Having a fire in your building would be bad enough – but imagine having a fire and the sprinkler system didn’t work, or there was no water in the fire hoses?

That’s one reason why fire pumps in NYC residential high-rise buildings must be inspected and tested weekly in accordance with the NFPA 25 Standard for the Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance of Water-Based Fire Protection Systems. The NYC Fire Code adopts the NFPA 25 Standard which seeks to cover wear-and-tear issues of fire protection systems that are in place.

The purpose of the weekly fire pump inspection is to check whether the pump assembly is in operating condition and is free from physical damage. The weekly fire pump test is intended to ensure the system is ready to operate automatically or manually upon demand, and will provide continuous delivery of required system output. While the weekly inspection is a visual observation (and can be performed at the same time as the weekly test to prevent a separate visit), the weekly test is a physical test that exercises the pumps without flowing water. The NYC Fire Code requires that records of the weekly inspections and tests of fire pumps be maintained on the building premises for a minimum of three years, and made available for inspection by a Fire Department representative.

Individuals qualified to perform weekly fire pump inspections must earn a Certificate of Fitness (S-12) for City Wide Sprinkler Systems and/or a Certificate of Fitness (S-13) for City Wide Standpipe Systems from the NYC Fire Department. Many on-site property managers and/or superintendents hold the S-12 and/or S-13 Certificates of Fitness and perform the weekly inspections themselves. However, weekly fire pump tests must be performed by contractors who hold a Master Fire Suppression Piping Contractor License, Master Plumber License, or Engineer License with a S-12 and S-13 Certificates of Fitness.

By Spencer Kraus – Account Manager – Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Co.

A knocking sound in your apartment is probably irritating all on its own, but being unable to identify its source makes things even more frustrating. I went to a pre-war building on the Upper East Side to determine the cause of such knocking inside two different apartments. The knocking sounded much like the bangs of a radiator when it’s initially turned on, so I decided to check out the radiators first. But the knocking noise seemed to resonate from within the apartment walls rather than the radiators themselves, and the noise only occurred in the morning around the same time the building’s steam system was turned on. Taking this fact into consideration, the problem became obvious to me: inside the wall was an exhausted expansion joint. The old joint would clank when the system’s pipes expanded and needed to be replaced.

Here’s what happens: expansion joints are built to allow the force of a hot, expanding pipe to exert its energy. Expansion joints defuse the natural tension brought on by the expanding pipe. If expansion joints are not installed and/or maintained, the force of the expanding pipe can exert its energy in different ways and cause damage to the heating system. If you hear knocking in your apartment and you can’t figure out its source, it could be due to an exhausted expansion joint.

By Spencer Kraus – Account Manager – Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Co.

New Yorkers probably have more experience with odors than the average person. And while identifying those smells can prove difficult at times, it’s important to pinpoint them in certain instances, like in this scenario: There was a bad odor resonating from a kitchen waste-line within an apartment on the eighteenth floor of a residential building in Manhattan. The tenant complained of a bad smell in his kitchen when he awoke. Sometimes rotten garbage that the tenant forgot to remove from his kitchen caused this foul odor, but the actual reason for the odor was fairly typical, and had to do with the plumbing underneath the sink: the seal inside the trap can break and cause the sewage odors to waft out of the waste-lines and into the apartment. If you find you have a similar problem, here’s what you need to ask yourself: why is the water seal inside of the kitchen trap breaking?

A trap, like the one in the photo, is located within a couple feet of each fixture and each drain on a waste-line. The structure of a trap allows water to build up and create a seal within the trap dip (the U shaped part of the trap). The water seal stops the odors from building up inside the waste-lines and seeping into the apartments through the drains. The whole point of installing a trap is to seal the odors inside the waste-lines. If the trap seal were broken, there would be no water in the trap to protect the kitchen from the foul odor of the building’s sewage.

But what causes the water to disappear? Usually the reason for traps not having any water in them is evaporation. But in the case we described, the tenant was home and used his kitchen sink twice a day, so something must have been causing the water inside the trap dip to be pulled from the trap and down the waste-line. As it turns out, there can be another explanation.

In the morning, we typically use a lot of water getting ready for the day. If the vent line for the kitchen sink is clogged, the large amount of water traveling down the main waste stack could cause negative air pressure to form inside the kitchen waste-line. The water inside the trap dip would then be siphoned out, breaking the seal. Maybe you remember learning the laws of fluid dynamics in your bygone days of physics, but basically by the principles of these laws, water is siphoned out of the kitchen waste trap dip where the water seal is located.

When the vent line is clogged, the airflow is restricted and a build-up of pressure inside the waste pipe causes the trap to malfunction. When the water inside the trap is gone, there is nothing to stop the foul odors inside the waste stack from filling the apartment. Only one thing can be done to prevent this from happening: clear the vent line stoppage! Once this happens, the problem will be resolved.

By Spencer Kraus – Account Manager – Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Co.

Winter brings with it a lot of extra precautions: shoveling snow, avoiding slippery spots on the roads and sidewalks, and guarding your home against the weather. One common home problem you may encounter is frozen water lines.

This image illustrates what happens when a pipe full of water is left outside in the cold winter months. The picture shows a tear in an outside copper line caused by the expansion of water in freezing temperatures. Obviously, this NYC townhouse owner had to replace the torn pipe when the weather warmed up.

But why do the tears occur in the first place? Here’s the science behind it. Water has hydrogen and oxygen compounds that constantly move around one another. This kinetic energy, or energy created by motion, is caused by the fluctuation between the hydrogen and the polar bonds within the water molecules. When water is frozen, the hydrogen and oxygen compounds in the water stop moving, then spread out and form a simple crystalline structure that we know better as ice.

Water will always enlarge when it becomes ice because as water compounds spread out, expansion also occurs within the molecule. So, there you have it: if you leave a pipe full of water outside in the winter, the expansion caused by the freezing of the water will build up lots of energy until it rips the pipe in half and causes a leak. And while there’s no getting around the science, there is one simple step you can take to avoid your pipes from breaking: drain your outdoor pipes before they freeze.

By Spencer Kraus – Account Manager – Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Co.