Today is a very big day for me. I am finally launching the start of an idea I've had and brainstormed and discussed and revisited for a number of years now. Finally. I could not be more excited about it. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began impacting the world around us I've been pressed to rethink my own operations and what I'm contributing to the world. Articles, design content, PE Prep, and trying to find ways to help the knowledgebase of the fire protection community is good, but I started the website around the idea of impacting the community in a real and tangible way. Today's new project is the start of what I hope could be a major positive impact for AHJs, designers, and installers. What is it? A Code Call Database. What is CodeCalls.org? CodeCalls.org is a free website that is bringing together local jurisdictions, fire protection designers, engineers, and installers to clarify and collaborate local code requirements. We're taking the areas of code in fire protection design that need local input, and helping jurisdictions get what they need to help first responders do their work. When we're done, we plan to have a searchable, filterable database where you can find local requirements based on a project's ZIP code, city or county name. Where to Start? Indiana! There tens of thousands of jurisdictions in the United States alone, how is all this data going to come together? First, we're starting with our test case. If you work in the State of Indiana or have contacts who do, pay close attention today. Our Goal is to gather jurisdictional requirements for 70% of Indiana's population by May 8th. That's in 30 days. Why Indiana?
Indiana has a healthy mixture of urban, suburban and rural jurisdictions, so it presents a great test case to validate the concept. If we get enough momentum for Indiana, we feel confident in pursuing the project for larger coverage. If we find that we can get enough momentum to clarify requirements for Indiana, then we feel that the project could be viable to expand to new areas beyond Indiana and beyond just the United States, too. Why a 70% Coverage Goal? In order for the database to work, the user experience has to be great. Both for jurisdictions and for designers & installers. We feel that if we can cover jurisdictions that account for at least 70% of the area's population, that we'll have enough data for a great user experience and a very helpful resource. Is it Free? Yes, the database will always be free for anyone to access. We're funding the development efforts as a joint project by MeyerFire.com and BuildingCode.Blog. Why Should I Help? If you're an engineer, designer or installer, why should you contribute? For one - this is a way to clarify local requirements that will help in more fair and consistent bidding. Second - we'll thank you by crediting your contribution with a link from the local listing directly to your company's website. If someone is looking for a local contractor or design outfit, they can search a ZIP code and immediately have contact information to you, the person who they know is already familiar with the local requirements. If you're a jurisdiction, why should you contribute? Simple - get your needs met. Are you tired of providing the same plan-review comments? Tired of answering the same basic questions in phone calls and emails? This platform is an easy way to clarify the gray areas of code and simply make your requirements more clear to those who are seeking them. I Have Some Information for Some Areas in Indiana. How Can I Help? You can contribute information for jurisdictions you're familiar with here. We'll thank you with a promotional link to your company's website and help get the information verified by the jurisdiction. See The New Site! Click here or the link below to check out the new project. Let us know what you think by commenting or emailing me at [email protected]. Would love to hear feedback on how we can make this helpful and accessible. First - last week I put together a draft PDF cheatsheet for fire alarm design in elevators. Lots of great response to that tool. One major flub on my part - I didn't actually link to it. Here's an actual working hyperlink (fingers crossed). K-Factor & Pressure Versus Area & Density One of the hand calculations I do frequently when laying out sprinkler systems is comparing the k-factor, minimum pressures, and resulting flow for the sprinkler. It comes up all the time with residential-style, extended coverage, special application, and storage sprinklers. Many hydraulic calculation programs do this comparison automatically. That being said, it is important to understand and compare the minimum flow from sprinklers for a hydraulic calculation. Reducing unnecessary flow from a sprinkler reduces the total calculated flow from a system, which has major impacts on pipe sizing for some branch lines, cross mains, feed mains, and even the underground service size. Driver #1: K-Factor and Minimum Pressure There are two drivers for the actual minimum flow that must come from a fire sprinkler. The first driver is the K-Factor and Minimum Pressure. This equation is Q = k√P
