Reading the annual sprinkler inspection report on your DC condo: impairments, critical deficiencies, noncritical deficiencies, and which ones the board has to act on

The report lands in the manager's inbox a week after the tech was in the building. Six pages, a lot of checkboxes, three or four items flagged at the end, and a line at the top that says the system passed. Most boards file it and move on. A few panic over the flagged items. Neither is the right read. The report sorts what it found into three bins, and the bin tells you how fast to move. This article explains the three words, what sits in each one on a typical Capitol Hill or Columbia Heights condo, and what the board owes after reading it.

Three words, three clocks

The inspection standard behind every residential sprinkler report in the District is NFPA 25. It gives the contractor three labels for anything short of perfect, and the labels are the whole point of the report.

An impairment means the system, or part of it, cannot do its job right now. A closed control valve, a drained riser, a fire pump that will not start, a backflow with no water behind it. The clock on an impairment is today. The building is under fire watch rules until it is back in service, and the fire watch article covers what that means hour by hour.

A critical deficiency means the system is in service but something would hurt it in a fire. Heads painted over or corroded, a head missing, storage stacked within eighteen inches of a deflector, a waterflow switch that did not trip during the test, a gauge reading pressure the tech could not confirm. The clock here is weeks, not months, and the report usually says so.

A noncritical deficiency means a records or housekeeping item that would not change what happens in a fire. A missing spare head cabinet, a hydraulic placard that fell off the riser, a sign missing from a valve, an escutcheon that is loose. These go on the list for the next service visit.

What the first page tells you

Before the findings, the report records the state of the system when the tech walked in. Read four things. The system type, usually 13R for a converted rowhouse or a mid sized building and 13D for a two unit conversion, which decides which rooms are allowed to have no head. The riser pressure, which should be close to what last year's report showed. The date and result of the main drain test, which proves water actually arrived at the riser through the backflow. And the backflow test date, which is a separate DC Water requirement the backflow article explains.

A main drain pressure that dropped a lot from last year is the one number on the page that can mean a problem outside the building. A partly closed valve in the street, a tap that is corroding shut, a main that was worked on. The main drain article explains how to read that comparison.

The findings that show up on DC condo reports

A building converted in the early 2000s now has heads old enough to show the first paint, corrosion, and loading. Those are critical and they are the most common line on a District report. Replacing them is quick work when the building gives access, and the access article covers the unit owner who will not open the door.

Second is the waterflow or tamper switch that did not report to the panel. In a 13R building that is a critical finding because the monitoring company would not know the system was flowing. Third is storage against heads in the trash room and bicycle room. Fourth is heads in the wrong place after an owner renovated a kitchen, which the report will call obstructed or improperly located. Fifth is a backflow test more than a year old, which is noncritical on the sprinkler report and a separate letter from DC Water.

What the board owes after reading it

The DC Fire Code puts inspection, testing and maintenance on the owner, which for a condo is the association. The report is the association's evidence that it did the inspecting. The fixing is a second step, and the report is also the evidence of whether that step was taken.

For an impairment, act the day the report arrives, though a good contractor called from the riser room before writing it up. For a critical deficiency, get a proposal, approve it, and schedule the work inside the window the report names. Keep the proposal and the invoice with the report. For a noncritical deficiency, add it to the next service visit and note that decision in the board minutes.

Then file it. The notice of violation article describes what happens when Fire Prevention asks for the reports and the building cannot produce them. The report that lists a critical deficiency and the invoice that shows it was fixed is the pair that closes that conversation in one email.

What a thin report is hiding

A two page report with every box ticked and no findings on a building more than ten years old is a report to question, not to celebrate. Ask whether every unit was entered. Ask whether the waterflow test actually tripped the panel. Ask for the main drain pressures. The cheapest annual inspection in the District is the one where the tech reads the riser gauge from the doorway, and a board that accepts that report year after year finds out what it missed when a head opens or the five year internal assessment comes due. The internal assessment article explains what that visit looks at.

A report with ten findings is not a bad contractor and not a bad building. It is a contractor who looked. Sort the ten into the three bins, fix the critical ones on their clock, and the next report should be shorter. The report is a tool for the board, and a board that reads it the way the contractor wrote it gets a building that stays protected.

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