Broward County School District, Fla.
RETROFIT TEAM
FIRE-SPRINKLER INSTALLER: Sprinklermatic Inc.
CPVC DISTRIBUTOR: Viking Supply
MATERIALS
Sprinklermatic Inc. has made a showcase of the Broward County School District, having outfitted the majority of the district’s buildings with new fire-protection systems over the last decade; approximately 22,000 feet of pipe and 1,300 sprinkler heads have been installed districtwide. Sprinklermatic Vice President Tim O’Brien has worked with BlazeMaster systems for years and was excited to bring the product to a new project.
“The Broward County school board needed to upgrade their fire protection systems,” O’Brien says. “That’s where the opportunity presented itself on the project. It became a question of, ‘How do you sprinkler a building that is in essence open all the time?’”
Updates to the school district’s fire protection began in 2003 when the administration learned one of its oldest buildings, Northside Elementary, required a new fire sprinkler system to meet new codes and regulations. The age and structure of the building would require delicate work; something that would become incredibly difficult with a steel system.
Initially, the Broward County school board balked at the prospect of a CPVC system installation. Sprinklermatic brought in one of Lubrizol’s expert piping systems consultants to present the benefits of a CPVC, or chlorinated polyvinyl chloride, system to the school board.
“The school board only knew steel pipe,” O’Brien recalls. “We had to teach them the benefits of CPVC. The cost benefits and ease of installation sold them. We showed them we could install the product without tearing apart ceilings, and that it could be done quickly.”
The flexibility of BlazeMaster systems worked well with the unpredictability of installations in buildings greater than 50 years old, where architectural and structural changes may not have remained consistent over the years. With BlazeMaster pipe and fittings, contractors don’t need
to worry about starting and stopping pipes at specific points during the installation; the flexibility of the product allows contractors to pick up and leave off where necessary throughout the process.
This was particularly important considering the time crunch involved on some of the Broward County installations. One building needed the job completed in under two weeks, which was possible with CPVC; a comparative system using steel would have involved hours of setup and cleanup, not to mention prefabrication and design that would have been impossible to install in the same amount of time. The district’s Coconut Creek High School was similarly sprinklered in just 28 days in 2013.
Across the Broward County School District, Sprinklermatic received the opportunity to sprinkler several other buildings—totaling 13 campuses districtwide, each with around 10 buildings. And Lubrizol offered its full support each step of the way, offering its comprehensive training to Sprinklermatic. Thus far, the district has experienced no issues with its new fire-protection systems, and Sprinklermatic continues to utilize BlazeMaster CPVC successfully.
CPVC MANUFACTURER: Lubrizol
FIRE-PROTECTION SYSTEM: Blazemaster
PHOTOS: BlazeMaster