Things around here are always busy. The past few weeks have been no exception. With feedback from some Apple users, field-users, and those without Microsoft Excel - I've heard your pleas! We now have every single tool from The MeyerFire Toolkit now available online to subscribers! You can see the complete list of tools at www.MeyerFire.com - just hover over the "Tools" list. Now, you don't need Excel or a Microsoft operating system - access the quick tools you need from anywhere, anytime. Not a Toolkit subscriber? Join on here. Licenses are now multi-user so you can share these tools with your whole team. SFPE Atlanta March 10th & 11th If you're attending SFPE Atlanta's regional conference on March 10th & 11th - let me know! I'll be there for John Frank's daylong session on updates with the Fire Protection PE Exam. He's the longtime leader of SFPE's Online PE Review Course and we'll be doing some collaboration in preparation for the computer-based changes to the PE Exam in 2020. NFSA Annual Conference April 29th - May 1st If you'll be in Phoenix for NFSA's National Conference - check us out! I'll be teaming with the voice of the fire sprinkler industry - Fire Sprinkler Podcast's Chris Logan to speak on New Media in Fire Protection. In Phoenix we'll be dissecting what we've learned while starting up different media in the industry, what projects we're working on now, and what ways we all can capitalize on new opportunities in the media space. That presentation is set for Wednesday April 29th. Making the Jump - The New Consulting Practice For all those who have reached out on LinkedIn about my (relatively) recent jump into starting my own design practice - thank you!! Things have been very busy with a healthy amount of fire sprinkler shop drawing design & consulting work. If you have interest in following the work I'm doing as part of that endeavour, follow my updates here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/meyerfire/. There's a fresh video on a recent all-BIM sprinkler design. If we're not yet connected on LinkedIn, consider doing so. It's GREAT to hear from and chat with other passionate people about the fire protection industry and it's something I really enjoy.
As always, thanks & have a great rest of your week! Awhile back I researched and built a translator for various versions of NFPA 13. It's built to quickly find where a code section has migrated between different editions of the standard. There's a free version here which connects the 2016 and the 2019 Editions of NFPA 13. Based on feedback and the positive response to that tool, I've just finished a similar edition translator for all of the published versions of the International Building Code. It covers Chapters 1 through 11, 15 and 30. Here's a quick video of how it works: If you're interested in giving this a try, you can get it as part of a 30-day trial for the MeyerFire Toolkit here. https://www.meyerfire.com/toolkit-trial.html. It's been busy around here tinkering with new tools since I went on my own in October of 2019. I am not by nature a programmer, but as the son of two accountants I'm pretty sure Microsoft Excel is just in my blood. I've gotten lots of positive feedback from users on the Toolkit and I'm happy to announce this week some major improvements aside from the new IBC translator: 1. A La Carte Tools Coming Some users aren't designers or engineers and would only use one or two tools. I get it. In the next couple weeks I'll be breaking out individual tools and pricing them for less, separately. The first one offered this way is the Water Supply Analysis tool that will be up this week. 2. Instant Activation Codes One of the biggest frustrations I've had on the development side is with quirky activation code servers. They drive me nuts. Over the past month I've dramatically simplified the process, so that new purchases automatically get clear activation codes exactly 2 minutes after their purchase. Clean and simple and it's working much better than before. 3. Toolkit Going to $195 in February With over a half-dozen new tools, the price of the Toolkit is going up to $195 starting in February. If you're interested but haven't bought yet, pick up a license now and you'll lock in your $150 subscription. 4. New Licenses Are Multi-Device & Sharable with Coworkers Lastly, based on the biggest piece of feedback I've gotten, with the $195 price-bump starting in February a single license will allow multiple installs, so that you can use on multiple devices and with members of your company. If you have a design staff with multiple users, it only makes sense that you're able to use and share files with coworkers. If you have a single-user license now and want to upgrade, shoot me an email at [email protected] and we'll get the upgrade set up. Should you want to learn more about the Toolkit, you can do so here. Hope you have a great rest of your week! Some big news on the MeyerFire front –
With the growth of the community here at meyerfire.com, I’ll be transitioning next week to support this venture full-time and begin my own design practice. This is a very big and exciting step for me, and I cannot express how thankful I am to have you be a part of the community here. It is because of your support and interest that’s made this possible. This week’s quick post is a collection of Q&As that I’ve gotten recently that I’m happy to share. What’s different now? Two big developments have come through in the last couple months. You may have noticed the website sponsorships that started in September. There is a good handful of interested organizations that serve the same audience and want to support our efforts at MeyerFire. Sharing their message has helped open up time I can contribute to site resources. I'd encourage you to click sponsor's messages as I both vet and have personal connections with each sponsor organization. The second big development is still in the works. It involves a major publication with a renowned fire sprinkler organization. I’ll be sure to relay information in time, but for now I’m excited to partner with an expert