said by ramsfansam:I take insult at being called "un knowledgeable" - which you misspelled, BTW. I am a "maintenance man" with an associates degree in computer programming, as well as many further hours of training in various areas.
No one said you, or all maintenance men are unkowledgeable, so cool your pits. I said
this maintenance man was unknowledgeable, (with regard to data center design). Local codes have precedence. The requirements and design of sprinkler systems is a very complex subject. It takes an engineer that specializes in fire protection, period. We have designed thousands of data centers and computer rooms - every last one with either pre-action sprinklers or gaseous or both. In no instance, has there ever been a situation where pre-action (dry) was not acceptable, so I disagree with your statement that 'dry-type sprinklers are
often not allowed by local codes. It has to be done right, of course.
For a fire to get hot enough to actually set off a sprinkler head in a data center, no one will be concerned with water in the data center. The equipment in that area will already have been destroyed, with the fire threatening to destroy the entire data center
and building. Even without sprinklers, the fire department is going to come in and dump tens of thousands of gallons of water into the room. Its too late.
The point of having pre-action, is to prevent leaks and accidental discharge of sprinkler heads (when there is no fire) from damaging the equipment and/or causing an outage.