We all want our buildings to be safe from fire, but who says safety can’t look good, too? Is it possible to have fire sprinklers doing their job without being seen? Let’s dive into some options for Florida fire sprinkler installation that blend fire safety with a dash of style.
Your fire sprinkler system is an essential element of your comprehensive Fire & Life Safety strategy. Its purpose is to extinguish a fire with water (or chemicals) to limit property damage and injury to building occupants. And we’ve all grown accustomed to seeing the pendant-style fire sprinkler heads poking out from the ceiling throughout the office. But can your system be code-compliant and not disruptive to the aesthetics of your custom building? Read on to find out!
How Do Fire Sprinklers Work?
Before we try to hide them away, let’s review how fire sprinklers work and why you need our professional Florida fire sprinkler installation team to tackle the job. If you have a new construction project or want a retrofit for an older building, we start with design. Every facility is unique, so we will design a system that best suits your needs. Most commercial buildings use a wet sprinkler system in which water is kept in the pipes all the time. When fire is detected, water is immediately released to the sprinkler heads.
Fire sprinklers work by detecting heat from a fire. Each sprinkler head has a heat-sensitive element, typically a glass bulb with a colored liquid inside. When the temperature in the vicinity of the sprinkler rises to a specific point, the glass bulb bursts, releasing the liquid. This sudden release triggers the sprinkler, allowing water to flow out and extinguish the fire. The heat-sensitive element in each sprinkler head ensures that only the sprinklers closest to the fire are activated, preventing unnecessary water damage in other areas.
Can You Hide Sprinkler Heads?
As you can tell from how they work, sprinkler heads must extend below ceiling level so the water can disperse effectively. Until they’re needed, however, it is possible to tuck them away to a certain extent – out of sight but never out of mind!
Recessed Sprinkler Heads
At the dawn of indoor electricity, rooms were illuminated by light bulbs screwed into ceiling sockets. Our great-great-grandmothers turned them on by pulling a string. Back then, no one minded that these bulbs were hanging down and very apparent – they were just happy to have light! Decades passed, and engineers and architects figured out how to recess the light bulbs into the ceiling so we could still have light, but the bulbs would be hidden away.
Recessed sprinkler heads operate in much the same way until they leap into action. They quietly nestle in the ceiling’s recess, and when triggered, they descend quickly to permit the flow of water throughout the area. Recessed sprinkler heads are surrounded by a metal disc, called an escutcheon, that sits flush against the ceiling. Professional installation and replacement of these escutcheons are crucial as per NFPA regulations, ensuring they are correctly matched with the sprinkler heads. This means you can’t go out and buy any old escutcheon and install it with your existing recessed system. The escutcheon needs to pair with the sprinklers they are designed for.
Concealed Sprinkler Heads
Another way to hide your sprinkler heads is by concealing them with cover plates. With this type of fire sprinkler system, the sprinkler head is, again, tucked away into the ceiling, and a round plate sits flush with the ceiling to cover it.
The fire sprinkler cover plate is affixed to a frame component that can be screwed or pushed into the fire sprinkler head assembly. The solder used is designed to melt at a temperature typically 20 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the activation temperature of the sprinkler head. When the solder melts, the cover plate detaches, enabling the sprinkler head deflector to descend below the ceiling level and disperse water once the sprinkler is activated.
Fire Safety Is Always In Style With DynaFire
Our Florida fire sprinkler installation team wants to design and install a fire sprinkler system that works best for you – in function and design. If you want fire protection as stylish as your building, we’re here for it! Contact us today to see how we can meet all of your Fire & Life Safety needs.
