A division of F.J. MURPHY & SON, INC.

In May, 1994 a MIC leak in a sprinkler pipe at an AlliedSignal corporate computer center in Phoenix, Arizona resulted in $25 million in damage, replacement costs, and lost productivity.  In April, 1998, patients narrowly escaped death in a fire at a nursing home in Iowa.  In the AlliedSignal case, MIC had caused unexpected leaks.  In the nursing home, MIC byproducts had completely blocked the fire sprinkler heads.  The system was activated, but due to blocked sprinkler heads water was prevented from getting to the fire.

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Any system exhibiting pinhole leaks and rusty brown tubercles is probably infected with MIC.  The problem is that MIC infestation is idiosyncratic.  In some cases, the whole system is compromised.    In others, only a few feet of pipe are affected.  Though laboratory tests for microbes can say whether or not they are present in a fire protection system's water supply, they cannot determine the extent of the damage.  Even after a system is "cleaned" and biocides are added to intake water to prevent new bacterial colonization, reinfestation may occur.

Before MICScan™ was introduced, fire protection engineers had only three ways to test for MIC damage.  They could cut suspected pipes open, use radiographic techniques to image them, or scan them with conventional ultrasound.  Cutting into pipe for samples requires replacing it, plus sampling the whole system is expensive, and the portions being sampled are out of service until the pipe is replaced.  Although radiography leaves the system in service, it is slow and expensive.  Conventional ultrasound, essentially point inspection that covers about 1/2 inch of pipe surface at a time, requires that many, many measurements be made in order to achieve 100% circumferential coverage.

With MICScan™, technicians can check the fire sprinkler system for a 30,000 square foot facility in two to three days.  The system remains in service and business typically continues as usual during the inspection.  A hand-held sensor fixture is run along a pipe.  Specialized software interprets the signal and provides a measure of cumulative MIC damage along with wall thickness measurements.  The system is portable, rugged, and accurate.  The technicians are trained and certified.

The accuracy of the MICScan™ system has been checked in blind tests at the University of Colorado and by Code Consultants, Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri.  After a MICScan™ inspection, Code Consultants opened all piping in which MIC was indicated.  It also opened sample selections of pipe that were unaffected.  There was a 100% correlation between the visual and MICScan™ inspections.  Fast and non-invasive, MICScan™ gives fire protection system owners peace-of-mind knowing the system is functional and provides intelligent repair options if problems are found to exist.
 

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