ISO 9001:2015
Certified by BRE Global, accredited by UKAS
An audited quality management system. It means the way a job is planned, recorded and signed off is itself inspected by somebody independent, on a schedule.
What does a fire sprinkler system actually cost?
There is no honest single answer, and anybody publishing one has not seen your building. What decides it is what is installed, what the water supply has to do, and how hard the plant is to reach. This page is the whole list, so you can read a quotation properly and tell whether two of them are pricing the same job.
- 0figures published, on purpose
- 6checks that make two quotes comparable
- 30days our written price holds for
Which of these are you pricing?
Four different jobs get called "sprinkler quotes" and they behave nothing alike. Pick the one you are actually buying.
The largest number, and the one with the widest spread, because it is driven by what the building is rather than by how big it is.
- 01 Hazard classification Light, Ordinary 1 to 4 or High Hazard under BS EN 12845. It sets the design density and therefore the size of every pipe, tank and pump downstream. A change of one class can move the whole scheme.
- 02 The water supply A town main that can already deliver the flow and pressure is the cheapest outcome by a long way. A stored tank and a pump set is a plant room, a foundation, a power supply and an annual test regime for the life of the building.
- 03 Storage height and racking In a warehouse this decides whether roof-level heads are enough, or whether the racking needs sprinklers inside it, which is a different job entirely.
- 04 The building fabric Exposed steel deck is quick. Suspended ceilings, listed fabric, occupied floors and anything needing concealed pipework and flush heads are not.
- 05 Phasing and access The same system installed in one empty shell and installed floor by floor around a working tenant are two different prices, and the second one is not a small uplift.
Ask for this. Ask for the hazard class the design assumes, and the water supply arrangement, in writing. Those two decide most of it and they are the two most often left vague.
The recurring number, and the one most often compared badly, because two quotations can look similar and cover different amounts of the standard.
- 01 How many control valve sets The single biggest input. Each set is stripped, cleaned, reassembled and proved at the annual service, so two sets is close to twice one. Buildings described as having one routinely turn out to have three.
- 02 The pump arrangement No pump is cheapest. An electric set adds an annual flow test against its curve. A diesel set adds fuel, two battery banks, a cooling system and a much longer regime.
- 03 Condition on day one A system nobody has touched since commissioning takes longer at the first visit than one serviced properly for ten years. A first-year price and a steady-state price should differ, and remedial work should be priced separately.
- 04 Access and site hours A tank room down a ladder, or work that has to happen outside trading hours in an occupied building, is a real cost and the one most often missing from a cheap quotation.
Ask for this. Ask which of the five intervals the price covers, and whether the weekly checks are included or left with you. Both are legitimate answers. Only one of them is the same product.
Priced by what is installed rather than by the size of the building, which is why a small block can cost more than a large warehouse.
- 01 Number of risers Each riser is charged and pressure tested separately at the annual visit. Two risers is two tests, not one longer one.
- 02 Number of landing valves Every outlet is inspected at the six-monthly visit and proved at the annual. A six-storey block with two risers has twelve of them.
- 03 Height The annual test charges the riser to 12 bar and holds it for 15 minutes. The taller it is, the longer the fill, the drain and the making good.
- 04 Getting to the valves Cabinets behind fire doors on every landing, in a building where somebody has to let you onto each floor, is a day that looks like an hour on paper.
Ask for this. Ask whether the price is per riser or per building, and whether it includes the annual pressure test or only the six-monthly visual.
Small next to the others, and the one where the cheap option is most often not the same test.
- 01 Electric or diesel A diesel set carries fuel condition, two independent battery banks, a cooling system and weekly running. It costs meaningfully more to maintain, for good reasons.
- 02 Duty and standby Two pumps is two sets of tests, not one.
- 03 Flow test or start test These are different jobs at different prices. A start test proves the controller. Only a flow test against the performance curve proves the pump can deliver.
Ask for this. Ask for measured flow and pressure figures on the annual report. If the paperwork has no numbers on it, you have bought a start test.
Six checks before you compare two totals
Nearly every gap between two quotations in this trade is explained by one of these, and none of them requires you to know anything about sprinklers.
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Does it name the standard?
BS EN 12845 for sprinklers, BS 9990 for risers. A quotation that names neither is not a compliance quotation, whatever it costs.
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Does it list the intervals?
Weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual for sprinklers. Six-monthly and annual for risers. One annual visit priced against a standard that requires five routines is a different product.
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Flow test or start test?
On anything with a pump. They are not interchangeable and the gap between them is most of the difference between two pump prices.
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Who does the weekly checks?
Under BS EN 12845 they sit with the responsible person unless contracted out. A cheaper quotation may simply have left them with you.
