Thread: Fire sprinkler system for the shed and 2016 wishlist.

I would look at sprinkler systems for sheds with the following context - what happens after the water has dumped?
Can your machines be cleaned up and recovered from the water damage?

My shed has been designed with the circle of e-stops dotted around the shed (similar to the old highschool workshops) where if any one e-stop is tripped anywhere in the shed, all power to machines and GPOs is dropped via a contactor in the shed board.

The smoke alarm/ fire detectors are wired into the security alarm (and crosslinked to the house alarm panel) so perhaps I should consider adding a relay contact from the alarm panel to the e-stop circuit to drop power if the alarm trips.

I hope that with RCDs on all GPO and machine circuits, power dropping fast, alarms able to reach me anytime, adequate space between my machines, good housekeeping (no rubbish laying around unnecessarily), and extinguishers inside every doorway, I will be OK to catch things before I loose too much.

Other than lubricants in the machines, most of my flammables are stored outside of the main workshop, in a vented separate shed with vent panels, and it's own detectors linked to the main panel.

New years wishlist for my shed?
adding the fibre optics run between the house and shed. The current Cat5e cable is just OK, right on the limit of the allowable distance. I should be able to pick up a 8 or 12 core plenum cable for a few hundred and use that with some old surplus media converters to bring my networks out to the shed. Internet is great in the shed for looking up information when needed, and my private network gives the shed PC access to the printer in the house, and files stored on networked hard disks in the house ( work on a design in the house on the good PC, save it to the hard disk in the house, then collect the next day from the shed for loading into the CNC or 3d Printer)
I suppose I should add finishing my CNC and 3D printer to the 2016 list, but I suspect those will be 2017 projects.

Des

Even if DIYer can't ever see themselves installing something like a sprinkler system it's a good thing to raise fire safety in the shed.

My greatest fire risk by far has to be when running my main gas powered forge. This thing generates 22kW of heat and copious amounts of hot gasses, CO and CO2 so I've built that end of the shed out of fireproof materials (e.g. lining is miniorb). I never leave the shed with the forge running. There are auto interlocks on the gas line if the air supply fails, 2 large ventilators running in case one fails, a CO/CO2 sensor to warn me about gas levels and 3 fire extinguishers available for use.

The other likely causes of fire are hot (metal) works. I have set a buffing wheel on fire and the armpit of a shirt on fire with the sparks from an angle grinder - just need to be more careful about where the sparks are directed.

The other small fire in the shed occurred about 7am in the morning some 18 years ago when rain came in under a window and dribbled into a GPO occupied by ants and some sawdust - this shorted the GPO and being before we had RCDs installed it tripped a breaker in the house which was connected to the same circuit. After a couple of minutes I managed to trace the fault to the shed and opened the shed door to see a small amount of smoke coming out of the GPO.

Now that I have breaker boxes in the shed I could turn the entire shed power off when I leave for the day (and I do this if we go away) but I often have things happening overnight like battery recharging or electrolysis or SWMBO has her lapidary tumbler running.

Good point about getting flammable chemicals outside a shed if possible.

I thought about connecting the shed to the house computer network but I recently connected a second wireless station to the house network so that we can get decent wireless reception in the family room and back yard. While not intended as such the reception now also reaches the shed. I tend to treat the shed is an internet free zone otherwise I end up wasting a lot of time mucking about on email/forums/ebay/newsites etc I sometimes use my mobile or an iPad mini to look things up on the web as these do not tempt me to use other internet services like my big screen laptop.

I have two fire alarms in the shed but I can't hear them inside the house so one thing I was thing of was getting one that is either louder or connected back to the house.
An alarm that connects to a mobile phone would be even better.

Recently I was looking at these systems but I'm not mobile phone savy enough to know if they would do the job.
GSM Switch 10Amp Relay Switch Activated BY Your Phone | eBay
At $180 its a bit much to buy one just to try it out,
They have two inputs so as well as a fire alarm a PIR could be added.

A cheaper more versatile alternative would be an Arduino GSM module but some work would be needed to put that together. I might ask my son about this as he is heavily into this.

As for my wish list - I wish for more time so that I can actually be in the shed