NFPA 99 Health Care Facilities Code provides performance criteria for healthcare facilities that follow a risk-based approach, where it is the risk posed to patients, staff or visitors that defines safety guidelines.
When our local water company started adding Watts No. 7 dual-check backflow preventers to all water services, we soon discovered water heaters were failing at a rapid pace, with gas fired models exhibiting telltale signs where the cold/hot water lines skewed off making them look like a bow-legged cowboy!
“Because knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence,” said Peter Drucker.
The classic way of estimating heating load in smaller, envelope-dominated buildings is to assume the rate of heat loss is proportional to the difference between the inside and outside temperature.