Boise "I" Beams

Not to rain on your parade, but comparing the stats from here

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to the Italian one, it seems that number of electrical fires in the UK are not that far from those in Italy. There were 11,190 fires related to electrical distribution and appliances, versus 12,500 cited by the Italians. UK has a population of roughly 59m (2005 figures) to Italy

57m , so you get a ratio of 1 fire per 5273 persons in the UK, to 1 per 4560 in Italy.

On the other hand UK cites 519,000 fires over the whole territory, versus 190,000 in Italy, which I find a very strange disparity. And yet UK cites 477,000 false alarms versus the 21,000 cited in Italy, so clearly there are reporting differences.

Nevertheless, in the detailed categories there are some similarities. It seems the British have similar problems with chimneys (12,000 UK to

7,400 in Italy), but they are more careful with their cigarettes (4,336 UK to 7,400 Italy). Unfortunately Italy doesn't report kitchen related fires, only 15,387 other causes (and electrical is one figure, titled 'general electrical causes'), so it becomes impossible to compare kitchen fires in homes.

Comparing with the US, the 27,248 kitchen fires reported in UK constitutes over 50% of total residential fires (47,769 total), while in the US, kitchen ignited fires are 26% of residential fires. So it seems the Brits are even more inattentive than the Americans when it comes to cooking.

Despite that, residential fires in the UK are half those in the US:

48,000/59,000,000 UK versus 401,000/280,000,000 (.0008 to .0014). Yet, nonresidential fires in the US (115,000)are less than those in the UK (37,600), percentage-wise (.0004 US to .0006 UK).

For the rest of your broad stroke picture, as with all such overreaching generalities, it needs to be applied with care. To lump northern Italians, southern Italians and Spaniards together is like lumping the Danish, Irish and Brits together. There is a cultural bias in Italy of looking for ways to 'circumvent authority', but this is changing, and has been doing so over the past 20 years, especially in the north (meaning from the Alps to Rome.)

Marcello

Reply to
marcenmoni
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NFPA has a code for sprinklers in residential homes (NFPA 13R). I think the issue has been raised before and may have been shot down by consumer advocates and GCs.

After doing a quick google, it seems the trend has been started.

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Marcello

Reply to
marcenmoni

Caro Marcello, you must have been a fact checker in an earlier incarnation. Your diligence is exemplary...you can tell there's a but coming, I suppose. Unfortunately all of those big numbers with soooo many decimal points and zeros makes for dry reading. In other words your presentation needs some pizazz. If you could work up some pie charts and graphics, maybe a nice PowerPoint presentation with some nifty slide transitions, that would be fabulous.

I'll be at my desk at 9 tomorrow morning, so get cracking!

R
Reply to
RicodJour

marcenmoni> wrote

Its been evolving for some time now in SW FL. Naples was the first, about 10 years ago, to require all residences over

4,000 sf living area to have sprinklers. In Lee County they incorporated *pockets* of residential categories to have them. Most of my work over the past 10 years has been on the assorted islands and all of them have differing rules pertaining to this, as well as many other things. North Captiva requires that if the lowest portion of the floor framing members ABOVE the pilings are more than 11' above *existing* grade then sprinklers are required regardless of size. Useppa has no requirement for sprinklers, which is odd considering the home values there are at least twice what they are on North Cap. Boca Grande requires sprinklers in homes where the first finished floor is less than 10' above finished grade. And on and on.
Reply to
Don

Welcome to my world. There are probably fifteen or twenty villages and five towns within a five mile radius. They all have their own modified building codes and building departments. This is one of the prices you pay when everyone wants to maintain their community's individuality.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Fun innit? Last year the chief plans examiner for Lee County called me up and asked me how to determine the finished floor height for the island of Cayo Costa. Seriously. This guy is like god at the building dept and he called me! There are very few homes on Cayo Costa and he remembered that I had done several out there. His assistant, an AIA architect, almost begged me to teach him Autocad. LOL

Reply to
Don

I would fit them, however they should be fitted as standard.

You may do, however find out what safety devices are for.

Reply to
John

Those that are recorded of course. The UK is very efficient at recording data. Crimes stats make the UK look like the wild west in some areas, yet in reality it is far from the case.

I was emphasising Latin counties in general, well southern Europe really. Now Greece!

As to electrical fires. many are at a portable appliance, such as a hairdryer.toaster or whatever, and not the electrical system itself. New UK systems require RCDs, which make a difference in protection. Also only in the past few years do electrical system require certification of the installer - gas has required certification for a long time. In future electrical problems should drop as systems become safer - no "electrician" from Kosovo or one of the 800,000 Poles that have flocked over, will be able to wire up anymore (well not legally).

Yep.

You have to take into account the UK is colder and uses heating far more than Italy. You will find a big difference from north to south Italy I am sure with heating appliance fires, so Italy in proportion to their appliances would be more than the UK. In the UK many gas appliances are connected to the old Victorian brick chimney which can crumble inside.

