{"id":16704,"date":"2016-10-11T02:56:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T09:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/historic-kenai-church-gets-new-fire-suppression-system\/"},"modified":"2016-10-11T02:56:29","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T09:56:29","slug":"historic-kenai-church-gets-new-fire-suppression-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/historic-kenai-church-gets-new-fire-suppression-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Kenai church gets new fire suppression system"},"content":{"rendered":"

KENAI \u2014<\/strong> A system designed to extinguish fires without damaging the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s collection of icons, art and archived documents is being installed in the historic church building in Old Town Kenai.<\/p>\n

The church and nonprofit preservation group Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska (ROSSIA) fundraised $61,623 for the restoration in early 2016, according to ROSSIA\u2019s website on the effort.<\/p>\n

Electrician Richard Cutting of Anchorage\u2019s Megawatt Electric normally bends and installs pipe to pass electrical wires through.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s working now with contractor ATS Alaska on installing the 38-millimeter-diameter main pipes and 12 millimeter-diameter distribution pipes that will carry water and pressurized gas through the church in the event of a fire.<\/p>\n

The building that houses Holy Assumption\u2019s gift shop also houses a water drum and a rack of 24 tanks filled with nitrogen gas at 3,000 pounds of pressure.<\/p>\n

When the Hi-Fog system is triggered, the gas will force water through an underground pipe into the church, where the 3,000 pounds of pressure will be strong enough to straighten bends in the 12 millimeter piping that delivers it to outlets in the church\u2019s ceiling, Cutting said.<\/p>\n

This high-pressure spurt won\u2019t be released directly on the religious art that fills Holy Assumption\u2019s sanctuary. Instead, it will be directed through special misting heads.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat (the Hi-Fog system) does is turn the water droplets into little particles, so that as the fire draws in air it also draws in these little particles, and I think the particles not only disperse the oxygen but also condense when they hit the heat and put the fire out that way,\u201d Cutting said. \u201cSo it\u2019s a whole lot less water than a traditional extinguishing system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hi-Fog installation is different from Cutting\u2019s usual work in other ways as well. Holy Assumption\u2019s construction is distinctly pre-modern. The church was built in 1894 and still has its original hand-hew timbers with moss insulation crammed between.<\/p>\n

Though Cutting said he\u2019s worked in historic buildings before \u2014 mostly old homes on the East Coast \u2014 he said most of those had machine-cut wood.<\/p>\n

Though sawmills were common in the Lower 48 in the 1890s, there were none near Kenai at the time.<\/p>\n

Installing pipe along the hand-cut logs of Holy Assumption, Cutting said \u201cevery little bit of it\u2019s challenging, because nothing is square.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou take a measurement that\u2019s great down here, but three feet away your measurement\u2019s no good anymore,\u201d Cutting said. \u201cSo you\u2019re doing a lot of bending. … A lot of the challenge is running your pipe, because you\u2019ve got to follow the contours of the log, as opposed to a flat beam where you can run right down it. Here you\u2019ve got to come out a little bit, build some supports for it. It\u2019s pretty intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timber itself also presents challenges.<\/p>\n

A one point Cutting needed to run a pipe through a hefty ceiling beam, but discovered the point where he planned to cross the beam had a knot that he said took him two hours to drill through.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is quite the challenge and I\u2019m pretty proud to be working on it,\u201d Cutting said. \u201cI get the opportunity to lend my expertise and abilities to it, so I\u2019m really kind of stoked to be involved in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Ben Boettger is a reporter for the Kenai Peninsula Clarion and can be reached at ben.boettger@peninsulaclarion.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

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KENAI \u2014 A system designed to extinguish fires without damaging the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s collection of icons, art and archived documents is being installed in the historic church building in Old Town Kenai. The church and nonprofit preservation group Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska (ROSSIA) fundraised $61,623 for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":16705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16704"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}