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Fire pumps operating in series must be located in the same room. A maximum of three
fire pumps may be arranged in series.
Auxiliary power for electric motor driven fire pumps is required whenever the fire
pump serves any floors that are beyond the pumping capacity of the fire department.
Access to fire pump rooms is required directly through an exterior door or through a
2-hr rated enclosed passageway connected to an exterior door or an enclosed stairway.
Water tanks supplying fire pumps that serve floors beyond the pumping capacity of
the fire department:
Must be subdivided and piped so that a minimum of 50% of the total fire protection
water demand is available with any one compartment or tank out of service.
A minimum of two automatic fill valves is required for the water tank. Each fill valve,
when operating independently, is required to refill the system at a rate equal to or
greater than the fire protection demand rate.
The water supply/fire pump arrangement must be such that the full fire protection
water demand can be met even with the failure of any single component. This
requirement can be met with a properly arranged backup fire pump, or possibly by
down feeding from a tank located higher in the building.
Risks with a high and/or dense occupancy load, such as exhibition centers
Risks with high intransient and/or business loss value, such as distribution centers and
key manufacturing facilities
Risks were occupants cannot be easily evacuated and need to be protected in place
such as hospitals and high-rise buildings.
Typically, the level of protection reliability required for these types of facilities is determined
by the building codes and/or owners and engineers working in conjunction with insurance
companies and AHJs.
The NFPA 20 committee did discuss if it was appropriate in an NFPA standard to include
requirements intended to provide a higher reliability for specific risks, i.e., high-rise
buildings. The committee reached a consensus to provide enhanced reliability for high-rise
buildings for the following reasons:
Manual fire-fighting operations are totally dependant upon the water supply from the
fire protection systems.
Fire pump installations in high-rise buildings may be complex, and should not rely on
manual intervention.
Current designs for some high-rise buildings did not provide the level of reliability
that the committee felt was needed.
Fire pump installations in high-rise buildings tend to be more complex, and complete
guidance should be provided in the installation standard.
The requirements in the high-rise chapter of NFPA 20 were developed after reviewing current
code requirements, current design practices, firefighting operations, maintenance
implications, and overall reliability and risk exposure.
In general, the requirements in the high-rise chapter are intended to maintain the availability
of the required fire protection water flow even with a single failure of any component, for
buildings that are beyond the pumping capacity of the fire department. On floors where the
fire department can use fire department connections to the standpipe/sprinkler system to
pump their own water, the requirements intended to increase reliability are not applied.
However, the fire protection design engineer should give serious consideration to using the
higher reliability requirements throughout the buildings.
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NFPA 20 must be used in conjunction with NFPA 13, 14, and 22 and other NFPA standards.
The use of tanks, standpipes, and fire pumps is highly interrelated and must be coordinated.
The philosophy behind the high-rise fire pump requirements can be summarized as follows:
Monitoring and operation of the fire pumps by the fire department (in the event of a
fire) should be as simple as practical.
For high-rise buildings with floors above the pumping capacity of the fire department,
the fire pump and water supply arrangement should be such that even with any single
piece of equipment impaired and/or isolated, the full fire protection demand can be
met.
Design issues
The issues most directly affecting the ability to meet the philosophy are:
Pressure considerations caused by the various floor heights frequently result in fire pumps
arranged in series (i.e., the suction for one or more pumps comes from the discharge of a
pump located upstream) for the higher standpipe/sprinkler zones in high-rise buildings.
There is an inherent decrease in reliability when pumps operate in series. Table 1 shows the
reliability of the second and third series pumps compared to the reliability of a single pump.
Theoretically, pumps operating in series can be in close proximately or on different floors.
This vertical stagingplacing the second or third fire pump in series on a higher floor
lowers both the suction pressure to, and discharge pressure from, the downstream pumps.
However, with this arrangement, failure of the low zone fire pump would result in the loss of
fire protection to all zones supplied.
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the same elevation, failure of one of a lower zone pump will not result in cavitation and
damage to the higher zone pumps that it feeds. Locating pumps in series in the same room
reduces fire department connection complexity and provides additional options for
firefighters to pump water into the building sprinkler systems. When series pumps are located
on upper building floors, fire department connections often are not provided, and the high
zone pump, out of the reach of fire department or manual intervention, is the only means of
providing water to the higher building floors.
With vertically staged fire pumps, it is difficult to find an appropriate place to discharge water
when testing fire pumps located higher in the building. Under the new high-rise chapter
standards, water can be discharged back into the water supply tanks.
The vertical series staging of fire pumps has some unique maintenance and impairment
issues. Maintenance on the low zone requires upper zone fire pumps to be taken out of
service. Restoring the fire pumps to service quickly in case of emergency is much more
difficult when the pumps are on different levels and the elevators may be out of service.
In summary, series fire pumps for high-rise applications should be in the same room for the
following reasons:
It simplifies fire pump maintenance and restoring fire pumps to operation in the event
of an emergency occurring during maintenance.
It prevents cavitation and damage to higher zone pumps if the low zone pump fails to
start.
requirement that 50% of the total fire protection water demand is available with any one
compartment or tank out of service. The automatic refill will augment the portions of the
tanks that are in service to provide the full fire protection demand, thereby meeting the design
philosophy for the water supply.
Adequate pressure to operate the fire protection system also is required. If the primary means
of providing adequate pressure is through a fire pump, a backup fire pump will meet the
proposed code requirements and meet the design philosophy behind the requirements. It also
may be possible the meet the pressure requirements by down feeding from a tank located
above the fire protection system.
Figure 2 shows a six-zone standpipe system where all zones are supplied by fire pumps.
Zones 1, 3, and 5 are fed by a fire pump taking suction from a tank. The fire pumps that serve
Zone 2, 4, and 6 are arranged in series with the fire pump from the zone below. The lower
tank is fed from domestic water. The second and third tanks are refilled from the standpipe
zone below and domestic water. Duplicate pumps are used to increase reliability. The design
shown in Figure 2 is arranged so that the system is fully operational even with the failure of
any single component.
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Figure 3 shows a four-zone standpipe system where a high-pressure pump is used as the
primary fill for the upper tanks. Zones 1 and 3 are gravity fed from the tank above. Zones 2
and 4 are supplied by fire pumps taking suction from a tank. Figure 3 also is arranged so that
the system is fully operational even with the failure of any single component.
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