Project Brief

After Hurricane Sandy, the NYC Department of Design and Construction's Build It Back program, delivered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, set out to return displaced families to their homes and leave those homes better able to survive the next storm. KeRi was the plumbing and fire protection design engineer, as a sub-consultant to the program managers, on an $18.9 million construction program of single- and multi-family residential buildings, each designed property by property under its own Build It Back application.

Adding automatic sprinklers to buildings that had none raised the central question: the existing water services could not deliver the flow and pressure a sprinkler system needs. Rather than install a fire pump, with its controller, power supply and testing regime, in homes with no maintenance staff, KeRi upgraded each incoming service with a new valve box and curb valve and fed a wet pipe system directly at street pressure. Lead-containing service piping was replaced with copper while the service was open, and a cross-connection control assembly was filed with the Department of Environmental Protection. Sprinkler layouts, pendant and sidewall heads, and hydraulic calculations were carried in KeRi's own documents, built from a standard set of details adapted to each building.

Permit review at FDNY and the Department of Buildings ran long under a surge of storm-recovery filings, and unrecorded subgrade utilities forced piping relocations. KeRi front-loaded the filings it controlled and reissued layouts promptly, and construction finished within about a month of plan and within one percent of the construction budget.

MEP Engineering Scope

What We Engineered

Plumbing and fire protection resiliency upgrades:

• Automatic wet pipe sprinkler systems with pendant and sidewall heads and hydraulic calculations
• Incoming water service upgrades with new valve boxes and curb valves in place of fire pumps
• Lead-containing service piping replaced with copper
• Cross-connection control assemblies filed with DEP
• FDNY, DOB and DEP filings, submittal and RFI review, and field observation

The Challenge

Homes with no sprinklers and no maintenance staff needed automatic fire protection, but their existing water services could not supply a sprinkler system, and permit review was slowed by a citywide surge of storm-recovery filings.

Our Solution

KeRi upgraded each water service so the sprinklers run at street pressure with no fire pump, replaced lead service piping with copper, and kept construction within one percent of budget.