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Is remedial work separate?
Nobody knows what a first service will find. An honest contract prices the service and prices repairs when they are found, rather than burying an allowance in the figure.
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What is excluded?
Making good, access equipment, permits, out-of-hours premiums and builder work. Exclusions belong in the quotation, not in the invoice.
Why we publish no price list
Two warehouses of the same floor area, on the same estate, can differ by a factor of three. One has a single control valve set inside the door and a pump in a house you can drive to. The other has three valve sets, a diesel set in a basement behind a two-metre access hatch, and racking that has to be moved to reach the flow switches.
A figure produced before anyone has seen that is a figure you will build a budget around, and we will have to revise. A revised price reads as a rise however honest the reason. So the survey comes first, it is free, and the number that follows it is fixed and in writing.
If you want the detail behind the recurring side of it, that is the seven things that drive a servicing contract, and the regime it is priced against is BS EN 12845 in plain English.
What you get instead of a guess
- 01
A free survey
An engineer, not a salesperson, walks the plant room and counts what is actually there rather than what the drawings say.
- 02
A fixed price in writing
Itemised, naming the standard and the intervals, with remedial work priced separately rather than buried in the figure.
- 03
Thirty days to decide
The price holds. No pressure afterwards, and if the answer is that you do not need what you thought you needed, that is what the survey will say.
Book the survey No fee, no obligation, and it takes about an hour on most buildings.
Questions about cost
Why does this page not give a price?
Because the two things that decide most of it, what is actually installed and how hard it is to reach, cannot be established from a postcode. A figure published here would be wrong often enough to be a liability, and you would plan around it. We survey instead, free of charge, and put a fixed figure in writing afterwards.
What is the most expensive part of a new sprinkler installation?
Usually the water supply. Where the incoming main can already deliver the design flow and pressure, the job is pipework and heads. Where it cannot, the scheme gains a stored water tank, a pump set, a plant room to put them in, a power supply and an annual test regime for the life of the building.
Does a sprinkler system reduce insurance premiums?
Often, and sometimes it decides whether cover is offered at all. Insurers treat a system as genuine risk mitigation only where an approved contractor installed it and it is maintained on a documented regime, so an unapproved installation or a gap in the records can lose the benefit the system was fitted for.
Is it cheaper to put several buildings on one contract?
Per site, yes, and noticeably so. Travel is shared, visits are planned into routes and the reporting is consolidated. If you look after more than a handful of buildings, say so at the first conversation rather than after the first quotation.
Can a price be agreed for more than one year?
The servicing can, on a multi-year contract, and that is normal on a portfolio. What cannot be fixed in advance is remedial work, because nobody knows what a first service will find on a system that has not been looked at properly. An honest contract prices the two separately rather than carrying a contingency inside the service figure.
Where the figures on this page come from
What a system costs is driven by what these documents require of it: the hazard class, the water supply and the design density all come from here, not from us.
- BS EN 12845Fixed firefighting systems. Automatic sprinkler systems. Design, installation and maintenance
The standard commercial and industrial sprinkler systems are designed, installed and maintained to. It sets the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual routines.
BSI
- BS 9990Non-automatic fire-fighting systems in buildings. Code of practice
Dry and wet risers, and private fire mains. The source of the six-monthly inspection and the annual pressure test.
BSI
- LPC RulesLPC Rules for Automatic Sprinkler Installations, incorporating BS EN 12845
The insurer-facing ruleset that sits alongside BS EN 12845. Part 1 is the standard itself; the technical bulletins in Part 2 are what an insurer means by property protection.
Fire Protection Association
- Approved Document BFire safety: Approved Document B
Statutory guidance to Part B of the Building Regulations. Volume 1 covers dwellings, Volume 2 everything else, and it is where the height thresholds that trigger sprinklers and risers actually live.
UK Government
British Standards are copyright documents and most are bought rather than read free. We hold the ones we work to. If you need to know what one of them says about your building, ask us rather than buying it.
Approved, and audited on a schedule.
Two certifications, and the first one is the reason we could apply for the second. ISO 9001 is a precondition for LPCB approval, so this is a sequence rather than a collection.
LPCB approved
Loss Prevention Certification Board
The approval UK insurers look for on sprinkler work. A system installed by an LPCB approved contractor counts as genuine risk mitigation on your policy; one installed by anybody else may not.
Working to BS EN 12845, BS 9251 and BS 9990. If your insurer or fire risk assessor wants the certificates themselves, ring us and we will send them over.
Tell us the building. We will tell you what it is due.
No survey fee to find out where you stand. Describe the site and we will tell you which intervals apply and what the visit involves.