Georgia Fire Inspectors Association

Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC)

NFPA 13 (2002), Section 14.2.2 requires information on any MIC treatment plans to be submitted with the shop drawings “where the Section 15.1.5 required water supply evaluation indicates treatment is indicated”, but all this is contingent upon information from the owner to the contractor required by Section 4.3(3) that the water supply is or is not in need of treatment.

[It should be noted that the handbook alludes that the owner’s certificate needs to ask the owner of any need for the water supply to be treated, but the sample owner’s certificate in Figure A.14.1(b) does not even suggest this…and the handbook indicates the owner’s certificate should accompany preliminary (building permit) plans, but is not actually required anywhere nor is this ever done since it is not ‘specifically required’ anywhere.]

The ‘requirement’ that the water supply be evaluated in order to require any treatment plan to be ‘submitted’ for approval with the shop drawings just ends up in a nice vicious indecisive logic loop that seems to effectively go nowhere!

The owner claims they are ignorant of the requirement since nobody tells them about it and they completed the duly required information owner’s certificate ‘form’, the contractor says the owner never told them about any needs, typically using the sample owner’s certificate in NFPA 13 (2002) as the evidence they were not told, and the water supply is thereby never even evaluated, nor is it treated, and fire safety typically suffers as the piping may or may not deteriorate hydraulically and/or in oh so many other ways.

The real question is – what was NFPA’s ‘intent’?

1) Was it to purposefully put the alleged ‘requirement’ for water supply testing/treatment into the main body, but weaken it to the point that it could’ve effectively just been left out of the standard for all the good it does trying to enforce any of it; or

2) Was the intent to require shop drawings provide information that the water supply was evaluated and the information from that evaluation included with the shop drawings thus justifying that treatment information required by Section 14.2.2 is not required?

Answer 1 means 'pass the buck' to the victim...the public who only has the visual illusion of fire protection of the system that may or may not actually work as designed by the alleged 'conscientious contractor' as required by the 'responsible owner', and the conceptual illusion that the 'authorities' are verifying system integrity.

Answer 2 means shop drawings must either include test reports indicating no MIC is present, or submit test reports indicating presence of MIC including its intended treatment for review and approval.