Comment by roywiggins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roywiggins | Hacker News Reader

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> there was also a conservative approach to preserving the historic wooden structure in its unadulterated form. The designers were determined not to alter the attic with protective measures like sprinklers or fire walls.

> A willingness to sacrifice its pristine state for a compromise between what was possible 850 years ago and what is sensible today could have saved the spire, experts said...

> But the main reason to opt against fire walls, Mr. Mouton said, was because it risked “mutilating” the structure. “It’s true,” he said, that the idea had been floated at the time, “but it was discarded.”

> “It changes the appearance but also the elements, because to put up a partition you need to cut the wood. It’s mutilating,” Mr. Mouton said. Mr. Prunet added that sprinklers were not added because they would “drown the whole structure.” Instead, they said, the team had banked on prevention and detection. This was a conscious choice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/world/europe/notre-dame-f...

> Mr. Prunet added that sprinklers were not added because they would “drown the whole structure.”

Waiting for the fire department to show up and start spraying the structure with high-pressure hoses in order to contain a fire that got much larger in the intervening time because it wasn't being mitigated by a sprinkler system, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have damaged the structure at all.

Hindsight really is 20/20.

It's also interesting that fire mitigation measures were discarded in the interest of historic preservation. The charpente being a part of the building that basically nobody ever sees, the question arises, "preserving it for who?" Or had the preservation become an end in and of itself?

And the roof was not part of the original structure, it had been completely rebuilt, yes a long time ago, but still completely rebuilt. My guess is that if they had access to modern materials at the time, they would have opted for that.

Also, the tall spire was added (historically) fairly recently. It was not an original part of the roof that burned. So apparently, earlier people were not "afraid" of altering it.

That was a bonus in addition to the restauration works that took place mid-19th century.

> drown the whole structure

My house has a fire sprinkler system. Each nozzle is heat activated, in that the heat from a fire melts a plug allowing the water to flow. Only the hot valves activate, not everything.

The contractor told me which would I prefer, a sprinkler spraying some water around, or a firehose through the window?

I don’t think that’s really contradictory though. I’ve lived through many cases of the sprinklers being set off accidentally (frozen pipe burst, rc-helicopter blade impact, and idiots using it as a clothes hook) and “some water” isn’t the phrase I would use. I think it’s more like if someone threw a bathtub from the ceiling every minute until someone could shut it off? That can be pretty costly to mitigate afterwards—but then I’ve also seen houses where nothing of it could be saved. As your contractor said, one of those is probably much better.

> I’ve lived through many cases of the sprinklers being set off accidentally (frozen pipe burst, rc-helicopter blade impact, and idiots using it as a clothes hook) and “some water” isn’t the phrase I would use. I think it’s more like if someone threw a bathtub from the ceiling every minute until someone could shut it off?

That's why i specifically mentioned double-interlock preaction systems, where if someone hits the sprinkler and causes it to open, the only thing that comes out is compressed air (and a trouble/supervisory alarm sounds).

Mine are flush with the ceiling, there's nothing to hook onto. Just regular plumbing pipes can freeze, too. But the sprinkler pipes all run in interior walls - it's the ones in exterior walls that are likely to freeze. (I've had floods from frozen pipes in a non-sprinkled house - the pipes were in an exterior wall.)

Anyhow, at the time I did some research and found that nobody had died in a fire in the US in a room that had working sprinklers. It's pretty darn compelling.

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