Large-Loss Commercial Sprinkler Failure in Irving, TX

The Challenge

A 2-inch fire sprinkler branch line on the fourth floor of an office building froze and split during a January hard freeze, flowing for roughly 45 minutes before the fire department closed the valve. Approximately 26,000 sq ft was affected across all four floors, including a second-floor MDF/IT room directly in the water's path.

The Approach

An eleven-person team was on site inside the hour, with priorities set before anyone touched a hose: life safety, elevator lockout and pit pump-out, protect the MDF room, then bulk extraction. The IT room was dried first, tented in plastic with ducted dry air, and the tenant's core switching and server gear never went down. Roughly 2,600 gallons were extracted, and glue-down carpet tile was lifted at the seams and dried in place rather than replaced, saving about 14,000 sq ft. Three trailer-mounted desiccant dehumidifiers, 90 air movers, and 8 air scrubbers ran on generator-fed power so building circuits weren't loaded. The building never closed. Floors 1 and 3 tenants worked normal business hours through the entire mitigation because containment and negative air kept work zones sealed, with the noisy demo work happening on night shift.

The Results

Dry standard was reached across all four floors in 9 days. Full reconstruction, including ceilings, carpet, drywall, paint, and the elevator cab, was complete in 7 weeks. Zero tenant days were lost on floors 1 and 3, and there was no data loss for the tenant in the MDF room's path.