Inergen

Brad Cole <bradford.cole<-a t->nau< . >edu> writes

>Next spring our Halon system in our vault is going to be replaced by
>an Inergen system.
>... our building
>manager has asked if I could find out if anyone has had any first
>hand experiences with Inergen. Thanks,

The Reserve Bank of Australia had an Inergen fire represent system
installed in our archives vault a couple of years ago.  We haven't,
touch wood, had to actually use it to put out a fire but I do have a
couple of comments to make on it and the installation.  Our vault is
a small one and for this we required four large gas canisters of
inergen instead of the one which we had for halon.  This as you can
imagine takes up a fair amount of room and is something you will
need to take into consideration.  You will also need to have some
way of releasing the pressure build up once the gas has been dumped.
We ended up installing a couple of small flapped vents for this
purpose.

Before the inergen system is tested, it is a good idea to clean your
vault first.  The gas is expelled at high pressure and any dust is
distributed over everything.  I entered the vault a short time after
the test and had no problem breathing.

It is apparently safe for a person to be in the room during the
dumping of the gas assuming the calculations were made correctly
(oxygen levels are below fire ignition levels but high enough to
breathe).  It would certainly not be a pleasant experience going
just by the noise.  The sound heard from outside the vault during
the test reminded me of a plane taking off.  I hope this was of some
interest.

Sally Kneebone
Conservator
Reserve Bank of Australia

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:30
                Distributed: Monday, September 29, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-11-30-003
                                  ***