Storing Materials Indoors
Storing materials indoors requires attention to access, fire prevention and protection, floor loading, and overhead hazards. Buildings under construction require special precautions.
This is a massive indoor storage and distribution facility.
- Access: Place or store materials so they do not interfere with access ways, doorways, electrical panels, fire extinguishers, or hoistways. Do not obstruct access ways or exits with accumulations of scrap or materials. Aisles must be wide enough to accommodate forklifts or firefighting equipment.
- Fire Prevention: When storing, handling, and piling materials, consider the fire characteristics. Store noncompatible materials that may create a fire hazard at least 25 feet apart or separate them with a barrier having at least a 1-hour fire rating. Pile material to minimize internal fire spread and to provide convenient access for firefighting.
- Fire Doors: Maintain a 24-inch clearance around the travel path of fire doors.
- Sprinklers: Maintain at least an 18-inch clearance between stored materials and sprinkler heads.
- Heating Appliances: Maintain at least a 3-foot clearance between stored materials and unit heaters, radiant space heaters, duct furnaces, and flues or the clearances shown on the approval agency label.
- Fire Protection: Emergency fire equipment must be readily accessible and in good working order.
- Floor Loading: Conspicuously post load limits in all storage areas, except for floors or slabs on grade.
- Buildings Under Construction: Store materials inside buildings under construction at least 6 feet away from any hoistway or inside floor openings, and 10 feet away from an exterior wall that does not extend above the top of the material stored.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
4-6. Stored materials must be kept at least _____ from overhead sprinkler heads.
You forgot to answer the question!