During large scale home improvement projects often the most critical and overlooked addition to a home, condominium or town home is the installation of fire sprinklers.

Each year fires are the cause of more deaths in the United States than the combination of all other natural disasters.  Even with the increase in natural calamities over the past few years, home fires remain a more personal and imminent threat.  These fires quit often strike at the most inopportune moments and quickly build into an unstoppable inferno.

The first line of defense in most homes is the smoke alarm.  Unfortunately too many home owners do not take the time to periodically check the operational state of their smoke detectors.  In addition, many smoke detectors are misplaced; either on a wall or near a constant source of fresh air from an air duct thereby negating their effectiveness at detecting smoke.  Smoke detectors cannot and should not be your only line of defense against this silent killer.

Thanks to upcoming legislation, many new condominium and town-homes will be required by law to include a fire protection system in the form of automatic fire sprinklers, giving the new home owners a new and infinitely more effective line of defense for safeguarding their families and possessions.  While this upcoming law will only apply to newly constructed homes, current home owners are encouraged install their own fire sprinkler system.  In homes with a fire sprinkler system installed, the chances of death from a home fire lowered by over 50%.

A fire needs three essential elements for it to be able to burn.  These elements are heat, fuel and air, more commonly referred to as the fire triangle.  If any one of these elements is absent, the fire will go out.  In the case of house fires, the fuel and air pieces of the triangle are present and nearly impossible to remove.  This leaves heat as the key to extinguishing the fire.  Fire sprinklers take away the heat from this mix thereby extinguishing the fire.  If you were to watch how experience fire fighters take on a fire engulged building you’ll notice they focus their water hoses on the building as opposed to the flames, in an effort to cool the area and bring the temperature down, almost as if they are forcing the fire to extinguish itself.

Another myth is that fire sprinklers will cause extreme water damage to personal property.  On the contrary, in the event of a house fire the firefighters will use nearly 10x as much water to control a fire as would have been required by a simple fire sprinkler system.  Currently just over 5% of residential homes have a fire sprinkler system installed, a figure that is disturbingly low.  As the government becomes more aware of the dangers of living without a fire suppression system and takes steps to protect us, hopefully each homeowner will heed their advice to protect their own homes and families from fire related accidents.

Next time you consider a remodeling project, don’t forget to increase your family’s fire defenses and piece of mind by installing a fire sprinkler protection system of your own.

Tags: Fire, home, Improvement, Overlooked, Sprinklers

3 Responses to “Fire Sprinklers – The Overlooked Home Improvement”

Leave a Reply