group and help bring more resources to the industry. This should be a complete volume by the middle of next year. Will the website change? Since July I’ve spent about 8 hours a week on the site. That includes developing content, writing for the blog, developing tools, helping Toolkit users, and supporting PE Examinees. This shift to full-time independence will open the potential to increase support for all these things. My hope is that you’ll continue to get better content and more useful tools with every new post. So this whole website thing is a lead-magnet for your design practice? Nope. MeyerFire.com will stay and keep the name and continue on where it is. I’ll continue to design because it’s what I love to do and it keeps me firmly entrenched in the industry’s hot issues. While it will launch this upcoming Monday the 21st, the new website for the design side of things will be www.MeyerFPE.com. My intent is to focus in on only a few specific small-business clients and support them extremely well. It’s also not my intent to hire any employees (see last week’s I’m terrible at management article). Of course business is fluid and change is constant, but that’s my initial intent. So How Much You Makin’ Off This-Here Website? When I started writing regularly about two years ago, I had about twenty subscribers. I would guess half of them had my last name. If I looked I would have bet three of them were just different emails my mom used. Since then (due to your support and sharing posts on LinkedIn & Facebook), the number of subscribers has grown dramatically. Those first few months in 2017 I was over the moon when three new people subscribed on the month. Now, somedays, there will be a dozen or so new interested professionals each day. It’s never about how many people tune in but about the impact of sharing best practices. The growth is well on the up and up and the distribution now approaches that of some of the leading fire protection organizations. You’ve made that possible and I can’t thank you enough for it. So money - the three revenue sources, if you will, are website sponsorships, PE Exam Prep content, and the Toolkit software package. The site sponsorships have just kicked off in September and have lots of interest. The PE Prep Guide is now technically the bestselling Fire Protection PE Exam book on the market, and there are now over 200 active MeyerFire Toolkit users. All of this combined still doesn’t make up a full-time income, but the impact that the combined effort is having has been incredibly positive. Not pursuing these in greater capacity would be something I’d otherwise live to regret. A Few Notes The transition to full time developer is a big step and a big transition for me and my family. It’s not without a lot of thought, nervousness, and a lot of excitement. Of course this is all really the beginning, but there are several people I’d like to thank just making it to this point. I’d like to thank the incredible team at SSC Engineering in St. Louis. They have a supportive and sharp group and I am so fortunate to have learned under the best these past few years. If you’re ever in the market for MEP, FP, or Structural design services, I would recommend the crew wholeheartedly. I’d like to thank some bigtime supporters and mentors for me. Far too many people to name, but those that have really stood out over the years are Mike Auld, Drew Robinson, Adam Hilton, Cindy Gier, Jeff Dunkel, Chris Cornett, Angie Grant, David Stacy, Aaron Johnson, Ed Long, and Mike Lonigro. You all rock. I'd also like to thank YOU for being a part of this community and being an advocate for better fire protection. I’m excited about what we’re going to build together. I'm very excited to announce that starting this September we will have a monthly site sponsor.
As you may know, MeyerFire.com was created to help you do great things in fire protection. This site was built to promote the practice and empower professionals in the fire protection community. How? By creating highly-visual, high-quality content and resources to support and connect the people who do fire protection the best. You. Each month we'll showcase an exclusive sponsor that supports our efforts at MeyerFire. The only difference you might notice is a new a sidebar image to the right on the site and a horizontal banner towards the bottom of emails. I'm very encouraged that the sponsorships will allow me to invest more time and development in content and resources that ultimately will help you continue to do great things. Sound like a stretch? Don't take my word for it. I hope you'll see for yourself later this year what the support of the sponsorships will bring to the site. In the meantime, please consider supporting our sponsors by clicking on the images and checking out their content starting this September. If you're interested in sponsoring the site with your campaign, don't hesitate to contact Joe directly at [email protected] for more information. Thanks for all of your continued interest and support! I'm excited to announce a new addition to the Toolkit that has been in development for a long time - the NFPA 13 Edition Translator. 