Quote:
Originally posted by lordjeebus
Sure,
My room is about 14 by 14 feet and has a couple of sprinklers near the ceiling.
How big would a fire get before the sprinklers can detect the heat and go off? How much water does a standard sprinkler put out per minute?
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your first question is kind of tricky. it depends on what the fuel source is, and also how high the ceiling is. normally, you would see a sprinkler head activate around the five minute mark, with say a wood fire. it really depends on the rate of heat release of the fuel, like i said.
the other thing to take into consideration is whats called thermal lag. thermal lag happens because the sprinkler head, being a solid object, takes more time to heat up than the air around it. so while you may have ceiling temperatures around 250 degrees or so in a rapidly developing fire, the sprinkler head may only be heated to about 130. now, your standard sprinkler head is designed to "go off" around 155 degrees, but you can get heads for special applications that wont go off till about 600 degrees.
as for your second question, a standard 5.6K sprinkler head, in a light hazard occupancy, say in a room 15' x 15' is designed to discharge about .10 GPM/SQFT. so thats about 22.5 GPM the head is discharging. i would say thats a bare minimum, as the stronger the water supply is, the more flow youre likely to get from the head.
this is, however, much less than say, a fire hose which can discharge as much as 500 GPM into an area.