Fire Flow

This method is a regression analysis composed of over 134 fire surveys conducted in Chicago (NFPA, 2003).

For residential occupancies:

Required fire flow (gpm) = 9 ×10−5 ×A2 + 50 ×10−2 ×A

For nonresidential occupancies:

Required fire flow (gpm) = −1.3×10−5 ×A2 + 42 ×10−2 ×A

“A” represents the gross floor area (sum of all the floors) in feet2 of the building.