Standards New Zealand

FIRE HYDRANT SYSTEMS FOR BUILDINGS
 N NZS 4510

Annotation

This Standard specifies requirements for the design, installation, commissioning, and testing of building hydrant systems.

The primary purpose of the system shall be to allow water supplied by fire service pumping appliances to the inlet to be reticulated to building hydrant outlets within the building and located to facilitate and ensure reasonable safety for fire service operations. Where the pressure available from fire service pumps is not able to deliver the nominated flows at the building hydrant outlets within the permitted pressure ranges, pumps shall be required to achieve those flows. It may be necessary to ensure that pressure ranges are not exceeded.

The type of system shall, unless otherwise approved by the hydrant system certifier, be a wet-pipe system, charged and pressurised with water to ensure the integrity of the system and maintained in this condition. The water supply for firefighting shall normally be supplied by the fire service through the building hydrant inlet.

An optional secondary purpose which may be allowed, is the reticulation of firefighting water for use by staff, prior to the arrival of the fire service. In such cases, the hydrant system may be supplied with a permanently connected pressurised water source sufficient to allow staff to establish hose streams direct from the hydrant system outlets. Use of this secondary option shall not diminish the primary objective of the Standard.

Building hydrant systems complying with this Standard are suited to firefighting operations using manually controlled branches.

Systems designed to this Standard are not suitable for the use of automatic branches, that is, those which optimise flow rate in order to maintain a constant nozzle pressure.