Control Rooms

Mission Critical Protection

Control rooms house supervisory personnel and computers and other electronic equipment to manage industrial processes. Virtually every modern industrial facility has one or more control rooms, often controlling every step of the manufacturing process. Whether your business is in heavy manufacturing, processes chemicals, or generates electricity, the control rooms are critical to your business’s mission, and vital to the continued productivity and profitability of your company.

Despite the low occurrence of fires in control rooms, the risk continues to increase as computerized controllers become faster and denser, requiring more power and generating more heat. Uninterruptible power systems and their storage batteries pose an additional fire risk. While many companies rely on sprinklers as the only fire protection in their control rooms, a risk assessment reveals:

Sprinklers are designed to (and are very effective at) protecting the building structure, but not your assets.
Sprinklers need significant heat to operate, requiring a full flaming fire, destroying assets (i.e. computers and other electronic equipment) at the source of the fire.
Assets surrounding the fire suffer collateral damage from water and smoke, with smoke contamination often destroying electronic equipment quite a distance away from the incident.
The cost of business interruption, including lost work-in-process, idled personnel and machines, and clean up, is often significantly more than the cost of the asset destroyed in the fire.
Downtime costs can be enormous… revenue per hour has been estimated to be $1.6M in heavy manufacturing; $700K in chemical processing; and $640K in utilities.

Fenwal Protection Systems and its worldwide network of factory-trained distributors can provide you with the best waterless fire protection system for your control rooms, to minimize business interruption caused by fire. Our innovative products to protect mission critical facilities include:

Clean Agent Suppression Systems

can snuff out a fire in seconds. Fenwal clean agents are people-safe, environmentally responsible, and do not damage sensitive electronic equipment. They minimize fire-related downtime and clean-up costs, leaving no watery mess or powdery residue, making them perfectly suited for protecting control rooms.

High Sensitivity Smoke Detection Systems

can provide the earliest possible warning in a potential fire situation. Fenwal HSSD^® is able to detect plasticizers released by overheating electrical equipment, before any significant smoke is visible. As an air-sampling smoke detector, it provides superior performance in the highly air-conditioned environment found in control rooms.

Intelligent Detection and Control Systems

combine detection and suppression capabilities into a single integrated fire protection system. The FenwalNET™ control panel and SmartOne™ intelligent detectors provide worry-free automatic fire protection system for your control room, or the entire facility.