It could be. If the fires is electrically ignited it could be that it is a portable appliance.

Northern Italy is like a different country in the people and the looks. A part of it even speaks German.

My broad stroke generalities to northern Europe and south is pretty spot on. If you have been around it all like I have you will agree. Only two months ago a British family in a hotel in Greece was killed by fumes from a gas appliance because of poor installation. In the UK you have to be registered, requiring the necessary education, qualifications and experience to fit and commission gas appliances. They don't bother and any fool from the street can do it.

Imposing higher regulations from Brussels helps, (the standard of electrical equipment has risen) however only when proper certification is implemented for installers and maintenance people will southern Europe improve.

Reply to
John

In the village I grew up in, they had a fire truck without a muffler (long story). When it pulled out of the fire hall, the motor would drown out the siren. You knew when that thing was coming.

John wrote:

Reply to
Pat

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Reply to
Pat

A plan must be submitted for approval indicating all head specifications and locations. There are engineers that do just that sort of thing. I've done many such plans in the past and it can get pretty intense. Few years back they started breaking up attic spaces into bite size pieces seperated by firewalls and these spaces are sprinklered too, as well as various other places where fire can get into and perhaps chase to other areas of the building.

Reply to
Don

Why? Do you also have a problem w/ a weld "holding up" a school?

Reply to
dpb

RicodJour wrote: ...

...

Shelters against what? Whether every public building should be a shelter or not is certainly debatable. In tornado country out here, the interiors are built to be reasonably safe within the competing demands of size, functionality, and yes (shudder!) cost. Despite what some would think, there aren't unlimited resources for such projects. In general, it is more the responsibility of individuals to provide their own protection unless at a location at the time of the event that isn't their domicile. In that case, it's prudent to make those facilities reasonably safe, but not practical to ensure complete safety under all possible scenarios.

Reply to
dpb

For most shelters, I don't think the purpose of the shelter is to protect people during the event, it is for afterwards. You need to keep some infrastructure & housing in place for those unfortuneate enough to have their homes destroyed.

dpb wrote:

Reply to
Pat

Say the cost to replace a typical sprinkler head is $250 each and the typical house has 20 heads. Are the homeowers really going to pay out $4000 every 10 years to replace the heads? How does the gov't enforce it? Does the insurance company enforce it? Or do they just leave them alone and hope that they work in 30 years when they need them? Also, are the individuals required to maintain replacement heads like commercial/multifamily buildings are?

I don't know. This just seems like something that will get overlooked.

D> A plan must be submitted for approval indicating all head specifications and

Reply to
Pat

Why? Because it seems to be a weak link. Yes, I have a problem with welds too. When I worked for the largest steel bldg manuf in the SE US an engineer told me that when a steel building fails the welds are the first things that are suspect. Its true that welds are stronger than the material around them but they are also more brittle and therefore more susceptible to stress. Rather than glues and welds I prefer mechanical fasteners. But in the realm of design and construction I don't always get to have my way.

Reply to
Don

I don't know how it works for private residences but in multi-family and commercial applications the fire marshall does yearly inspections. I'm pretty certain sprinkler heads are a lot less than $250 each to replace. Seems like a complete installation in a 2000 sf house is in the $7000.00 range more or less.

In my last house I had the pool installer add an extra inlet to my filter and I roughed in the piping in my attic (1" sched 40 PVD) and after the CO was issued I went ahead and installed (4) 360 degree Rainbird lawn sprinklers on the backside of the roof ridge of the house. This was a very rural area with lots of tall pines everywhere and during the dry season they frequently turn into torches, so I wanted to be able to access my 17,000 gallons of pool water to douse and keep the house wet in the event of a forest fire.

Reply to
Don

That's a good, inexpensive way to do it. But if I were spending your money, besides being in the poor house ages ago, you would have placed the pool on the roof in the first place, stuck in a glass bottom, built a bar lounge underneath it and have a two drink minimum with cover charge. It would have paid for itself in no time. I'm also seeing an endless pool edge turning into waterfalls that cascade over the windows below. Hugh Hefner would have been calling you up asking if he could bring the girls over to hang out for a while.

"Hi, Don, it's me Hef. The Grotto is getting a little old and I was wondering if I could bring over six or eight of my girlfriends for a party next week - all week, if that's okay with you. You know how they are once they get started."

Poor house is starting to sound like a reasonable trade off, isn't it? ;)

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Whether a weld is more brittle or not depends on much other than simply being a weld. I'd hazard a speculation that just as in the subject case, the prime root cause of a weld failure will be, in essence, a manufacturing defect although far more often the "manufacturing" in the case of welding is on-site rather than factory, the parallel is essentially complete imo.

There are failures in fasteners and fastener systems, too. The upshot is, no system is perfect either in manufacture nor installation. One can try to achieve it, and failures are, overall, remarkably few, but some have occurred and others will in the future despite our best efforts to avoid them.

A blanket condemnation of any particular system (other than truly egregious blunders, of course) is not a productive solution or proposal.

Reply to
dpb

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