Jesse Roman chats with Matt Klaus, NFPA principal fire protection engineer and liaison to the NFPA 13 technical committees, about these updates to 13, why they were made, and why they are important.

In the case of the commodity classification tables, much of the commodity information provided in NFPA 13 is nearly 50 years old, written when storage facilities and schemes were vastly different than today, Klaus explains. That was a big problem, because the accuracy of those classifications is vital for fire protection.

Cloud ceilings—essentially aesthetic ceiling panels suspended below the actual structural ceiling—are very popular among architects and developers these days because they can hide unsightly wires and pipes, and they look really cool. Unfortunately, they complicate sprinkler system design.