2019 Changes With the major restructuring changes in the 2019 Edition of NFPA 13 - it has been difficult for me to flip straight to the content I'm used to doing. From the feedback I've heard I'm not alone on that learning curve. As a result, a couple weeks ago I released the first version of the translator, which takes any numerical section from the 2016 or 2019 edition, and returns the matching section from the opposite edition. Full Tool Now Available This full version is quite the powerhouse. With over 130 hours of research included, it can now take any numerical section from any edition of NFPA 13 from 1999 through the 2019 edition, and returns the matching section throughout it's history. A quick search on the edition translator shows the history of the section and where it appears. Why? Why could this be helpful? If you work across multiple jurisdictions or your local jurisdiction just updated to a new edition of NFPA 13, the shift in organization can be frustrating. If you use the free versions of NFPA 13 that are supported by NFPA, then this tool could help you quickly navigate equivalent sections. Probably the most common use I have is finding the back-history of where a section first appeared and where to look for it in past editions. This comes up occasionally for projects when there's disagreement about a particular section of code and searching for the back-history and any clarifications in future editions is very helpful. Available Now If you're a Toolkit subscriber, you can download the latest version of the Toolkit, including this edition translator, here. I've made it easier to download updates for Toolkit users. You can access the latest version and quickly download it at www.meyerfire.com/download. No sign in required. Find this interesting? Consider sending to a friend or colleague who might find it helpful. It's always a bit of a wild ride between March and May around here publishing the new edition of the PE Prep Guide. Each year I go through all of the prior year's feedback, make the updates I want, and then wait for the official SFPE list of required references to make any changes and publish. Good & Bad News The good news is for 2019 that the books are here a whole month earlier than I was anticipating - thanks to SFPE's early posting of the 2019 required reference list in early April. If you order a copy with our current sale, we'll get it headed your way in less than 24 hours. The bad news is that SFPE has also just revised the required reference list again just last week, well after their usual April posting and also after I sent the 2019 edition to the publisher. I guess this isn't really bad news at the latest update just took NFPA 25 from the 2014 edition to the 2014 OR 2017 edition, and NFPA 92 from the 2012 edition to the 2012 OR 2015 edition. The 2019 Edition is now the 4th and largest edition of the PE Prep Guide. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this change was based on recent feedback SFPE gathered about introducing older standards to the exam than what they've previously used. I'm guessing it was in good faith to not force examinees to go hunt down older versions of these standards while not materially affecting this exam. Regardless, this week I was happy to receive the largest shipment of books we've ever had (a FedEx Freight semi-truck dropped off a 480 pound pallet of books at our home Thursday) and we've already shipped over three dozen books in the last 24 hours. An annual tradition around here is pre-packaging the shipment of books as they come in for quick turn-arounds. This year we received our largest shipment to date - a nearly 500 pound pallet of hardcover books. PE Guide Growth If you're in the hunt for the PE Exam this year, you might consider getting a copy of the PE Prep Guide. Last year over 2 out of every 3 examinee had the 2018 edition in hand, and many of the last 1/3rd had prior editions of the guide. It's quickly becoming the go-to resource for the Fire Protection PE Exam and is well beyond what I could ever have hoped would happen when I put the first guide together in 2016. Weekly Exam Prep Series If you already have the 2018 Edition, you might consider the Weekly Exam Prep Series. It's a 20-week set of mini-exams that simulate the pace and difficulty of the actual PE Exam, with a bank of on-demand questions as well. For the numbers we're still gathering from last year's users of the Weekly Exam Series, we're having tremendous success with those who are taking the exam for the 2nd or 3rd time with a pass rate double the average of all repeat examinees. Check it out especially if you're a repeat examinee. The feedback and growth for the Weekly Exam Series has also been great - there's already as many people signed up for this year as we did all of 2018. Thank you for the feedback and interest so far - I can't wait to get these books out to everyone and get the summer of study rolling. Any questions/concerns - I'm always here at [email protected]. A huge thank you to the nearly 300 respondents to the survey posted a couple weeks ago. I am very appreciative of the feedback provided by so many, and I can promise you I've read every single comment provided by you, and I've already started implementing some changes to the site that were suggested. I mentioned I'd raffle a Toolkit & free 2018 PE Prep Guide (good as a reference book), and I decided to raffle a couple of each. The winners are: Philip Valdez and Stephen Crotts If you're interested, there were a total of 296 respondents to the survey. 87.5% of readers either specify, approve, or recommend products in the industry. Some common feedback for improvement include:
I am thrilled with these concepts and look forward to incorporating all of these in greater capacity going forward. |
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+ Unsubscribe anytime AUTHORJoe Meyer, PE, is a Fire Protection Engineer out of St. Louis, Missouri who writes & develops resources for Fire Protection Professionals. See bio here: About FILTERS
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