Fire Sprinkler Inspections and Testing: What You Need To Know

3/19/2022 (Permalink)

It is important to schedule and tests your fire sprinklers.

Fire Sprinkler Inspections and Testing

As a business owner, you have a responsibility to your employees and your customers to keep them safe in the event of a fire or other disaster. Though you cannot prevent disaster from occurring, you can mitigate injuries and loss with the aid of a properly working fire sprinkler system. To ensure your fire suppression system is working properly, you should perform routine inspections and tests.

How Often Should You Inspect Your System?

Because there are various components of your sprinkler system, you should abide by an inspection schedule. The National Fire Protection Association provides a simple guide you can use when examining your sprinkler components:

Weekly or Monthly: Inspect the gauges in the deluge, pre-action and dry systems once a week. Gauges on the wet system can undergo inspections once a month.

Quarterly: You should inspect the alarms on a quarterly basis. Alarms include the valve supervisory alarms, water flow alarms, control valves, supervisory signals and hydraulic nameplates.

Annually: On an annual basis, examine the pipes, fittings, hanger/seismic bracing and information signage. You should inspect the backup fire sprinkler system once a year as well.

Every Five Years: An internal inspection of your sprinkler system is only necessary once every five years.

How Often Should You Perform Sprinkler Tests?
In addition to performing routine inspections, you should also test the various components of your fire suppression system. Below is a testing schedule by which you should abide:

Quarterly: To ensure your devices are ready to work in the event of a fire, you should test all the mechanical devices on your system on a quarterly basis.

Semiannually: On a semiannual basis, you should test the pressure switch and vane devices.
Annually: You should perform a thorough test on an annual basis. This should be a complete systems test, and your maintenance technician should perform physical examinations of all components of your system.

Every Five Years: If your system is exposed to extremely high temperatures and harsh conditions, you should inspect or replace all gauges on your system every five years.

For more information regarding fire sprinkler testing and maintenance, consult with your local fire unit. For fire sprinkler cleanup, contact your Tarrytown, TX fire damage remediation team.