Do You Need Sprinklers in Your House? (Part 2)
by Dale Tyler

This is the second of a two-part article about the proposed government mandate to install sprinklers in houses undergoing certain types of remodeling. Part 1 can be found here.

On Jan. 3, 2011, the Mission Viejo City Council will have the second reading of an ordinance designed to require homeowners in Mission Viejo to install sprinklers in their entire house, if they add on a certain number of square feet or percentage of floor area. It is interesting that the initial discussion of this item took place after most of the public had gone home and the Council members were so tired they could not muster a coherent discussion. So much for open government at the hands of the manipulative city staff and City Attorney.

Hopefully, the Council will have a productive discussion on Jan. 3. In my view they should conclude, as I have, that government should not meddle in this area.

In Part 1, I talked about the proper role of government and some of the technical arguments for and against installing fire sprinklers in a residence. The fundamental issue is who is better able to determine if a homeowner should install sprinklers in their own home. Every homeowner is concerned about their family's safety in their home. We all want our families to be protected from risks as much as reasonably possible. At the same time, most of us do not have unlimited money to spend on safeguarding our family. We take risks every day, like driving to the store or work. We live in an area prone to earthquakes. These risks and others are considered acceptable tradeoffs by most of us.

Yet, we hear the absolutism of the Orange County Fire Authority and others supporting sprinklers when they say, “even if it saves only one house, it is worth it.” That's because they aren't paying for it and don't suffer the loss of other choices one might have, had the money not been spent on sprinklers.

Fire sprinklers should be a family's choice, not a government mandate. It is your safety, after all. You should be the one to decide if the cost of installing fire sprinklers is warranted by the actual reduction in risk to your family and property. The problem is that the data supplied by the government is false and/or misleading. They deliberately understate the costs and risks while overstating the benefits.

The best example of understating the costs is their very low cost estimates for retrofit installation of sprinklers. They do this by using such inferior materials such as plastic pipe and making unreasonable simplifications on the means of installation, such as ignoring cathedral ceilings. Plastic pipe has a history of failures in domestic water use. There have been two widespread recalls of plastic pipe used in houses that leaked and caused damage and replacement costs that, in the aggregate, likely would have dwarfed the possible benefits of fire sprinklers to those homes. Ask any master plumber what type of material he or she would use for domestic water in their own home. In my experience, almost everyone would choose copper tubing, which is what most of you already have installed going to every faucet and fixture in your home. However, the pro-sprinkler studies use the inferior plastic pipe in the cost estimates, because it is much less expensive to install. Unfortunately, when it leaks and destroys the ceilings and furnishings in your house, it will cost more.

One way the pro-sprinkler studies overstate the benefits is by taking credit for a reduction in fatalities and injuries in homes with sprinklers. In fact, properly operating smoke detectors will alert a home’s occupants that there is a fire and give them plenty of time to evacuate. Smoke detectors are inexpensive and effective at protecting lives. They cost less than 1/100 of what a sprinkler system would and give much the same protection. In some cases a smoke detector would be even more effective than a sprinkler system in saving lives. Take the case of a smoldering fire that does not produce much heat, but fills the house with noxious smoke. The smoke detectors would alert the occupants to evacuate, while the sprinklers might not even operate until it is too late. This is one of the hazards of installing sprinklers. Occupants might think that the sprinklers would protect them in all cases, when there are cases where sprinklers are useless. A very interesting omission in pro-sprinkler studies is a lack of a controlled study where only working smoke detectors were used instead of sprinklers to determine the incremental effect, if any, of sprinklers on saving lives.

Pro-sprinkler advocates also point to the potential reduction in property damage if a sprinkler extinguishes a fire, especially when no one is home to turn in an alarm. This might be their strongest argument, except that fire insurance is designed to nearly eliminate the financial risks to the homeowner if their property is damaged or destroyed. It is true that fire sprinklers, by isolating the damage to a portion of the house, might save “irreplaceable” items. However, it seems to me that almost nothing is both irreplaceable and essential, except human life. Important papers and photos can be copied and stored elsewhere. Art and keepsakes can be destroyed by fire, but also by earthquakes and the water from the fire sprinklers. Fire sprinklers can also cause extensive damage when they discharge in an unattended house. They do not shut themselves off when the fire goes out, so they keep pouring water into the house until someone comes home or a neighbor notices water pouring out from under the doors. The house might be saved, but much of the contents could be destroyed.

In Part 1 of this article, I made some suggestions about how this issue might be dealt with without a government mandate. It turns out that at least a couple of suggestions are already in place. The OCFA does not charge any fees for plan checks and inspections on installations of fire sprinklers. This is a great start on encouraging people to voluntarily install fire sprinklers. The city and county could do more by eliminating any increase in assessed valuation for the cost of sprinklers, such as is done for solar electric installations today. Private insurance companies are providing a small discount, in the range of 5 percent to 10 percent on homeowner's insurance premiums. If sprinklers are really a cost-effective way of reducing fire losses, then these discounts should be much higher. Perhaps there is a reason they are not higher.

The bottom line is that the government cannot and should not tell us how to safeguard our homes and families. I urge the Mission Viejo City Council to reject the OCFA-sponsored law that would require the installation of fire sprinklers in existing homes. Please contact the City Council by way of the City Clerk cityclerk@cityofmissionviejo.org to express your concerns. You might also ask them to encourage voluntary installation of fire sprinklers by exempting the costs of sprinkler installations from all taxes and fees.