Hi Peter
A couple of details that need to be considered in regard to cold storage:
The ratio of facility cost to stored product cost is about 1:7, which means that if you store your own product, in your own cold store, then the underwriter is only concerned with the product value. The reason for this is that if you get any sort of fire in a cold store, you automatically lose all of the product. This is because MPI will arrive and instruct you to dump it - no ifs, buts or maybe’s. As a consequence, sprinklers, no sprinklers, external water supplies, no external water supplies are of little interest, as the loss is basically the same.
The second item is your comment in regard to “given the history of cool store fires in NZ”. I would appreciate it if you could supply me with the relevant information to back this statement, as my information is not in compliance with this statement.
I am concerned that risk analysis does not seem to enter the conversation. There will always be a trade off between the impact of a fire event upon an enterprise, and the cost of ameliorating that event. Assisting the client in getting the balance right should be absolutely basic in any fire engineering design, not just blindly following a code that may/may not be applicable. One of the great pluses of the NFPA codes is that they do not tell you what you need to do, they tell you how to do it after you have decided that you want to do something.
Of any of the comments this one concerns me the most. There are some projects that are hindered by FFW and some that get scrapped because of FFW. If the water storage will not be used, or at least not used effectively then what is the point in making people pay for it. I find nothing more frustrating than providing something for use by FENZ and then find that it will not be used.
Does the COP actually fit within FENZ’s operational strategy for both urban and rural fire fighting?
It is obviously not a Building Act issue but should there be local water storage integrated with the water supply infrastructure?
Rather than have water storage randomly installed on private property could it not be provided where it would be useful and fit in with an operational strategy? If money is going to be spent it should be spent effectively.