Stirling Palace, the historic seat of the Scottish monarchy, is now being protected with a water mist suppression system.

The pipework was specially designed to minimise the impact on the historic building

The installation at the palace – part of Stirling Castle – was carried out by Ultra Suppression Systems and involved the royal lodgings, the upper and attic levels, and the vault level.

Because the fabric of the building could not be interfered with by penetrating the walls, water travels up a riser pipe form the vault level tank to the top of the building. The water coming out of the riser pipe is then split to travel through loops of smaller pipes between 15mm and 20mm in diameter.

Nick Ketteridge, the company’s technical director, explained: “Through a unique configuration, we were able to reproduce the low water usage and narrow discreet pipework associated with high pressure water mist in a low pressure system, which meant significant cost benefits for the project.”

Water mist systems use the thermal energy from a fire to rapidly convert water into steam, so displacing oxygen feeding the fire. Typically they use between 10% and 30% of the volume of water required by sprinkler systems.