Parking Garage Design – NFPA 88A to the Rescue (FP-21033)

For those of us who have been engineering and designing fire protection systems for 10 years or more, it would be safe to say, “you’ve seen one parking garage, you’ve seen them all”. The biggest and usually the only question that was ever asked about them was, “are they open or closed”. With the advent of electric vehicles that use lithium batteries, and the fact that all vehicles are made with significantly higher amounts of plastics, along with some help from social media showing electric vehicles on fire, questions are raised as to the adequacy of the sprinkler system design criteria that has been used for the past +50 years. Thankfully, research and testing is starting to yield some data that is being used to shape up prescriptive codes and standards that is helping keep things in perspective. This seminar will focus on what we know and what we do not know; and how that has been translated to the proposed next edition of NFPA 88A. Learning Objectives:

• Identify the differences, if any, between ICE and EV fires.
• b. Identify the features that distinguish parking garages from parking systems.
• c. Recognize those characteristics of a sprinkler system that make a difference when protecting these occupancies.