When Pipe Corrosion At A Fire

Protection System Can Cost Lives

to confirm the operation of key system
components has ironically resulted in the
premature destruction of the fire piping itself.
Flushing procedures to clear a fire
protection system of accumulated iron oxide
rust and debris are of extremely limited effectiveness in such a widespread network of
horizontal dead-end and often air-bound
piping - thereby allowing most rust product to
remain behind. This photograph of a 4 in.
main fire distribution line, regularly drained
and flushed, easily proves such argument.

Corrosion, once it has been identified at

a fire protection system, is typically viewed
exclusively in terms of the cost for pipe
replacement. By the time it is finally realized,
years of deterioration have often occurred.
With repair, corrosion remediation, and
the removal of rust deposits a difficult and
often unlikely to succeed option, partial or
complete fire pipe replacement is often the
only alternative - at tremendous expense
and inconvenience.

Greater Problems Today

The incidence of corrosion problems at
fire piping, virtually unheard of 25 years ago,
has now become an every day issue.
Approximately 30% of our involvement in
corrosion and ultrasonic pipe testing today
relates to failures at fire protection systems.
With some of the oldest fire protection
piping at near 80 years still in excellent condition, and capable of providing many decades
of additional service, there are clearly factors
related to more recent installations which are
responsible for todays more advanced failures.
The predominant use of thin wall schedule 10 pipe, more corrosion susceptible
steels, poor quality galvanizing, insufficient
grade, and seamed pipe are the primary
physical influences often associated with
premature fire system failure. Installing thin
wall schedule 10 pipe rather than schedule 40
not only halves its wall thickness, but can
reduce service life by 500%.
Dry sprinkler systems, now more
frequently installed, are associated with
some of the most advanced and complete
piping failures we have documented. A dry
system presents inherently greater threat
due to the fact that inadequate grade always
allows water and moisture to remain within
the lines - the source of dramatically higher
corrosion losses. In reality, it is never dry.
Frequent testing, flushing, and draining
requirements regularly bring into every fire
system abundant fresh oxygenated water to
raise corrosion levels. With corrosion against
steel pipe directly related to available oxygen,
the potential benefits of such test procedures

And if the above factors are not a sufficient detriment to fire protection systems in
themselves, add the more recent threat of
microbiologically influenced corrosion, or
MIC. Where even a severe general corrosion
condition may take 10 years to produce a
leak, microbes in the water supply can literally
eat and dissolve their way through 6 in.
schedule 10 steel fire pipe in under one year.
Unquestionably, multiple forces exist
against modern fire protection systems to
produce threats and concerns still not widely
understood nor recognized within the fire
protection and building operations industries.

Different Consequences
The similarity between a corrosion
problem at a fire protection system and other
HVAC or plumbing related piping systems
ends with the economic cost of replacement
and interference with regular building operations.
A relatively small corrosion-induced
pipe failure at a high rise commercial office
building can easily exceed $1 million in just
water damage alone. Replacement of a
condenser cooling or domestic water system
for a 40 story high rise office building can
mean an unexpected expenditure exceeding
$10 million.
The failure to provide sufficient cooling
water to the mainframe computers of a major
financial institution are estimated at millions
of dollars per minute of downtime. Huge
economic losses indeed, but rarely does
such corrosion-related failure result in the
loss of life.
Corrosion at a fire sprinkler system,
however, directly impacts the life blood of the
fire protection system itself - water, and
negates the central purpose of every other
single piece of equipment designed and
installed into the fire system. Fire sensors,
alarms, pumps, control panels, actuating
valves, sprinkler heads, and standpipe
connections are all designed with the
primary interest to move abundant water to
the source of the fire as quickly as possible.
Water pressure, flow rate, sprinkler
head location and density, orifice size,
discharge times for dry pre-action systems,
and every other conceivable aspect of a fire

protection system are precisely defined by

NFPA Chapter 13.
The frictional loss of water based upon
the internal surface resistance of new pipe,
the flow resistance of each fitting, valve, and
elbow, and most importantly, predictions of
flow rate based upon inside pipe diameter,
define a fire protection system that is
expected to supply the required volume of
water to every point of the system on
demand.
Assumption is made by everyone that
the fire protection system, as designed and
installed, will be in similar physical condition
when called upon in a real fire emergency whether that call is tomorrow or decades
away.

