Fire Sprinklers Set to Become Standard in New Homes

Members of the International Code Council's Residential Building Code Committee (RBCC) have made it clear that fire sprinklers are destined to become a standard feature in all new homes. The fire sprinkler requirement was added to the International Residential Code (IRC) last year, and it is scheduled to become effective January 1, 2011, in states that adopt the latest version of this code. Currently, 48 states use the IRC as a basis of regulating residential construction, although some states lag behind in adopting updates. I checked and Michigan is one of the states that might be called “lagging behind”, since it currently has implemented only through the 2006 set of IRC standards. It is inevitable that the state will eventually catch up on this.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) had petitioned the International Code Council (ICC), which publishes the IRC, to repeal the fire sprinkler requirement, but the RBCC rejected that request by a vote of 7 to 4. Following the committee vote, NAHB attempted to use a new procedure in the ICC process that allows members assembled at the hearing to overrule the committee decision, but the members made it clear that they were standing firm on protecting American families from fire. More than 1,000 ICC members in attendance voted overwhelmingly to affirm the RBCC's decision.

"ICC's message on this matter is pretty clear," said Jeffrey Shapiro, P.E., executive director of the IRC Fire Sprinkler Coalition. "Their membership has now supported the home fire sprinkler requirement at both the 2008 and 2009 annual hearings, and each of those votes passed by more than a two-thirds margin." Those decisions have now been further affirmed by the RBCC, which is a balanced, consensus committee that includes home builders, building and fire safety officials, architects and engineers.

So it looks fairly inevitable that new homes will eventually have to have sprinkler systems built in to them. That will undoubtedly save some live and most assuredly increase building costs. Some small amount of the cost increase may be off set by slightly lower insurance rates, but the insurance industry will likely argue that they must increase the water damage rate for the house by an equal amount, since the sprinklers going off will cause quite a bit of water damage. Then again, having the sprinkler systems in isn’t meant to save possessions; they are there to save people and that’s a good thing.

One site that I went to had a statistic that said that 90% of all residential fires could be contained by the operation of a single sprinkler. When you think about it, that's probably true, since most fires in homes start in a single room and then spread. If that original room fire was doused in that room, it certainly would save both the house and the lives of whoever was in the house at the time. As much as I occasionally rail about laws and rules designed to save us from ourselves (many are really stupid) this one seems to have merit. To read more about these systems, here's a site to visit.