Fire sprinklers are a familiar safety feature and have long been required by state or municipal fire codes in public and commercial buildings. Installation of home fire sprinkler systems in private residences, however, has been slower and less consistent across the country.
Are Home Fire Sprinklers Effective?
Home fire sprinklers deliver a lower volume of water for a shorter period of time compared to systems in commercial buildings. Instead of totally extinguishing all flames, a home sprinkler system is primarily designed to suppress fire, allowing residents time to safely escape from the house. According to statistics published by the National Fire Protection Association, when installed along with functioning smoke detectors, home fire sprinklers provide impressive safety benefits:
- Where fire sprinklers are installed, death rate of occupants in home fires are 81 percent lower than homes without sprinklers.
- Firefighter injuries are reduced by over 80 percent when responding to residential fires where sprinklers are installed.
- Property loss due to fire in a home with sprinklers is reduced by 70 percent.
- In over 95 percent of recorded incidents, fire in a home with a sprinkler system was restricted to the room of origin and did not spread to the rest of the house.
Are Home Fire Sprinklers Necessary By Law?
Effective in 2011, the International Residential Code (IRC) which regulates residential building standards in 49 states added a code requiring all new home construction to include a fire sprinkler system. As of 2018, however, only two states—California and Maryland—along with the District of Columbia have opted to enforce uniform compliance with the IRC code that requires residential fire sprinkler systems.
State laws in remaining states either grant local jurisdictions the option to adopt the sprinkler requirement or not, or they entirely prohibit enforcement of that specific IRC code, statewide. In a few states, home fire sprinklers are required in very large residences only; for example, those exceeding 14,000 square feet. No IRC code or state or local regulation requires fire sprinklers to be retrofitted into existing residences.
