Fire sprinklers

Overview

Fire sprinklers lays out sprinkler heads in a room of the BimCraft model by hazard class, draws the branch lines and the cross main that feed them, and runs a density and area hydraulic calculation against a water-supply test that you type in. It then writes the heads and the sized steel pipe into the open model. The design criteria are your table; the built-in defaults are labelled for professional review.

Who it’s for

• Fire protection and MEP engineers who want a first layout and a hydraulic check of a room before the detailed design: where the heads go, how big the pipe is and whether the supply is enough.
• BIM coordinators who need the heads and pipe in the model for clash checks and quantities.
• Reviewers who want to see the calculation the design rests on.

What you can do

• Lay out heads on a grid in a room (Sprinklers tab, Lay out heads). The head count is the least the hazard class allows, and a cross main feeds a branch line to each side of every row.
• Pick a hazard class (Light, Ordinary I, Ordinary II, Extra I or Extra II by default) or type your own table of density, design area, spacing, coverage and hose allowance.
• Calculate the density and area method against the water-supply test you type in (static pressure, residual pressure and the flow it was measured at). The result shows the governing design area, the source pressure needed and whether the supply meets it.
• Place the heads (fire suppression terminals) and the steel pipe runs, sized by the calculation, in the model (Place in the model). Each pipe run is one undo step.
• Send the layout and calculation warnings to the shell's Problems list in apps that have it.
• Run the same three steps from the add-on's commands: sprinkler:layout, sprinkler:calc and sprinkler:place.

Methods and standards

Density and area hydraulic calculation. Operating heads discharge K times the square root of pressure. Pipe friction is Hazen-Williams, with C typed in (120 for new black steel by default). Fittings count as equivalent lengths in pipe diameters, and elevation counts as head. The supply is drawn as a water-supply test curve. Several candidate design areas are tried, and the lowest source pressure that gives every operating head its minimum is kept. Head spacing and coverage follow the maximum spacing and coverage of each hazard class. The hazard figures are taken from NFPA 13, with EN 12845 and NBR 10897 named as the local standards that use other numbers. The defaults are the commonly quoted figures, labelled for professional review, and the add-on says to check clause numbers against the edition in force.

Data and sources

The hazard classes and the other defaults (K-factor 80.6 L/min per root bar, minimum head pressure 0.5 bar, velocity limit 6 m/s, and the equivalent lengths of fittings) are labelled defaults that you can type over. Your water-supply test and your own design table are the inputs that matter. Steel pipe sizes come from the mechanical tables for Schedule 40 steel in the BimCraft engine.

Verification

Tested by tools/bimcraft-test/eg-mep-test.mjs, which runs as part of node bin/test-bimcraft.mjs --eg. The checks cover the hazard libraries, a 12 by 8 m ordinary I room laid out as 4 by 2 heads at 3.0 by 4.0 m (within the class's maximum spacing), the hydraulic libraries, and the add-on end to end: layout, calculation and eight heads placed with their property set, through a stand-in add-on interface. A worked example from the standard has not been checked by hand yet.

Limits

A design aid, not an approval. The pipe network is solved as a tree: a loop is warned about and ignored. Pipe-schedule sizing from the standard's tables, standpipes and hose, and pumps and tanks on the supply are not included. The layout works on one room outline at a time. Reading the room from the model is planned, not done, so you type the outline in the Sprinklers tab.

Files and formats

Reads the room outline and the water-supply figures you type. Places the heads as IFC fire suppression terminals (IfcFlowTerminal in IFC2X3 models), each with the property set CadCraft_Sprinkler, and the steel pipe runs, in the open BimCraft model. The model is saved with the usual BimCraft save.

Get started

1. Switch Fire sprinklers on in Settings, Add-ons.
2. Open a BimCraft model and the Sprinklers tab. Type the room corners in millimetres, one per line, pick the hazard class and press Lay out heads.
3. Type the water-supply test and press Calculate, then press Place in the model.

Languages

The text is available in:

• Afrikaans (af)
• Amharic (am)
• Arabic (ar)
• Azerbaijani (az)
• Belarusian (be)
• Bulgarian (bg)
• Bengali (bn)
• Bosnian (bs)
• Catalan (ca)
• Czech (cs)
• Danish (da)
• German (de)
• Dhivehi (dv)
• Greek (el)
• English (en)
• Spanish (Spain) (es-ES)
• Spanish (Mexico) (es-MX)
• Estonian (et)
• Persian (fa)
• Finnish (fi)
• Filipino (fil)
• French (fr)
• Galician (gl)
• Guarani (gn)
• Hebrew (he)
• Hindi (hi)
• Croatian (hr)
• Hungarian (hu)
• Armenian (hy)
• Indonesian (id)
• Icelandic (is)
• Italian (it)
• Japanese (ja)
• Georgian (ka)
• Kazakh (kk)
• Khmer (km)
• Korean (ko)
• Kyrgyz (ky)
• Lao (lo)
• Lithuanian (lt)

Works in

Comes with

Adding it brings these too. Engines are shared: each downloads once for every add-on that uses it.

Needed by: Clinical and hospital engineering, Fire and life safety engineering, Plumbing and fire protection.

Permissions

• Adds commands
• Adds a panel section
• Opens or saves its own file types
• Keeps its own settings in this browser

From its manifest. Shown again when an update changes them, and the update waits for your yes.

Versions

Licence and maker

CadCraft (CadCraft, first-party). Licence: Apache-2.0. Dependencies carry their own licences, listed on their pages.