Fire sprinkler hydraulic calculation summary.

A calculation packet is long. What it assumes is short.

A sprinkler contractor's hydraulic calculations run to dozens of pages of pipe tables, and a reviewer who does not read them every day has to find a handful of facts inside: the hazard and density the design uses, the area it assumes is burning, the water supply it rests on, and whether that supply has pressure to spare. Those facts are what the plans have to agree with. This tool pulls them out of the packet and sets each one beside a sentence saying what to look for on the drawings.

Read it in order

1. Start with the design criteria. Confirm the hazard classification fits the use of the space on the plans, and find the design area outlined on the sprinkler drawings.
2. Then the water supply. The flow test the calculation uses should be one you accept for this site. The margin is the pressure the supply has to spare; many departments set a minimum.
3. Then walk the plans with the checklist. Count the sprinklers in the design area, check their K-factor against the legend, check the spacing against the area each sprinkler covers, and find the pipe sizes, the long friction runs and the devices (backflow preventers, pumps) where the calculation puts them.
4. Last, the packet against itself. A figure that does not match the arithmetic of the figures printed beside it is worth a question to the designer. Rounding-sized differences are folded away.

What this summary does not do

• It does not review the design against NFPA 13 or your adopted code: the hazard classification, density, design area and sprinkler spacing are yours to judge.
• It does not read the plans. Each design area lists what to find on them; the comparison is yours.
• It does not check the inputs the calculation trusts: pipe lengths, fittings and C-factors against the building.
• It does not say whether the water supply is adequate or the flow test is current.
• Responsibility for the design stays with the design professional, and the approval decision stays with the reviewer.

How it works, and what happens to your file

The PDF goes straight to a storage area used for nothing else. Its text is read, with the position of every word, and the pipe tables are read column by column the way the program laid them out. Nothing is guessed: a figure that could not be read is left out and said so, and every figure on the summary is the one the packet printed. No AI reads your file. The file and everything read from it are deleted automatically within a day.

The tool reads the calculation packets of AutoSPRINK, Hydratec, SprinkCAD and Sigma Development Group. A scanned packet has no text to read, and an older or unusual layout may not be recognised; the page will say so.