Should Fire Sprinkler Systems Be Mandatory in All Single-Family Homes?

We’ve probably seen too many movies and real-life situations where fire sprinklers malfunctioned and–much to their chagrin–drenched hundreds of people rather than help put out a fire. That may be why some states don’t adopt some of the requirements of the International Residential Code that gives the option to require all townhouses or single-family homes in a particular state to install an expensive fire sprinkler system in their homes or be in violation of the law. What’s worse is that in a time when families are struggling, having to lay out $3,500 for the reported price of a complete fire sprinkler system in their home would more than hurt. On the plus side, however, it would obviously make overworked firefighters not have as much of a burden as well as saving a lot of homes in the process.

Some states are already starting to honor the IRC option, though reminding people that the sprinkler systems would only be required in newly-built homes for now rather than existing ones. If this option starts looking more attractive to other states, you’ll have to start considering whether you can afford a fire sprinkler system if building a new home. Of course, the argument might be from your state government that if you can afford to build your own home, you’d have the funds to plunk down 3.5 grand to get the sprinkler system installed.

That may be a good argument and might even snowball to the point of requiring older homes to put in a fire sprinkler system…with hopefully no penalties if a family can’t afford one. The analysis of what the negatives of mandatory installation could be, however, have all been assessed and may be the only thing that would prevent other states from picking up on this idea. Nevertheless, when you have organizations representing firefighters promoting this adamantly, you can see the influence of how far it’ll go, no matter what the negatives are. When it comes to lobbying, nobody will have more clout in getting something on the books than our nation’s firefighters who still don’t get the respect they deserve.

The biggest argument against firefighters pushing states to implement the fire sprinkler law is in the lack of public confidence maintaining those sprinklers systems in their homes. While some choose to implement expensive security equipment in their home, having to maintain a complicated fire sprinkler system in their house they didn’t want in the first place would just make the requirement moot. And then you have that little problem I mentioned in the beginning: Worry about sprinkler malfunction.

We’ve all seen a fire sprinkler system malfunction at least once, sometimes right in a public place where we’re attending. The biggest problem seems to have always been smoke from some other location setting of a sensor that automatically turns on the sprinklers. For years, families have had to endure fire alarms going off when someone burns their toast in the toaster or a family member burning something on the stove. But we’ve always been able to (most of the time) turn off the alarm merely by pressing the button to alert our little alarm friend that it’s overreacting. With fire sprinkler systems, there usually isn’t an easy way to get the water turned off in the blink of an eye during false alarms.

In that scenario, you have many people worried about getting unexpected water damage rather than losing their home to a fire. The threat of that or not, firefighters still find this optional law to be a major security blanket for them to prevent another firefighter from losing his or her life fighting a raging inferno in a home that could have been better equipped to prevent a fire. With people seemingly getting more careless lately in avoiding fires (yeah, I don’t get the use of having candles sitting all around the house either), having a sprinkler system there to prevent disaster looks more attractive.
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Keep in mind that if your state adopts the International Residential Code law of fire sprinklers in your new home, you’ll have until 2011 to get it in there. By that time the financial crisis hanging over the heads of Americans at the time of this writing will assumedly be better so those required to place a fire sprinkler system in their homes won’t have to face legal troubles on top of everything else.

If the newer system can be made with better sensors to detect when there’s a real fire and not just smoke from someone’s cigar or the toaster, then the investment may be worth it. Certainly having a new age where people’s homes can be saved from increasingly careless fires and subsequently saving firefighters’ lives would be worth much more than $3,500. Perhaps it’ll also put an end to the fire sprinkler system malfunction as a comedy device in movies and TV comedies.

Ironic how water can create guffaws, conversely create grief or even create extreme relief in preventing a complete loss by fire of a home containing personal valuables that can’t be replaced…

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/24code.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin