The build green concept revolves around the environment, and is a fine idea that we can, if we modify our way of building and the materials we use, build a house that is in many ways more friendly to the environment both inside and outside the home. There has been much said about nearly every aspect of putting together a house, and a lot of thought as to ways that could be modified to make the structure more earth friendly. There seems to be one area that has got very little attention.

There is nothing green about a house on fire! A home burning down is a tragedy on a lot of levels. It could include loss of the home itself, and most, if not all the personal property inside. Also personal injury and even loss of life for you, your loved ones, and for the firefighters responding to the event. Environmentally such a fire produces tons of poisonous gases and particulates that get pushed into the air, and wastes thousands of gallons of potable water in fighting the flames. Certainly if there was a way to avoid this happening it would be worth a good look. In the USA fires kill more people each year than all other natural disasters combined, and most fire deaths (80%) occur in the home. We lose, on average, over 3000 people a year to home fires. In other words, someone dies from a home fire in this country roughly every 175 minutes. Add to that many thousands of injuries, millions of dollars in property loss, and untold damage to the environment per year. Not very green at all.

At a time where there seems to be such an interest in Green Building, in protection of our environment, it seems reasonable to build into a home not just the ability to warn the inhabitants of a fire, but also to suppress that fire if not put it out entirely, this would help the people, the house, and the environment. Smoke alarms are not enough. Smoke alarms have long been required in residences to warn those at home of a fire. These though can not protect the lives of those people, they can only announce a danger. If someone fails to hear or can not physically respond to a smoke alarm, the house fire will continue to grow until it can not be controlled and the loss we spoke about earlier is the result. While smoke alarms certainly are of high value in making a home safer, they have their limits and the fire continues to burn.

Residential fire sprinkler systems are the solution, they represent the gold standard for home fire safety. The design code is federal and designated NFPA 13D for single family residences duplexes, and manufactured homes. In conjunction with smoke alarms they vastly increase the chance of home fire survival, and as a nice side effect they contain the fire to one room and usually put the fire out.

Unlike commercial fire sprinklers, residential fire sprinklers were not designed to save the structure, the property within, or to help the environment. These are just the natural unintended side effects of a good design. The design goal of these systems is to saves lives by delaying flashover. As a fire grows in a home it is lethal with toxic gases very quickly. It reaches a point called “flashover” in as little three minutes (depending on the fire load or what exactly is burning). This is the point in a room where the fire has heated the room so much that the flammable gases and the contents of the room reach auto-ignition temperatures, first the smoke appears to catch fire and then the whole room, everything, bursts into flames. NOTHING lives through flashover. This being the case home fire sprinklers were designed to stop flashover by cooling the fire long before it can reach the kind of heat needed for flashover to occur.

These sprinklers can be concealed in the walls or ceiling and are part of the house plumbing system. Multipurpose systems carry potable water in the piping and stay fresh by circulation every time a water closet (toilet) is flushed. Because of this design, they do not require expensive antibackflow devices as commercial fire sprinklers. And they run at the same pressure as your home plumbing, so there is no need for the high pressure system also needed in commercial applications. The heads are independent of each other in their activation. They activate only by the extreme heat caused by fire (155F to 165F). Ninety percent of the time only one head is needed to control a fire. They never all go off at once like in the movies and TV.

This relatively new design of fire sprinklers (NFPA13D) are much more affordable than their heavy duty cousins used in commercial service and apartment buildings. Because most of the sprinkler heads are placed in the ceiling, the more complicated the ceiling the more heads are used. This makes it very tough to say it is so much per square foot, especially for custom homes. However, on new construction one can figure about 1%-2% of the price of the home. To retrofit a home is only slightly higher. This puts the price bracket about the same as upgrading flooring or cabinetry. Also home insurance is reduced because you have lowered the risk of catastrophic fire loss.

By adding residential fire sprinklers to your new or existing home you essentially are having a fire department on duty in your home twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. This certainly has a positive impact on the environment within your home. By extension it protects your community’s environment by drastically reducing the chance your home ever burning down and all but eliminating an avoidable tragedy.

These custom designed fire sprinkler systems can bring a great deal to your peace of mind into your home. A fire sprinkler system would make your house more green. They allow you and yours the needed time to escape if a fire should start. They use only a small fraction of the water a firetruck and crew will use to control or extinguish the fire. Because of fighting the fire so early, there is much less fire to fight. That means less pollution released into the air, less smoke damage, less fire damage, less water damage (compared to a what the fire department will use), all of which is good for your home, your pocketbook, and the environment.

Michael Cox serves as sales and marketing manager for 13dPEX.com, a design and distribution company in Bellingham Washington, dedicated to NFPA 13d sprinkler systems. This firm supplies design, tools, pumps, and installation materials to plumbers and others who are contracting to install 13d systems. Specializing in multipurpose or flow through design using PEX tubing as a primary material. He has worked in life-safety and fire prevention for more than two decades, holds a Washington State certificate for sprinkler design, and has worked with AHJs and Fire Chiefs through out the state. He is currently teaching a seminar program designed to prep plumbers and others to get their state certification.