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Hydraulic calculations and
the slide rule
Before the scientific calculators and computers, we still 8

produced hydraulic calculations for High Hazard sprinkler systems but this
was a long-winded and time-consuming process and prone to error. I say
High Hazard sprinkler systems as these were the only systems you would
consider producing hydraulic calculations for as the production of the
calculations by hand took so long that we were content in using pre-

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Hydraulic calculations and the slide rule Page 2 of 7

calculated pipe table for Light hazard and Ordinary hazard sprinkler
systems and no one had ever thought of installing sprinklers into a house or
care facility.
(/)
Even with a scientific calculator you still have a lot of buttons which need to
be press to solve the Hayes William pressure loss formula (/Hydraulic-
calculation-for-fire-protection-engineers/the-hazen-williams-formula-for-
use-in-fire-sprinkler-systems.html), after all, each time we need to enter the
pipe diameter, the flow rate and the C factor of the pipe. Of course, we can
simplify the Hayes and William pressure loss formula for any pipe by
producing a k-factor for each pipe size and pipe type, this certainly
simplifies the input when using a calculate but we then need to look it up in
a table so it is still quite laborious. If this was not enough we have not even
considered the K-Factor formula (/Hydraulic-calculation-for-fire-
protection-engineers/k-factor-formula.html) for working out the flow
through the sprinkler head or balancing the junction points at each tee or
cross which needed yet another adjustment calculation. As an aside who
thought it was a good idea to have “K” and “k” as two different formulas in
fire sprinkler calculations, did someone not think that this may be confusing!

Fortunately, we had an answer the hydraulic calculator slide rule and no


self-respecting sprinkler engineer would be without one. I seem to
remember there were not that easy to get hold of. Some of the larger
sprinkler companies produce their own such as Matter and Platt and others
like the one shown was produced by an insurance company for their own
fire sprinkler inspection engineers.

The use of a hydraulic slide rule was still a useful tool even after the
invention of the scientific calculator, you may be wondering why! Well, it
was just simpler especially for those quick estimates and I still know a few
fire sprinkler engineers which still rely on their trusted slide rule to this day.

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Hydraulic calculations and the slide rule Page 3 of 7

The next invention in helping with fire sprinkler


hydraulic calculations was the programmable
calculator such as the Texas Instruments TI-58
(/) and the TI-83 which at the time was a very
expensive device. With this calculator, you could
programmer Hayes William pressure loss
formula and the sprinkler K-Factor formula which
was certainly a bonus and it reduced the number
of keypresses drastically. You could also enter a
small program of around 200 lines which had to
be entered manually (no USB memory sticks or Bluetooth in those days) this
was a laborious process and subject to error and if you let the battery go flat
you lost the lot and had to re-enter it. In Harold S. Wass book ‘Sprinkler
Hydraulics’ he devoted an entire Appendix to the subject ‘hydraulic program
for the Texas instrument TI-58’ which included the program code which you
needed to enter, I always wonder how many people successfully
completed this task.

The downside to the hydraulic slide rule and the programmable calculator
is that it was still only possible to calculate a branch (tree) systems with
dead-end lines, we could not calculate looped or gridded networks. You
can, in fact, calculate a simple loop system with little maths, paper and pen
and a loop can provide additional efficiency with the advantage that it
delivers water by more than one route and therefore the flow the decrease
in each line and as the friction loss decrease is proportional to the flow to
the power of 1.85, we will return to loops in a later blog.

I know some of you will be thinking why on earth are we talking about slide
rules, times and moved on and we all use hydraulic calculation software
such as FHC produce are calculation we can optimise designs and try out
numerous permutations of pipe sizes and head K-Factor.  Well, I still believe
that fire protection engineers need to understand the basic concepts of

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Hydraulic calculations and the slide rule Page 4 of 7

hydraulic calculations and formulas which underpinned them even if you


are using computer software, the saying "garbage in garbage out” is very
true.
(/)
You will find on this website a series of articles which explain the
fundamental formulas which are used for hydraulic calculations for fire
sprinkler and water mist systems.  We recently added an article which takes
you through hand hydraulic calculation step-by-step (/how-to-calculate-a-
fire-sprinkler-system.html) for a simple branch (or raged pipe
configuration).  Of course, you may not wish to use the slide rule or the
scientific calculator as same can be achieved much more easily by using
our Hcalc hydraulic calculator (/hcalc-free-hydraulic-calculator-for-fire-
sprinkler-hydraulic-calculations.html) which can be freely downloaded from
this website.

Something which computer software is excellent at is doing repetitive tasks


that are the fundamentals of hydraulic calculations repeating a series of
steps.  I mentioned earlier is that hand hydraulic calculations are only
suitable quite simple branch line systems but of course, tremendous cost
savings can be achieved in large installations by using a grid system.  In fact,
I will go to say that some ESFR (early suppression fast response) with the
very high water densities which are required could not be considered if it
was not for the grid as the pipe sizes and water supply requirement would
be just too high.  This is where our FHC hydraulic calculation software
(/FHC-Hydraulic-analysis-software/fhc-sprinkler-hydraulic-calculation-
software-for-the-fire-sprinkler-industry.html) can pay for itself in one
project by helping you optimise the design reducing the pipe sizes
balancing supply.

It used to take us a day to calculate by hand a reasonably sized high hazard


project with our slide rule.  This included the time to check and make one or
two very minor alterations as the process was laborious.  But we certainly
couldn’t consider trying different permutations as the process is so time-
consuming whereas today enter the ray of pipework into a hydraulic model
and press the calculate button your calculation be completed before you

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Hydraulic calculations and the slide rule Page 5 of 7

can blink.  This now says the design engineer considerable time which 
you can use optimising the system for best effect.  So I don’t think
engineers spend any less time producing the calculations is just that their
(/)
time is spent more efficiently fine-tuning their hydraulic model for best
effect and a more cost-effective solution.

K-Factor formula. (/tag/k-factor-formula.html) ,


Hayes William pressure loss formula (/tag/hayes-william-pressure-loss-formula.html) ,
Hydraulic calculations for sprinkler systems (/tag/hydraulic-calculations-for-sprinkler-systems.html)

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