All methods for the prevention of fires fall so far short of the ideal
of immunity that there is a necessity for fire-apparatus. The principle
of the defence of a manufactory against fire is that of self-protection,
by making the installation and management of the fire-apparatus equal to
the progress of any fire which can possibly occur.
Fire-apparatus should be kept in service as well as in order. It is no
exception to any other machinery, in that practice is essential to
obtain any efficient results.
The practical results of private fire-organizations, where fire has
occurred, have been very marked; and systematic and skilful work has
been the rule, in place of the needless confusion and liability to
breakage of the apparatus, which almost inevitably occurs in the lack of
such organization.
The details differ with the arrangements and administration of every
mill; but the general policy of definitely assigning persons to the
positions for which they are best adapted, and where it is presumed they
could be most useful, and to practice them in such work, is a rule which
is common to all.
A great deal of fire-apparatus is destroyed by freezing water during the
winter months, and therefore a special inspection of all such apparatus
should be made late in the autumn, when the water should be drained from
all portions of the system where there is liability of freezing, and all
hydrants and valves should be well oiled, preferably with mineral oil.
The hazard from a hydrant or other portion of the apparatus broken by
frost, does not lie so much in the probability that disadvantage may
result from the disuse of one element of the plant, as in the liability
that such a breakage may interfere with the whole system and render it
inoperative.
Buckets of water are the most effective fire-apparatus. They should be
kept full, and distributed in liberal profusion in the various rooms of
a mill, being placed on shelves or hung on hooks, as circumstances may
require. In order to assist in keeping them for fire purposes only, they
should be unlike other pails used about the premises, and in some
instances each pail and the wall or column behind its position bears the
same number.
Automatic-sprinklers have proved to be a most valuable form of
fire-apparatus in operating with great efficiency at fires where their
action was unaided by other fire-apparatus, particularly at night. In
mill fires the average loss for an experience of twelve years shows that
in those fires where automatic-sprinklers formed a part of the apparatus
operating upon the fire, the average loss amounted to only
one-nineteenth of the average of all other losses. If the difference
between these two averages represents the amount saved by the operation
of automatic-sprinklers, then the total damage from the number of fires
to which automatic-sprinklers are accredited, as forming a portion of
the apparatus, has been reduced six and a quarter million dollars by the
operation of this valuable device.
Although there have been numerous patents granted to inventors of
automatic-sprinklers since the early part of the present century, yet
their practical use and introduction has been subsequent to the
invention of the sealed automatic-sprinkler by Henry S. Parmelee of New
Haven, Ct., about twelve years ago. This device being the first, and for
many years the only automatic-sprinkler manufactured and sold, and
actually performing service over accidental fires, to him belongs the
distinction of being the pioneer, and practically the originator, of the
vast work done by automatic-sprinklers in reducing destruction of
property by fire.
Although nearly or quite 200,000 Parmelee automatic-sprinklers have been
installed, their manufacture has been supplanted by other forms; and the
total number of automatic-sprinklers in position at the present time
must be about 2,000,000.
When automatic-sprinklers were first introduced there were many
apprehensions that leakage, and also excessive water discharged upon
small fires, would be sources of damage. In England this opinion found
expression in increased insurance rates in buildings where
automatic-sprinklers were installed.
The logic of figures shows that this liability to damage is merely
nominal in the case of well-constructed sprinklers. An association of
underwriters who have given careful attention to the subject obtained
the facts that from the automatic-sprinklers installed in some
$500,000,000 worth of property insured by them, the average damage from
all causes, except fire, was $2.56 per plant per annum.
Although automatic-sprinklers have proved to be so reliable and
effective, yet, in order to provide for all possible contingencies,
their introduction should not displace other forms of fire-apparatus,
particularly stand-pipes in the stairway towers, with hydrants at each
story. The hose at these hydrants should be festooned on a row of pins,
or doubled on some of the reels made especially for such purposes.
Stand-pipes are not recommended to be placed in rooms or on
fire-escapes; and inside hydrants should not be attached to the vertical
pipes supplying automatic-sprinklers.
Fire-pumps are generally too small for the work required of them, 500
gallons per minute being the minimum capacity recommended. For a
five-story mill there should be an allowance of 250 gallons per minute
for an effective stream through a 1-1/8-inch nozzle, and for lower
buildings the estimate should rarely be less than 200 gallons for each
stream.
Contrary to the general assumption, a ring nozzle is not so efficient as
a smooth nozzle, the relative amount of discharge of ring and smooth
nozzles of the same diameter being as three is to four. For stand-pipes
7/8-inch nozzles are recommended, but for yard hydrant service the
diameter should never be less than one inch, and 1-1/8 inches generally
fulfils the conditions of best service.
The yard hydrants should be placed at a distance of fifty feet from
buildings, and covered with a house which should also contain hose,
axes, bars, nozzles and spanners.
Water-mains about a mill-yard should be of ample capacity not to cause
an excessive loss by friction, their diameter being based upon a limit
of velocity of ten feet per second for the maximum delivery.