What is a Fire Sprinkler Designer?

When I first interviewed for my current job, the man interviewing me told me that being a fire sprinkler designer is about as non-glamorous as a job can get.  He said, "If you're at a party and someone asks you what you do, and you tell them, 'I'm an astronaut', then everybody in the place wants to be your friend, every girl wants to talk to you.  If you tell them, 'I design fire sprinkler systems', you can watch their eyes start to glaze over until they can think of an excuse to walk away."  It's not that what we do is hard to understand.  It's just, you know, boring.

You've probably seen sprinklers go off in movies.  Picture the scene:  the hero is trapped in a building full of enemies and he needs to escape.  He spots a sprinkler head in the ceiling, and is able to get up to it.  He holds his cigarette lighter up to the sprinkler head, and after several seconds, every sprinkler in the building goes off, creating the chaos our hero needs to escape.

In reality only one head goes off at a time, more if needed.  The sprinkler heads are automatic, they're heat sensitive, so when a fire starts below them they activate by themselves, but they don't activate other heads.  If the fire is big, it'll activate multiple heads, which must be strategically placed so that just the right sprinklers will go off.  A huge part of the designer's job is that strategic placement.  They can't be too close to each other, and they can't be to far away from each other.  I could write a book describing all the rules for spacing and placement, but I don't have to; there's already several.  Our primary rule book is the NFPA-13: The Standard for the Installation of Fire Sprinkler Systems, put out by the National Fire Prevention Association, who put out something like one hundred different rule books for different aspects of fire prevention.

The rules for sprinkler design are so stringent because it falls under the heading of Fire Prevention, which falls under Life Safety, which means it's very serious stuff.  Everybody from insurance  agents to the local fire marshal gets a say in any sprinkler design, which makes our job even more difficult.

I love my job, and I'm very proud of the things I know and do.  Oh, and to refer back to my opening paragraph, I've actually had fairly good luck in talking to people about my job, but I think that's because most of my friends have at least some construction background so they're able to put what I say into that context.  My wife Nicole, though, likes hearing me talk sprinklers, and she understands most of what I tell her, which is more than what most of my coworkers and bosses can say.  When we go into buildings and I see an interesting sprinkler feature I point it out to her.  During the six months I spent in training she helped me study every night and got really good at quizzing me.

Anyway, I hope this brief description helps explain a bit about what I do.  As always, thanks for reading.