorry, I guess that this is what I get for getting some of my information from commercial videos on youtube.