Frequently
Asked Questions

The heads have many looks, and depending on your preference, they can look industrial or clean. Generally, the heads we use for the work most people see are concealed heads. They are flat plates that sit on the ceiling and can be factory painted any color, but generally all stock colors are included in our bid.

For offices and shared spaces, the heads are commonly placed in the center of the acoustic tiles. All our bids include the best possible and least intrusive look we can possibly perform. The type of head is an important consideration when choosing a fire sprinkler company because often other companies include very obtrusive heads and upcharge for a more aesthetic look.

We have made every effort to use the best and most reliable products on the market. At Lake Tahoe, and most residential projects we use CPVC which has a long track record of having the best track record of not leaking. In fact, the joints that have the least reliable track records of not leaking are more traditional, such as threads. We have taken every possible step to assure that we have no leaks, including using every new technology at our disposal to assure that our systems stay leak free.

Many people think that more traditional methods of joining pipe are more affective, and have better reliability than more modern methods, but to the contrary, that is not true. Iron pipe rusts, wears and becomes in need of constant repair, whereas CPVC does not wear down, and the joints, although are joined using the commonly used term “glued,” are not glued at all, but chemically melded together to form a joint that is stronger than both the pipe and the fitting.

The head adapters we use to screw in our heads have a very reliable rubber gasket that it presses up against. When we use copper, we use a technology called “press-fit” whereas there are no soldered joints that later react with the antifreeze causing numerous electrolysis leaks.

This is a very serious issue since the very explosion that killed two people happened here in our area and caused a widespread and rapid change in the way we install fire sprinkler systems in houses and multi-family dwellings. When glycerin (which was the common antifreeze used in houses) wasn’t mixed correctly, the highly concentrated mixture would actually explode when exposed to high temperatures, such as fires.

AAA Fire Sprinklers has always used a factory mix of antifreeze and has never mixed their own. Furthermore, we had recommended for years that the mixture be remixed every couple years, but the industry went to a premixed solution that has many of the same properties of glycerin (antifreeze, high surface tension), but cannot ignite.

We do recommend you change the antifreeze in your system to the new product, even though our company did not mix its own antifreeze. The reason we recommend this is for the simple reason that fire insurance is getting harder and harder to get in the Reno and Lake Tahoe area, so anything and everything you can do to assure your system is up to date is essential in maintaining your coverage. Antifreeze has a shelf life anyway, and at this point most of the systems we have installed would need to be changed out anyway.

We train every person who works at our company, and we don’t let anyone run jobs who has not been trained to our expectations. That being said, most of the guys running our work have 10 plus years experience, and we have many checks on the work we do as well. There is no job we install that is not looked at by more than one person here, including the owner. We know we are only as good as our last job and we take that very seriously.

This is something that many people like to say, but it is simply untrue. A residential fire sprinkler system gives you 10 minutes to exit the house and reacts right away, as fire departments give you no time to exit your house safely, and they also use water to put out the fire, much more water than a fire sprinkler system. They also use axes, and large hoses and guys with boots with severely diminished field of view. A house with fire sprinklers system has about a 40% loss when there is a fire, whereas a house without one is almost always a 100% loss. No one has ever died due to smoke or fire in a house with a fire sprinkler system … ever.

This is a myth that drives fire sprinkler companies mad. This is often portrayed in movies and other media, but fire sprinklers do not work this way. You cannot hit a switch or set one head off to set the others off. Every sprinkler head is a mechanical device onto themselves. They work using a fusible link that is set off by a specific temperature which is … a fire. When the link is compromised, the guts of the head come out and the water that’s behind it flows out. They will contain the fire where it starts, and more often than not, only one head goes off.

This is something else that is mostly untrue. We hear a lot that although your fire insurance will go down, your insurance will raise your rates to compensate the potential water damage. This, as far as we know, is against the law. If your insurance raises your rates if you have a fire sprinkler system, make a call and find out why.