Fire suppression systems are required to meet fire safety codes, but what happens when your facility contains combustible, extremely valuable, or irreplaceable materials. Special hazard suppression systems are designed and tested to help control and extinguish challenging fires in mission-critical rooms, areas, and buildings. Let’s discuss below if a special hazard suppression system is right for your building/business.

What is Special Hazard Suppression?

While fires are certainly damaging, sometimes water used to suppress a fire can be problematic. This is because they introduce an element that could compromise important documents, electronics, or other business functions necessary to continue a company’s revenue stream. Special hazard suppression is designed to take water out of the equation (except for water mist systems) but still provide your facility with the fire protection it requires. Often these systems use mist, inert gases, dry chemical’s or foam as suppression agents to attack the fire tetrahedron. Gas systems are used in areas where people are not. They work by filling the room with carbon dioxide or other gases and removing oxygen. Dry chemical and foam special hazard suppression systems also work by depriving the fire of oxygen. They spread a layer of white foam or chemical that is impenetrable by oxygen over the area affected by a fire and combat heat.

Where to Use Special Hazard Suppression?

Generally, there are two categories of facilities that need special hazard suppression. Places that hold highly combustible materials or materials that are extremely valuable or irreplaceable. Some good examples of some such facilities are:

• Oil refineries
• Power plants
• Chemical production plants
• Aircraft hangars
• Fuel storage facilities
• Computer server rooms
• Storage of critical documents
• Museums
• Art galleries
• Medical facilities
• Control rooms
• Data centers

These examples are places where fire damage costs are extremely high or damaged property cannot be replaced. Things like famous masterpieces, artifacts that are thousands of years old, or hard drives containing valuable information would be damaged by fire or water. Other avenues should be considered when protecting these things.

With a special hazard suppression system, you can have peace of mind that the right fire suppression system is in place protecting your property from extensive damage. We at Valley Fire Protection can help you with your special hazard suppression needs. Give us a call today!

Related Topics: Fire Protection // fire suppression systems // Special hazard suppression

By: Tom Hartel

I acquired my expertise by directing day-to-day operations of the business for over 20 years. Continuous hard work helped me become a nationally recognized speaker and expert on fire protection, fire sprinklers, special hazards, and plumbing systems. In this blog, I share my knowledge that will hopefully help you make better decisions for your projects.