Featured Articles

Louisiana Fire Sprinkler Association Impresses with Events, Charity, Fellowship At the American Fire Sprinkler Association’s (AFSA) 35th Annual Convention & Exhibition in Nashville in September, the Louisiana Fire Sprinkler Association (LFSA), a chapter of AFSA, was honored with the Outstanding Chapter of the Year Award. This award was created to recognize …

Membership in the winner’s circle of the American Fire Sprinkler Association’s (AFSA) 23rd Annual National Apprentice Competition has its privileges. Just look at this year’s champion, fire sprinkler fitter Jonathan Offord. Despite having a background in plumbing, Offord says he did not find the fire protection industry, rather it found …

NextGen or Not: Use #SprinklerGeek on Social Media My favorite definition of the word geek is, “The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult.” Really though, the best way to define a geek is as a knowledgeable, borderline obsessive, enthusiast of a …

AFSA Celebrates 35th Anniversary in Nashville Extraordinary things happen when the fire sprinkler industry comes together for North America’s largest – and we’d argue, best – convention and exhibition. That was evident throughout the American Fire Sprinkler Association’s (AFSA) 35th Annual Convention & Exhibition September 14-17 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort …

A different way to measure. There are many ways to measure the health of a company or an industry. All the usual metrics of profits and losses, business cycles, competition, and employee morale, but there is another one that I think is often overlooked. It is people’s charitableness. And as …

This will be my final column in Sprinkler Age. Two years ago I notified the AFSA Board of Directors of my intention to retire on December 31, 2016. During the past two years we have planned for this transition, repositioning some staff to new responsibilities and adding new faces. In …

Edit: The voting deadline has now been extended to November 27.  ICC final action online voting is active now, and we need your help to defeat Proposal RB129-16, which would eliminate the International Residential Code (IRC) requirement for new dwellings and townhouses to have fire sprinklers. Although the proposal was rejected by the IRC …

Can They be Near the Sprinkler? When using sidewall sprinklers can there be obstructions at the ceiling within 4 ft of standard sprinklers or 8 ft for extended coverage and residential sprinklers? Since the 2002 edition of NFPA 13, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems, it has been fairly …

AFSA Chapter Hosts Fifth Annual Trade Show The Sacramento Valley Chapter of the American Fire Sprinkler Association (AFSA) hosted its 5th annual trade show on March 10, 2016. The show, which is the largest of its kind in the region, had 52 vendors and over 700 attendees. It’s a lot …

A Look Back at the Fire Sprinkler Industry Many of you cannot identify with the term “Red Book,” but back in the late 1950s the fire sprinkler business was governed by the “Red Book,” which was always carried in your hip pocket. Back when the states had their own “Inspection …