Corrosions Terrifying Impact

Internal pipe corrosion, however, influences every aspect of a fire protection
system - from interfering with the proper
operation of individual equipment components, to constricting inside pipe diameter
and reducing flow. In its most severe form,
corrosion may produce through wall penetration and / or sufficient internal rust deposits to
clog the smallest branch lines and sprinkler
heads entirely.
Is there even the slightest possibility that
the huge volume of loose rust shown in the
above 4 in. main, after being forced into the
below 1- in. branch line of the same fire
system, would allow any water through the
smaller orifice of a in. sprinkler head?

Obviously not.
And yet this condition
remained unknown for years until multiple
leaks prompted an ultrasonic investigation.
This fire system, as most, was assumed
functional because regularly prescribed
testing and flushing indicated acceptable
results. In fact, no fire protection existed!

Unstoppable Loss
Corrosion is an unstoppable force of
nature seeking to revert steel back to its original form of iron ore. It is extremely difficult to
control for even HVAC systems having the
benefit of constant circulation and the daily
addition of chemical inhibitors and high-tech
electronic monitoring.

But unlike HVAC systems, which are

typically designed with a corrosion factor
taking into account lost heat transfer efficiency due to deposit buildup and reduced
wall thickness due to corrosion, no such
consideration for fire protection systems
exists. Fire piping is installed with the unreasonable expectation that no significant corrosion will occur to impact system performance.

and inspection to ensure its effective operation if ever called into service.

Material Weakness

Fire protection contractors install a

system design carefully defined down to bolt
size and the spacing distance between pipe
hangers. Fire protection consultants and
engineers follow well thought out and
frequently improved guidelines in designing
an automatic and very effective response to a
wide range of potential fire threats.

Ultimately, the service life of a fire sprinkler system is a question of pipe quality, wall
thickness, and its inherent corrosion resistance, verses the corrosive potential of the
local water supply and water flow.

Every possible aspect of a fire protection

system seems to have been more than
adequately defined except to address the
inevitable and unstoppable deterioration of
the steel pipe by water itself.

Seamed pipe, and pipe of some foreign

manufacture, almost always suggests the
potential for greater corrosion activity before
the system is even filled. The use of thin wall
schedule 10 pipe simply doubles the potential
negative effect of any individual physical
weakness or corrosion condition.

Documented Failure

Galvanized pipe, still viewed as the solution to the corrosion of carbon steel and
widely used in dry fire systems, rests its effectiveness at providing long service life entirely
upon the quality of the zinc protective finish.
Where the galvanized finish holds,
corrosion activity is prevented. Where it fails,
however, the entire corrosive potential in that
area then focuses its attack upon one or more
small areas to produce deep localized
pitting and penetration
best described as
having been produce
by a drill bit.

On April 30, 1998, an electrical fire

erupted in the laundry room of a nursing
home in Lamoni, Iowa. While the sprinkler
heads functioned correctly, no water was
released due to their being totally plugged
with heavy rust deposits.
Fortunately, no loss of life occurred due
to the quick actions of the rescuers, but the
outcome could have easily been tragic.
Further investigation into the failure showed
that maintenance was current, and that the
fire sprinkler system had been inspected and
regularly tested according to NFPA Chapter
25 standards. A similar event near Philadelphia in 2000 caused a womans death.

Nearly impossible to evaluate for future

service life prior to installation, the use of
galvanized pipe often means a hopeful
expectation of corrosion-free operation, but
with the more likely result of more advanced
failure over carbon steel. Combining multiple
factors such as poor quality galvanized
seamed pipe in a dry fire system with inadequate pitch virtually guarantees a corrosion
problem that will render it totally worthless in
under 10 years, and often sooner.

