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Derek Cutsinger/5 min read

Designing a Standard Wet Fire Sprinkler System in Revit: A Step-by-Step Guide

Wet Sprinkler System Components

Riser

Main vertical pipe carrying water from supply.

Cross Mains

Horizontal mains feeding branch lines.

Branch Lines

Smaller pipes feeding individual sprinkler heads.

Inspector's Test Connection

Required device at hydraulically remote location.

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This Revit tutorial walks through designing a standard wet fire sprinkler system in revit, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Hi everyone, welcome to Revit for fire protection design. In this course, we'll be taking a look at creating a standard wet fire sprinkler system using Revit. Now, while there are several fire protection add-ons for Revit such as AutoSpring for Revit and HydroCAD for Revit, with various manufacturer-specific components like sprinklers, fittings, and valves, in this course we'll be designing our sprinkler system in standard Revit.

And while our design will be adhering to code requirements, particularly NFPA 13, the focus of this course is going to be on modeling. In addition to that, we'll also be checking for clashes with another MEP discipline and rerouting some of our pipes and possibly relocating sprinkler heads. And then finally, we'll be annotating our plans and creating construction documents.

So let's begin by opening our BIM 324 Revit file. So please go to where you saved your BIM 324 downloads, and please open the BIM 324 student name Revit file. Now, as you can see here, my file is being upgraded to the latest version, so if you're in the same situation, once we save we won't have to go through this process again.

Okay, we're in the file, but first things first, why don't we save. So let's go to File, Save As, Project, and please save this with your name. So BIM 324 dash your name.

Okay, so we are currently in the Level 1 floor plan, and as we can see, a portion of our system has already been modeled. And this is because it's quite a large building and we have a lot to work with, so we're going to be continuing modeling from this position here, or from this set of the model. But first, let's take a look at the 3D view.

If you go to your Project Browser, and down to 3D Views, let's double-click here. And so now we can see our model along with the elementary school building and some of the levels. If you hold down Shift and your middle mouse button, you can rotate around the 3D model.

As well as the cube up here, you can see various views. For example, the top view gives you a plan view, and you can rotate counterclockwise and clockwise. So take a few moments, go ahead and pause the video, and play around with the different ways that you can orient around the model.

Now we want to take a closer look at our system, but it's a little difficult to see everything that's going on. So why don't we make a duplicate copy of this and get rid of some of these elements. So let's go back to the 3D, right-click, Duplicate View, and Duplicate.

And let's rename this. So right-click, Rename, and let's call it 3D Fire Sprinkler System. All right, now let's find the View tab and our Visibility Graphics, and let's go to Annotation Categories, and let's turn off the levels.

Now let's go to the Revit Links, and let's turn off the architectural model, and click OK. Now we can see our sprinkler system in isolation. So before we move forward, let's just talk briefly about the components of our system here.

If we zoom in, let's start on this piece of pipe. And if I click on it, we can see it's an eight-inch diameter pipe, and the elevation of the middle or centerline of the pipe is at minus seven feet. So this is seven feet underground.

This piece of pipe represents our city main and our water supply for our system. We then tie in right here, and we come back up above ground, and here is our backflow preventer. Now this stops the water in our system from going back out into the city water supply.

We come back down below ground, and we come all the way here, where we tie in inside the building. And this pipe will be our fire sprinkler riser, and here is our main. If we zoom in here, we can see our main goes up to the second floor and continues in this direction to the first floor.

Now after the main, these sections of pipe are our branch lines. As we can see here, these are one-and-a-half-inch diameter and 12 feet above finish floor. Our main, with larger size pipe, is two-and-a-half-inch diameter and also 12 feet above finish floor.

To go back to our branch line, these then connect to smaller pieces of pipe called our arm overs, and these are one-inch diameter. And finally, those connect down to our pendant sprinklers, which are right at the ceiling facing downwards. We also have upright sprinklers in areas where there is no ceiling, and it's exposed to the structure above.

For example, over here is an example of an upright sprinkler. Okay, in the next video, we'll get ready to set up some of our views and start into the modeling.