By Robert DeWitt – Tuscaloosa News

Residential sprinkler systems save lives, firefighters say.

‘What will residential sprinklers mean to us?’ asked John Brook, a battalion chief assigned to training in the Tuscaloosa Fire Department. ‘Eight out of 10 people who die in fires die in residential fires.’

But safety like that comes with a price that not everyone is willing to pay.

‘This is a hot-button issue for the national home builders association,’ said Todd Vick, Home Builders Association of Tuscaloosa president. ‘It’s one of those deals where it does cost more.’

Adding an additional expense to a home is never popular with home builders or the buying public. But it’s particularly unpopular in a slumping real estate market.

‘Cost is definitely an issue since we’re already experiencing a tough housing market,’ Vick said. ‘The cost has been the number one reason for the opposition from home builders.’

Tuscaloosa Fire Chief Alan Martin has been pitching residential sprinkler systems to the City Council Public Safety Committee. While he doesn’t favor mandating sprinkler systems, he wants the council to consider offering incentives to encourage builders to install them.

‘It’s one of those things that’s going to take a little time,’ Martin said. ‘What we need to do is get past all the myths and misinformation and convince people this is the thing we need to do.’

The statistics, he said, are compelling. He points to Scottsdale, Ariz., which in 1987 began requiring all new residences to have sprinkler systems.

‘It saves a lot of lives,’ said Kerry Swick, a battalion chief with the Scottsdale Fire Department. ‘We haven’t had a life lost in a sprinkled residential since then.’

Since the law’s passage, Scottsdale had 13 fire fatalities in homes without sprinkler systems. Swick says those numbers indicate the value of residential sprinkler systems.

Fire codes have long required sprinkler systems for commercial buildings and multi-family housing. But single-family houses have been exempt, except in a few places.

Brook says it will take a while before people recognize the value of residential sprinkler systems, just as it took some time before smoke detectors became standard.

‘In 1969, smoke alarms came onto the market,’ Brook said. ‘It cost about $1,000 for a three-bedroom home to have working smoke alarms. Today, you can put smoke alarms in a three-bedroom house for about $50. They reduced in half the number of people dying in residential fires. But people are still dying in residential fires.’

Martin and Brook saw a presentation by a group called Fire Team USA, which got a federal grant to study the effects of sprinkler systems on house fires. The organization’s conclusion was that sprinkler systems help the people inside survive.

‘It’s not designed to completely extinguish the fire,’ Brooks said. ‘Many times, it does control the fire. A residential sprinkler system is like a protection system. The fire department still has to come.’

It also helps protect the people least able to protect themselves, such as the elderly, children and people with disabilities. The sprinkler system can help them stay alive until help arrives.

‘Smoke alarms are a passive protection device,’ Brook said. ‘It gives you an opportunity to escape. A sprinkler system is an active protection device. It is going to work the same way regardless of your state of mind. You can be impaired by alcohol. You can be 5 years old and go hide under the bed.’

People can’t breathe in temperatures above 120 degrees, Brook said. Residential fires in houses without sprinkler systems can climb to 2,000 degrees in a matter of minutes.

In studies of houses with sprinkler systems, temperatures never got above 165 degrees at the ceiling level and 80 to 90 degrees on the floor, Brook said.

And sprinkler systems actually cause less water damage than the fire department, Brook said. Firefighters use 100-150 gallons of water per minute to fight fires. A sprinkler head produces about 12 gallons a minute.

Advocates claim sprinkler systems can easily be freeze protected and are not as expensive as a commercial system. They can be installed with PVC piping using the domestic water supply and don’t have to be tested regularly like commercial systems, Martin said.

‘The cost on those is $1 to $1.50 per square foot. That’s about like a countertop,’ he said.

Vick disputes that assessment, saying home builders have not found that to be true. A Lee County builder priced systems for two 3,000-square-foot houses, with one estimate for $11,000 and another for $14,000. That’s closer to the $3 to $4 per square foot that builders expect.

‘Proponents make it appear that it’s as easy as your plumber installing a few sprinkler heads,’ Vick said. ‘It’s not. There are issues with who can install it. There are issues in design. Where do the heads have to be and where do they need to be?’

There are other considerations too, Vick said. For instance, a retrofitted ceiling fan could block a sprinkler head. What happens if water is cut off to a residence? What about water pressure issues? And if the system fails, can homeowners hold builders liable for the damage?

The savings on homeowners insurance is also minimal, since insurance companies are responsible for water damage in addition to fire damage, Vick said. On a $200,000 house in Trussville with a sprinkler system, the savings was only $10 a year, he said.

‘All these concerns need to be addressed and need to be defined before mandating anything,’ Vick said, adding that sprinkler systems are being advocated by fire equipment companies trying to make sales and by firefighters who are as concerned about the safety of their own ranks as about homeowners.

But Martin reiterates he doesn’t want to force residential sprinkler systems on builders. He wants to convince people to install them because they save lives.

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