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Perks for high-rise building automatic sprinklers in the 2006 IBC: spend some quality reading time with this latest edition, and you will be able to help your clients save money while ensuring them their building will be a fire-safe haven for its future occupants.

Article Excerpt
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Back in their 1981 editions, two (BOCA and UBC) of the three legacy building codes (BOCA, UBC and SBC), began requiring sprinklers in new high-rise office and residential buildings. By comparison, the NFPA 10I (Life Safety Code] began requiring sprinklers in new high-rise office buildings in its 1976 edition, and in residential high-rises in its 1991 editions. With the combination of the three legacy building codes into the 2000 edition of the International Building Code (IBC), most new buildings classified as a "high-rise building" were required to be sprinklered. The exceptions were very few and included areas like open parking garages and airport traffic control towers.

These national model codes have almost uniformly classified a high-rise building as a building having occupied floors located more than 75 feet above the lowest level of fire department vehicle access. The codes required sprinklering of these new high-rise buildings because of the numerous benefits sprinklering provides such buildings.

This article will explore a few of the major advantages to the mandatory sprinkler requirement for a high-rise building when it is built under the IBC, which is the predominant building code used throughout the United States. When the plumbing engineer understands some of the advantages under the IBC for sprinklering a high-rise building, he/she will be able to be a real asset to the design team to not only provide valuable life safety/ fire protection to the project, but also some major design alternatives and cost savings to the occupants and owners of the building.

Please note as you read this article that:

* All code section references in this article will be to the 2006 edition of the IBC (unless otherwise noted) in order for you to be able to review the issues covered in this article in the correct edition of the Code;

* Under the 2006 IBC, sprinklering the entire building would be required to be done in accordance with the 2002 edition of NFPA 13, Installation of Sprinkler Systems; and

* The sprinkler benefits provided are partial and intended only as an educational guide--not as a replacement for the actual reading and understanding of the 2006 IBC requirements.

Code Benefits Provided by Sprinkler Protection in a High-rise Building

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