Retrofitting Your Facility or Home with a Sprinkler System

Have you been thinking about adding a sprinkler system to your facility or home?  There are a lot of benefits to having a sprinkler system installed with the most important being the safety of the people inside.  Maybe the laws for your type of facility are changing and you are needing to add a sprinkler system.  As time goes on, they have been adding more and more types of facilities that are required to have some type of sprinkler system.  Some are still in the recommended stage but more than likely will get to the point that all new structures will be required to have them installed.

Considerations and Benefits to Installing a Fire Sprinkler System:

If you are planning on adding a fire protection system, choosing what type of system you need is one of the first steps.  Would a water sprinkler system be sufficient or do you need a foam system, or maybe a special hazards system?  This type of question would be best answered by certified technicians that are familiar with your facility and needs.  Also determining, if going with a water sprinkler system, whether you can use your existing water supply or if you need to drill a well with a separate storage tank with its own pumps.  A lot of this depends on what type of facility or the size of your facility.  For a small assisted living home, using the existing water system would work just fine where in a large church you might need to have a well with the separate storage tank.

The next thing to consider is timing of the install.  For an assisted living facility, this is a very important thing to consider.  Most facilities can not have a lot or any down time so coordinating your schedule with the company retrofitting your facility is highly important.  Trying to figure out a good time or method to go about installing so that, in the case of an assisted living facility, the residents and staff’s lives are disrupted in the least way possible is crucial to a successful install.

Cost of Retrofitting a System

The cost is a big factor when considering retrofitting your facility with a sprinkler system.  According to the National Fire Sprinkler Association, the average cost of retrofitting your facility is around $3.00 per square foot.  There are a lot of factors that play into this including the above question about what type of system you need.  The ease of ability to install the required piping and fittings can also either decrease or increase your cost.  With this comes a potential for a large savings as well.  Installing a sprinkler system can dramatically decrease the amount of insurance you pay.  The size and type of facility will affect the amount of money you can save.  More often than not, it will pay itself off in relatively a short period of time.  Talk to your insurance agent to find out what kind of savings you can expect if you retrofit your facility with a sprinkler system.  You can also talk to your accountant to find out if there is any tax savings when installing a sprinkler system.  It would add to your depreciation schedule but there might also be some state incentives available to facilities to add sprinkler systems.

There are many things to consider when thinking about adding a sprinkler system to your facility or home.  At Davis-Ulmer Fire Protection Systems, we believe that the benefits greatly outweigh the cons when adding a sprinkler system to your existing building structure.  Our certified technicians will work with you every step of the way to make sure that you have a successful installation and that the disruption the install might create is kept to a very minimum.  They will help you choose the system that is right for your needs.  We also inspect and service all systems to make sure they will work the way they are designed to if you ever have a fire.  Contact us today at 877-691-3200 to find out how we can help you explore the possibility of retrofitting your facility with a sprinkler system. Contact us today for more details.