"State and local officials are now wrestling over whether to adopt building codes that would require sprinklers in every new home and townhome starting in 2011 amid intense lobbying from both sides."
Sounds like my former town in Illinois. I have seen sprinklers by the furnace and water heaters in some houses. Maybe it was only attached townhouses, but I really don't remember. When we were building the church in the mid 80s, the town wanted the entire building sprinkled. The builder/architect didn't want sprinklers and sited a loophole in the code that said the building could be divided into various parts separated by firewalls. I think the architect just didn't know how to put in the sprinklers and properly hide all the plumbing. There were only 2 sprinklers in the boiler room. Otherwise the building was separated into 5 fire zones. The were fire detectors connected to the fire department in each zone. BTW, he also sited statistics at the time where there were almost no church fires on record and the ones sited were always when the building was not occupied. Since then I've seen many church fires on the news, mostly in the middle of the night, though. I think the sprinklers would have been an improvement over the system that was installed. But this was a commercial building. Homes are another thing.
I've always been a fan of that plan. I see it as the best solution, eliminating the response time from the fire department. The downside would be the water damage from a relatively easy to control fire, but likely worth the risk. They should be zoned though, no point in washing down the TV in the living room to control a little fire in the kitchen. Easy to turn off would be another good feature, auto off after flames subside for 10 minutes or so. even better, so long as it had the ability to turn back on if the embers came back to life. Cost would probably eliminate those desirable features though.
Cost? How about the cost of all the systems that are going to be installed compared to the number of lives they MIGHT save? According to the article, 3000 people die each year in fires. I'm sure some reasonable estimate can be made of how many of them would actually be saved if there were sprinklers. Certainly it's not anywhere near the total 3000. Is a sprinkler gonna save someone smoking in bed by going off from the heat before they are already dead? I think not.
Now compare how much money would be spent and I'd venture there are plenty of other things the money could be spent on, like healthcare for the poor, which would save an order of magnitude more lives. As the opponents point out, smoke detectors are very effective. I'd like to see statistics on how many of those 3000 deaths had working smoke detectors.
Lots of theoretical ideas turn out to be nowhere near what they were supposed to be. One prime example is anti-lock brakes. They were supposed to drastically reduce traffic fatalities and serious wrecks, but curiously in practice they have done little if anything.
I'm of the opinion there are better solutions:
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The fire department had ripped down and uprooted the iron-picket fence between the apartment units and the street, had run hoses off to the horizon, and swarmed over the whole shebang like vultures on a dead zebra. There were ladder trucks, ordinary pumper trucks, a truck with ladders that could reach the thirty-seventh floor of this two-story aparment house, a water-spray truck with a boom like a cherry-picker, supervisor vans, ambulances, a cascade unit, special operation's vans, and a HUGE, black, bus-looking vehicle labeled "City of Houston Mobile Command Center" that looked like the thing that carries seniors to the local Indian reservation for a day of gambling.
I recognized one of the station numbers on a pumper. It was from the station near the Texas Medical Center, some eight miles away.
In addition to the 42 fire trucks in front of my house, a couple of neighbors reported that several pumpers were stationed up to six blocks away with hoses connected to fireplugs ready to race to the scene with more water.
There were police cars without number to direct the traffic. News vans. A helicopter. A power company truck (he was the one that cut power to the block). Everything but a steam-powered calliope playing the Star Spangled Banner. I half-expected a hurdy-gurdy man with a monkey and a tin cup.
Lordy!
On the plus-plus side, I now know what to do if I get lonely.
They do. At least in IN you get 20% off your homeowners insurance. The same as for having an alarm. I would amortize it within 10 years, using your $1500 scenario.
*In NJ the fire extinguisher manufacturers lobbied for mandatory fire extinguishers in every home. So now we are required to have a visible fire extinguisher in or close to our kitchens. When we sell our homes we have to pay for a smoke alarm and fire extinguisher inspection by the town before we can close. I talked to several fire inspectors about this and they all said that they were against this law. Their thinking is that they want people to get out of the house if there is a fire; not stick around and try to put it out.
There are many towns here that have all volunteer fire departments. The response time can be as long as 20 minutes. Sprinklers are not a bad idea in a situation like that. I personally feel that the fire rating for walls and ceilings should be increased in certain areas of the house such as the kitchen and garage.
Meanwhile, Barney Frank and Newt Gingrich having an argyment over whether it's "sprikler" or "sprinkler". Barney Frank is quoting Ted Kennedy, on the correct pronunciation.
Your ignorance is astounding. Please let me attempt to replace ignorance with facts.
1) Generally, sprinklers reduce water and fire damage. Non sprinklered areas, the fire gets a much better "hold". Also, fire departments have been known to do water damage. 2) Each individual head has a low melting point metal, or some other way of activating. The only way to wash the TV is if the sprinkler head gets hot enough for the fusible metal to melt.Like the auto shutoff feature. Good idea.
Sounds like over kill for a kitchen fire. However, one town where I used to live. They had a stretch of apartments that were tinder boxes. We in the FD all had heart flutters when we heard "wintergreen way" on the air.
There's a lot of different people out there. Some can whomp out a fire with an extinguisher, do the salvage and such. Others, it's a virtual death sentence, to go after a fire. I like the smoke detectors, the other things (sprinklers and fire extinguishers) oughta be personal choice.
Not only many towns...
When someone tells me there's no private substitute for some governmental entities - like fire and police - I like to point out that there are MANY more private security guards on the job than cops and that 85% of the nation's firefighters are volunteers.
Good one! That really puts government in perspective.
Sprinklers generally don't let fires get big enuff to bring out the truckies which means vast expanses of roof remain intact (g).
The other thing is that only the ones that are near the fire go off. I always get a kick out of the TV when a small fire in a corner kicks off the sprinklers throughout the entire warehouse. About the same as when the car ALWAYS catches fire after a wreck.
Outside of high rises. Anything over about 6 stories should get sprinklers because that is generally about as high as most ladder can get by the time you get setback, etc., out of the way. In the City County Building in Ft. Wayne, because the bldg had a underground garage the largest ladder could only get to the third floor. Guess which the floor the FWFD occupied?
And most wars in history were fought by (or helped by) mercenaries.
The original British Navy was founded by a gift of warships by British merchants ("Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves...").
The Pony Express was a private outfit.
And so on.
On another matter:
Ran into an interesting statistic on health care, particularily the president's claim that there is too little competition. Consider Maine where two companies have 88% of the insurance business (Wellpoint 78% and Aetna
10%).Ah, but 52% of the employers in Maine SELF-INSURE and merely hire some companies to manage the paperwork (much like administering payrolls). That means that Wellpoint (in this example), the largest insurer in the state, manages only 37% of the health insurance in the state. Wellpoint is in "competition" with thousands of medium-sized businesses that self-insure.
In some sprinkler systems, when one goes off, they all go off. Better to be wet than blown into the ocean.
Please post evidence. I've never seen such.
Most house fires are caused by Jewish lightening.I'm sure the firebug will find a way to disable the sprinkler.
None that I ran into in 9 years in the fire service. Although I did not do inspections so did not have to run the numbers, it would seem that if they did all go off, you'd lose too much water pressure and they would be close to useless.
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