Laboratory identification to the presence

of MIC throughout the piping system pinned a
cause to the Iowa fire sprinkler failure, and
raised important awareness to a seemingly
new problem. By focusing attention mostly
toward MIC and at specific geographic areas
of the United States, however, the potential
for similarly clogging sprinkler heads due to
rust product produced by more common
generalized forms of corrosion, far more
prevalent, was entirely overlooked.

Pipe quality is still generally unquestioned as long as it meets the ASTM specifications. Local water quality, which can vary
greatly in terms of its chemical properties
such as hardness, pH, conductance, alkalinity, chlorine content, and of course MIC, is
starting to be considered in estimating future
corrosion problems at fire pipe.

Not Just MIC

Any such planning, however, is likely far

less than required to fully address the potential impact of corrosion which can evolve from
a very wide variety of sources.

Inherent Threat
For most building owners / operators,
such inherent corrosion threat remains
generally unrecognized. Signing off on the
installation of a new fire protection system
implies decades of useful service life, and a
system which has the necessary safeguards
through design, technology, maintenance,

Today, severe rust found within a fire

protection system is automatically suspected
as MIC, until laboratory testing usually proves
otherwise. In fact, by approximately 5 to 1,
the majority of failure problems found at fire
protection piping are the result of generalized
and pitting corrosion which is present to some
degree in most fire systems. It is a worldwide
concern.
MIC certainly accelerates pipe deterioration, and raises the potential to destroy a
fire system at phenomenal corrosion rates
exceeding 0.100 in. of steel per year. Equal
and potentially greater threat exists,
however, due to more slowly occurring and
gradual effects of generalized corrosion over
longer periods. To the building owner / operator, however, the net effect is the same - with
the problem hidden entirely from view until
revealed by the first leak.

Failure Before Fire

Today, the economic impact and life
threatening consequences of corrosion to
fire pipe still remains generally unrecognized
and too often ignored. Indeed, no worse
time exists to discover a corrosion problem
within a sprinkler system than during an
actual fire emergency.
Although the use of heavier pipe is one
obvious answer to longer system life, it also
has a negative aspect as well, given that
under corrosive conditions, a greater
amount of rust product will be produced.
Ironically for many property owners,
their use of thin wall schedule 10 fire pipe,
leading to a more advanced failure, also
provided an earlier notification of a hidden
corrosion problem prior to an actual fire. In
such cases, expensive pipe replacement
can be viewed as the cost of avoiding far
greater tragedy.

Major Liability
The failure of fire protection piping after
50 years is a reasonable product of nature corrosion, and old age. Its failure after 4
years is someones fault.
Property owners reference a fire system
designed for long service life and toward
which a testing and maintenance agreement
indicated no cause for concern. Installation
contractors cite a fire
system design followed
explicitly. For all those
involved, defense rests
that corrosion is a
natural
occurrence,
hidden from view, and therefore unknown
and beyond their control.
Extensive litigation often follows, with
the final cost of repair or replacement ultimately borne by the insurance company.
Death as a result of a fire sprinkler failure only
increases such conflict exponentially.

Changes Required
The assumption that a fire sprinkler
system will perform as designed, 10 or more
years after installation, may require new
consideration - regardless of the testing and
maintenance checks currently performed.
Although the overwhelming majority of fire
protection systems will function flawlessly
when called upon, sufficient threat remains
to warrant further pro-active measures.
With the current trend in fire protection
continuing toward those factors responsible
for more advanced failures, tragedies such
as occurred in Philadelphia will increase.
Greater recognition of this problem,
aided by more invasive testing and monitoring for hidden corrosion conditions, exists
at the only response currently available.

CorrView International, LLC

P.O. Box 8513 * Landing, NJ 07850
Tel: 973.770.7764
www.CorrView.com * Info@CorrView.com