Reno:
After reading your response I was wondering if there were listings for these type of sprinklers as they don't seem to be in general use in my city. Here is what I found on the Internet.
International ships appear to be under the Safety rules of the International Maritime Organization which is one of those UN groups. Boat mist sprinklers have to meet rule IMO 800(19) and I think the coast guard of the flag country is the final AHJ for this.
For building sprinklers the UL listing number is 2167 and at least one major manufacturer had one shown for sale on their web page.
According to the page I was looking at FM and UL worked with the IMO on the tests so sprinklers may be listed meeting both standards.
Regarding your views on the instant experts I agree.
Our data center had salad bar cough shields installed over all the servers, tape silo's and disk packs to prevent water from hitting them if the sprinklers went off. The director of data processing did not want his equipment getting wet in a fire if the sprinkler(s) went off.
He is under the impression that with a dry pipe system all the heads go off as soon as the water hits the pipe. We tried to explain to him if one of the covered units has flames coming out the top, the plastic would catch fire, melt and make sure the sprinkler head over it opened.
