Designing Fire Suppression Systems

First off, familarize yourself with all the relevent Codes of Practice; all your designs must comply with these codes. For HVAC systems, air volumetric flow rate in cfm is (room volume in ft³ x required number of air changes per hour)/60. For air drying systems, you will need a psychrometric chart to help you in the design. For fire fighting systems, you size the pumps the same way as you size pumps for any other purpose: total required volumetric flow rate vs required service pressure. I can only provide you these rough general guidelines since these two fields are too wide and detailed to be explained in detail here.

These are all university level courses. If there are online courses for these that are recognize by the relevant authorities in your area, then of course it's okay to learn from them; if not, then you have no choice but to go back to school. For books, you can go to any technical bookshop; they will have them in stock. If not, they can order them for you. Please note though that without an expert to guide you, merely reading the books aren't enough unless you already have a fairly good understanding of the topics.

Couldn't agree more DV...............you get people designing fire systems that have no knowledge of the area and it is an open invitation to disaster......with possible loss of life.............here is an example of what can happen.

Some "expert" in fire fighting systems installed a high pressure, fixed installation fog system in a fishing trawler's engine room............pvc pipework and nozzles, a very clever design............until there was a fire. Cause of fire - shorted out battery cables.......most of the nozzles and pipework melted............fotunately the crew were able to extinguish the fire by conventional means..........but.............not before it made quite a mess of the engine room.

This did not occur in Australia, it would have been picked up in their annual survey, which is mandatory.............it occurred in the USA!!!!!

After you determine your local building requirements/rules/laws, you could look into the following:

http://www.ashrae.org/publications/

http://www.iccsafe.org/e/prodshow.html?prodid=3400s03

http://www.nfpa.org/catalog/