Argus Fire Involved in Yet Another Fire Protection Upgrade

Argus Fire Protection Services have completed many large projects over the past few years, using their many years of combined experience in the fire protection and life safety industries, and their team is able to offer an extensive range of fire protection of products and services to meet their clients’ needs. They were involved in the expansion of the Warehouse Distribution Centre at Wiri in South Auckland, being awarded the fire protection upgrade, which required, among other things, a complete water supply reconfiguration.

The existing town main supply was unable to provide the flow required for the extension because The Warehouse wanted maximum flexibility with racking, therefore no in-rack sprinklers, which means flows of around 9,000 litres per minute at roof level to achieve fire suppression.

The existing tank was converted into an infill tank where the town main starts topping the tank up when the water level drops to provide a 60 minute water supply. In addition to this a 540,000 litre steel panel tank was installed to provide a 60 minute fully stored capacity tank for a secondary source independent of the town main.

The existing seven control valves and pumps where all removed and replaced by 10 new valvesets and two new pumps, the extra three valve sets were to serve the new extension. This was all installed in a purpose built fire control room. The builder decided to prefabricate the structural steel on the ground in 1500 sq.m assemblies; each of the roof sections was then lifted with multiple cranes. The prefab concept was extended to fire sprinklers, which were assembled onto the steel sections on the ground before the roof structure was lifted into its final position more than 14 metres up.

The alarm system also required a complete upgrade. The existing conventional alarm system and devices were upgraded throughout the new extension and existing areas to an Analogue Addressable system. All work was carried out while the site was occupied and isolation of fire protection systems was kept to a minimum to ensure property and people protection was not compromised, which is the Argus Fire way!

For more information on Argus Fire Protection Services please visit the website at http://www.argusfire.co.nz .