Furniture Store Warehouse Fire Compliance

Many furniture retailers are surprised by the fire protection requirements and costs when revising or expanding an existing warehouse, building a new facility or even acquiring a warehouse that was being used for furniture. There are a number of ways to approach fire compliance design issues, but experience has shown that skilled systems designers achieve fire protection compliance at substantially lower cost.

For this article FURNITURE WORLD asked nationally recognized fire protection code expert, Elley Klausbruckner to supply general practical information on fire protection requirements for furniture warehouses. Specific solutions require the design expertise of a qualified fire protection engineer and warehouse designer.

Due to rising land costs, the availability of high-rise material handling equipment and the need for large inventories to support sales, racked warehouses are expanding toward the heavens. Racked warehouses of 30 to 40 feet clear height and occasionally higher are common. The highest furniture warehouse of record in the USA is an automated warehouse at 106 feet clear height.

Increasing building height to achieve a desired storage capacity is much more cost effective than increasing the building footprint. This is true even when we factor in the cost of the fire protection systems needed to protect these facilities. Tall warehouses contain more goods per square foot, which in turn increases the potential property loss per floor area in the event...

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