CARIBOU FIRE &
AMBULANCE DEPARTMENT

Properly installed and maintained automatic fire sprinkler systems help save lives. Because fire sprinkler systems react so quickly, they can dramatically reduce the heat, flames and smoke produced in a fire. Fire sprinklers have been around for more than a century, protecting commercial and industrial properties and public buildings, such as hotels and hospitals and high-rises. What most people don't realize is that the same life-saving technology that protects these buildings is also available for homes, where 80 percent of all fire deaths occur.

Cost of installing home fire sprinklers averages $1.61 per square foot
This Fire Protection Research Foundation study provides a national perspective on home fire sprinklers by developing data on installation costs and cost savings for 10 communities in the United States. The study also explores the range of insurance premium discounts which are available to home owners with home sprinkler systems.

Facts & figures   

• When sprinklers are present, the chances of dying in a fire are reduced by one-half to three-fourths and the average property loss per fire is cut by one-half to two-thirds, compared to fires where sprinklers are not present.
• Sprinklers typically reduce the chances of dying in a home fire by one half to two thirds in any kind of property where they are used. Together with smoke alarms, sprinklers cut the risk of dying in a home fire 82 percent, relative to having neither.
• NFPA has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a completely sprinklered public assembly, educational, institutional or residential building where the system was working properly.
• Sprinklers are highly reliable. When present in the fire area, they operate in all but 7% of fires large enough to activate the system. Human error was a factor in almost all of the failures. The system was shut-off in almost two-thirds of the failures.
• Only one or two sprinkler heads were activated in 81% of the fires with wet pipe sprinkler systems operating and in 56% of the fires with dry pipe systems operating.
• In August 2005, NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, NFPA 5000®, Building Construction and Safety Code®, and NFPA 1, Uniform Fire Code ® were updated to require sprinklers in all new one- and two-family dwellings.

About automatic fire sprinklers

Contrary to what many Americans think, we are not at greatest risk from fire in hotels or other public places; it is at home, where most of us feel the safest, that we are actually at highest risk of fire. Hotels, in fact, are among the places that are safest from fire, and that is due in large part to the fire protection technology required for them. That technology typically includes automatic fire sprinklers.

• How do they work?
• How are they installed?
• Debunking the myths

How do they work?

In a home fire sprinkler system, a network of piping filled with water under pressure is installed behind the walls and ceilings, and individual sprinklers are placed along the piping to protect the areas beneath them. Because the water is always in the piping, the fire sprinkler system is always "on call". If fire breaks out, the air temperature above the fire rises and the sprinkler activates when the air temperature gets high enough. The sprinkler sprays water forcefully over the flames, extinguishing them completely in most cases, or at least controlling the heat and limiting the development of toxic smoke until the fire department arrives. Only the sprinkler(s) nearest the fire activate. Smoke will not activate sprinklers. 

Sprinklers are so effective because they react so quickly. They reduce the risk of death or injury from a fire because they dramatically reduce the heat, flames and smoke produced, allowing people the time to evacuate the home.Home fire sprinkler systems release approximately 10-25 gallons of water per minute. In a home without sprinklers, a fire is likely to grow to dangerous levels by the time the fire department is able to arrive.

In less time than it typically takes the fire department to arrive on the scene, sprinklers contain and even extinguish a home fire. That not only reduces property damage, it saves lives.

 The Test: