High hazard occupancy?

[jpranch]

Need some help / expert advice on this one. The following is proposed by a building owner:

"The products that will be stored inside this building are motor oils, Transmission fluids, and hydraulic oils which have flash point ranging from 350 degrees to 500 degrees which will be stored in those tanks and also will be stored in 55 gallon and 5 gallon containers on the shelves. The maximum quantity we would be storing is some where around 200,000 gallons (1.5 million pounds)"

Sure smells like a high hazard use? What say you?

 

[FM William Burns]

Re: High hazard occupancy?

JP,

I would think that you came to my city and saw what I discovered 1.8 years ago and I’m still dealing with today. The indoor AST’s went beyond the scope of all the codes including NFPA 30 and the owner finally decided to get a FPE like we originally requested. They submitted a PB design plan for a Foam System and containment and found out today that it’s going out to bid next week. Phase II will be the overhead EH Group II system for the excess of MAQ in IBC and Drums the warehouse. The oil company did tell me that they do this in Texas all the time and Haz helped me with that statement during our code analysis.

Have fun

 

[cda]

Re: High hazard occupancy?

Give Haz a PM

"""which will be stored in those tanks ""

what do you mean by those tanks??? plastic totes, actual steel tanks, what size??

just storage??

or dispensing???

sounds like at minimum have them do a tech report to classify them,and average quantities, then go from there

depending on clas for strage only you may or maynot be over the quantity

is said building owner's building sprinkled???? already

 

[Oldfieldguy]

Re: High hazard occupancy?

JP,

Everything your dealing with are lubricants, which are Class IIIB combustible liquids. The MAQ in IBC Table 307.1 is 13,200 gallons. If they exceed the MAQ, the building will require sprinklers in accordance with NFPA 13 and the quantity is unlimited. Sprinkler design for Class IIIB liquids is packaging and storage method dependant, so make sure the design complies with the NFPA 13 and NFPA 30.

If you look at Table 307.1(1), a Group H occupancy classification cannot be assigned to a building strictly storing Class IIIB combustible liquids. Most likely the storage area would be a Group S-1 occupancy.

If you have storage tanks, that can be whole different set of problems. I would suggest a technical report and opinion per IBC Section 414.1.3.

Old Field Guy

 

[jpranch]

Re: High hazard occupancy?

Oldfieldguy, Thanks. That helps a lot. Sorry about the limited information. You know how it is. Sometimes as code officials we all get spoon fed information. This will have storage tanks. Steel tanks that will not exceed 10,000 gal. Didn't know if S-1 was a good fit looking at the IBC typical types for moderate hazard. It is my understandind that the transmission fluid has the lowest flash point at about 350? That is still pretty high.

 

[FM William Burns]

Re: High hazard occupancy?

Metal tanks/containers are much easier to deal with in accordance with code. Our's are 13,000 "poly" hence my comment "Have Fun". Thought your distributor might be similar.

ICC and NFPA didn't know how to handle our's and as stated went beyond everything. I spent one month just on research.