What actually drives the cost of sprinkler servicing

We do not publish prices for this work, and this page explains why rather than dodging the question. What it does give you is the seven things that actually move the number on a servicing contract, so you can read a quotation properly and tell whether two of them are comparing the same job.

If you are pricing something wider than servicing, installation, riser testing or pumps, the whole picture is on what a fire sprinkler system costs.

Why there is no price list

A sprinkler or riser contract is priced from what is installed and how hard it is to reach, and neither is knowable from a postcode.

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 at the door and a pump in an accessible house. The other has three valve sets, a diesel set in a basement with 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 plan around and we will have to revise, and a revised price reads as a rise however honest it is. So we survey first, free, and put a fixed figure in writing afterwards.

The seven things that move the number

1. How many control valve sets

The single biggest input on the sprinkler side. Each set is stripped, cleaned, reassembled and proved at the annual service, and each one is roughly a fixed piece of work. Two sets is close to twice one.

Buildings are frequently described as having one and turn out to have three, because sets get added when a building is extended and nobody updates the record drawings.

2. What the pump arrangement is

No pump at all, on a town main supply, is the cheapest case. An electric set adds an annual flow test against the performance curve. A diesel set adds fuel condition, two battery banks, a cooling system and a much longer test regime, and it costs meaningfully more to maintain for good reasons. Two pumps in duty and standby is more again.

Why the flow test rather than a start test is the part that matters is in our guide to fire pumps.

3. Risers, and how tall

Dry and wet risers are priced by the number of risers and the number of landing valves, not by the building. A six-storey block with two risers has twelve landing valves to inspect and a pressure test on each riser.

Height matters directly: the annual test under BS 9990 charges the riser to 12 bar and holds it for 15 minutes, and the taller the riser the longer the fill, the drain and the making good.

4. Access

The most underestimated item, and the one that varies most.

A pump house you drive to is not the same job as a tank room down a ladder through a hatch. Landing valves behind locked cabinets on eight floors, in a building where you need a resident to let you onto each landing, is a day’s work that looks on paper like an hour’s.

Anything needing a scissor lift, a permit, an escort or a second engineer for safe access is a real cost, and it is the item most often left out of a cheap quotation.

5. Condition

A system serviced properly for ten years is quick. A system nobody has touched since it was commissioned is not: seized valves, missing caps, painted-shut cabinets, tanks that have never been cleaned.

This is why a first-year price and a steady-state price should be different, and why an honest contract keeps remedial work separate from the service. Anyone who buries an allowance for unknown repairs inside the service price is either overcharging you or about to ask for more.

6. When the work can happen

Testing a riser or running a pump disrupts a live building. In a shopping centre, a care home or an occupied office, some of this has to happen outside trading hours, and out-of-hours work is charged at a premium rate.

That is often still the right call, because isolating a system in the middle of a working day carries its own cost. It should be priced both ways so you can decide.

7. How many sites

A portfolio priced as a portfolio is cheaper per site than the same buildings priced one at a time. 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.

How to compare two quotations

Ignore the totals until you have checked four things.

• Does it name the standard? BS EN 12845 for sprinklers, BS 9990 for risers. A quotation that names neither is not a compliance quotation.
• Does it list the intervals? Weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, annual for sprinklers. Six-monthly and annual for risers. A single annual visit priced against a standard that requires five routines is not the same product.
• Does the pump work say “flow test” or “start test”? They are different tests at different prices, and only one proves the pump.
• Who is doing the weekly checks? Under BS EN 12845 they sit with the responsible person unless contracted out. A cheaper quote may simply have left them with you. That is legitimate, and you need to know.

Those four questions will usually explain the gap between two quotations entirely. If you are choosing between firms rather than between quotations, how to choose a sprinkler contractor covers what to check before any price arrives.

What we do instead of a price list

A free survey: an engineer walks the plant room and counts what is actually there rather than what the drawings say. Then a fixed price in writing, itemised, with remedial work priced separately, valid for thirty days. It costs nothing and it commits you to nothing.

If that is what you want, that is sprinkler servicing and dry riser testing, and the survey covers whatever is actually in the building.