Storage Units

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vexxxboy

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# 143132 4-Apr-2014 10:37

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11231991

looks like a lot of Valuables were lost. Going to be an Insurance nightmare.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

sleemanj

1301 posts

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# 1018358 4-Apr-2014 11:18

You'd think one of the first answers to "I'm going to run storage unit facility, what do I need" would be fire protection!

---
James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

Disrespective

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# 1018386 4-Apr-2014 11:31

Whilst I agree that sprinklers should have been present, you'd hate to have a call one day to say the sprinklers were set off accidentally and all your belongings are drenched. I appreciate that in the long run this is more preferable to having them go up in smoke, but I wonder about how many times sprinklers are set off accidentally vs a fire.

wellygary

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# 1018394 4-Apr-2014 11:36

Some are sprinklered, some arn't ,

The budget ones tend not to be, and to be honest you get what you pay for...

also I dont buy the " I didn't notice that it didn't have sprinklers when I put my stuff in it"
look if you are storing stuff you think is valuable you should take note of where you are putting the stuff,

Geektastic

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# 1018456 4-Apr-2014 12:32

Disrespective: Whilst I agree that sprinklers should have been present, you'd hate to have a call one day to say the sprinklers were set off accidentally and all your belongings are drenched. I appreciate that in the long run this is more preferable to having them go up in smoke, but I wonder about how many times sprinklers are set off accidentally vs a fire.

You could use another fire suppressant other than water, such as CO2 or Halon gas?

Geektastic

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# 1018457 4-Apr-2014 12:33

wellygary: Some are sprinklered, some arn't ,

The budget ones tend not to be, and to be honest you get what you pay for...

also I dont buy the " I didn't notice that it didn't have sprinklers when I put my stuff in it"
look if you are storing stuff you think is valuable you should take note of where you are putting the stuff,

Indeed - that is the danger of buying on price not quality!

mattwnz

15325 posts

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# 1018491 4-Apr-2014 13:15

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Disrespective: Whilst I agree that sprinklers should have been present, you'd hate to have a call one day to say the sprinklers were set off accidentally and all your belongings are drenched. I appreciate that in the long run this is more preferable to having them go up in smoke, but I wonder about how many times sprinklers are set off accidentally vs a fire.

Sprinklers will only go off where the actual fire is, they don't all go off. This is one of the mistakes many TV and movies make when depicting fire sprinklers going off.

nickb800

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# 1018528 4-Apr-2014 14:20

As above, each sprinkler head is independent and can only go off if it is heated or physically damaged, so accidents would only affect the unit where the accident occurs (and possibly others with water runoff).

I helped fill a near new (<5 year old now) storage unit in Kapiti, it had heat sensors in each unit but no sprinkler - so it may be standard not to fit sprinklers in these facilities.

A big problem is that the storage unit operator doesn't know what kind of goods are being stored in each unit, and often doesn't have access (tenant supplies their own lock to make it seem more secure) - so maintaining fire safety stuff in each unit is difficult and cannot be customized to the type of fire.

Examples that come to mind where gas fire suppressant is used are data centres and document storage facilities (Recall) - both are environments with homogeneous contents which makes fire design a lot easier, and contain mission critical functions or records - hence a higher expense is justified.

Lastly: If you are going to put an Oscar into storage, make sure you know what fire protection your facility has

Disrespective

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# 1018540 4-Apr-2014 14:29

mattwnz:
Disrespective: Whilst I agree that sprinklers should have been present, you'd hate to have a call one day to say the sprinklers were set off accidentally and all your belongings are drenched. I appreciate that in the long run this is more preferable to having them go up in smoke, but I wonder about how many times sprinklers are set off accidentally vs a fire.

Sprinklers will only go off where the actual fire is, they don't all go off. This is one of the mistakes many TV and movies make when depicting fire sprinklers going off.

Whilst mostly true, that's not entirely true, you can have deluge systems, which will all go off at once. Whilst these are relatively rare, I have seen them specified in some situations. But all that is besides the point. I was supposing a situation where a sprinkler head was tampered/accidentally set off from someone hitting it, with some furniture maybe? In any case water is better than fire in these situations.

mattwnz

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# 1018541 4-Apr-2014 14:30

I wonder if there are standards for storage units in terms of how they are built and protected. For houses which are detached, they require firewalls. But this probably isn't the case for storage, as people don't occupy them. It is probably not something you rent on price if storing belongings that you can't risk losing. You would want to make sure that all the protections are in place.

Bung

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# 1018553 4-Apr-2014 14:57

sleemanj: You'd think one of the first answers to "I'm going to run storage unit facility, what do I need" would be fire protection!

Maybe being beside the fire station resulted in some complacency. ]

Jase2985

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# 1018559 4-Apr-2014 15:03

Geektastic:
Disrespective: Whilst I agree that sprinklers should have been present, you'd hate to have a call one day to say the sprinklers were set off accidentally and all your belongings are drenched. I appreciate that in the long run this is more preferable to having them go up in smoke, but I wonder about how many times sprinklers are set off accidentally vs a fire.

You could use another fire suppressant other than water, such as CO2 or Halon gas?

lol

and then it wouldnt be your every day storage warehouse. the customers would be paying a fortune for it. and im pretty sure there are already companies they specialize in that sort or storage

you know how much those sort of systems cost to install and maintain?

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

# 1018592 4-Apr-2014 15:38

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Who has Oscars and such, and puts them in freaking storage?