Van Walraven was promoted to fire marshal of the Aspen Fire Protection District and City of Aspen when Vandemark retired and notes: “Wayne Vandemark was my mentor, a true friend, and always supported my efforts. He left large shoes to fill.”

Serving the Industry During his career as inspector and then fire marshal, Van Walraven was elected to the committee for NFPA 720, Standard for the Installation of Carbon Monoxide (CO) Detection and Warning Equipment, and continues serving to this day

“I looked at the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) standards-making process and how it works and there weren’t a lot of AHJs on the enforcement end. I wanted to make a difference,” states Van Walraven. “We AHJs need to have input in the process. I was fortunate to have the support of my fire district and the Fire Marshal’s Association of Colorado to serve in this capacity. We wanted to at least have our voices heard. Now with NFPA instituting the enforcer reimbursement program, more AHJs might have the opportunity to take part in the process.”

Throughout his fire protection career, Van Walraven has been active in writing and enforcing the codes, setting up inspection programs, determining origin and cause of fires in his jurisdiction, and organizing public education programs within the schools and surrounding communities. He was involved with wildland fire prevention and education in local neighborhoods and communities and worked to adopt and amend codes to fit his community’s jurisdiction. And all the while, even though his focus was fire prevention, he ultimately promoted total life safety.

“There are many hats that AHJs wear,” Van Walraven comments. “Fire sprinklers are a passion of mine, but I’m involved with all aspects of life safety – smoke and carbon monoxide detection, smoke alarms, enforcement of the fire code, and fire investigations.”

In addition to his seat on the NFPA 720 committee, Van Walraven serves as a member of the technical committees for NFPA 13D, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems in One- and Two-Family Dwellings and Manufactured Homes, and 13R, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems in Low-Rise Residential Occupancies.

"My goal has been to provide input from an AHJ's point of view but to also try to make the standards enforceable and easily understood," he states.

He also serves on several task groups and committees for antifreeze, which were set up by the NFPA Standards Council. In addition, he is involved with the NFPA water meter study focusing on how water meters affect sprinkler systems and on the task group for sprinkler piping insulation.

“I tended to get involved in issues that affected my jurisdiction directly and ultimately helped other jurisdictions,” Van Walraven states. “When I heard about antifreeze issues, I had to get involved immediately because of the climate in my jurisdiction. The challenges were working with contractors and designers/architects

The homes in the area were mostly designer homes with large square footage and a bigger challenge because of the roof systems with architectural features and little or no insulation.

“I worked with both groups to address the best way to solve the issue for new and existing systems. Throughout this difficult time, I was able to maintain our ordinances even when the opposition challenged the difficulty of applying the new rules,” he states.

Another area that piqued Van Walraven's interest was sloped ceilings and fire sprinkler coverage.

“Tyco sets the installation guidelines for their products. When talking about ceilings, their technical bulletin covered 4/12 to 8/12 pitches. At the end, it said ‘anything over 8/12 pitch, check with the AHJ for approval.’ Basalt Fire Marshal Bill Harding and I discussed that and the fact that we didn’t want to take on that liability, as we weren’t engineers. So we found James Golinveaux, senior fellow, Tyco Fire Protection Products, and asked what he could do about that.”

As many in the industry know, Van Walraven had found the right man to ask.

“James said he didn’t know but he’d find out. That was the beginning of tests to determine if sprinklers would work. All of the ceilings around here have greater than 8/12 pitch ceilings. If you’re going to ask me to approve something, you’re going to have to show me that it will work. These tests gave us that information.”

Harding concurs. “Ed has always been an advocate for residential sprinklers and this was the ‘icing on the cake’ for him. The results of the testing were rather surprising and sort of revolutionized the whole industry. You see our results in the present day code. NFPA 13D has been revamped to give more specific criteria and more options, and we can refer to guidance from manufacturers who have done testing to try and approximate which setup will work for the application at hand.”

Golinveaux remembers long days of fire testing and the "Van Walraven Furniture Package."

“We were working with Underwriters Laboratories (UL) running the tests, adjusting the cathedral ceiling and placing the furniture in the corner per the standard, and Ed walks in and says ‘I’ve never seen furniture in a corner. It’s always arranged in the middle of a great room’ and then proceeds to arrange the furniture to what it would normally look like,” he says.

That simple rearrangement sent everything off the charts.

“We had to rethink our testing,” comments Golinveaux. “We had to run over 30 new tests. But if Ed hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have had a real fire protection solution. Ed brings that perspective. He’s a common-sense grassroots fire protection advocate and believes sprinklers are his best tool for residential applications. When one guy can walk in and change an industry’s test method, that’s pretty powerful,” Golinveaux summarizes.