Cost concerns weaken fire protection code

HOFFMAN ESTATES, ILL.- The village board here in February voted to update its building codes to require fire sprinklers in all new residential buildings. Multi-family buildings such as town homes or quad homes must be fully sprinklered. However, responding to concerns raised by homebuilders, the board voted to require sprinklers in single-family homes only in areas of the house where combustion regularly occurs.

The four areas that need fire sprinklers in single-family homes are the kitchen, laundry room, utility room, and where fireplaces exist or could be installed in the future. The reason different fire codes were adopted for single- and multi-family homes is that the potential for fire to spread throughout a structure is greater in multi-family buildings where higher concentrations of people live.

The village board's decision to alter the National Fire Protection Association’s standard 13D and weaken the already minimal standard drew criticism from the NFPA and concern from a local fire protection official.

"We believe residential fire sprinklers are the way of the future, and I just can't believe that the technology exists to save lives and the chance to do that was not taken," said Jim Walsh, Hoffman Estates fire inspector. "We gathered statistics from the NFPA revealing that 4,000 fire-related deaths occurred last year and 75% to 80% of those were in the home. What we are hoping to learn is that the cost difference between sprinklering a home fully and partially will be small enough to maybe expand the weakened legislation in the future."

Some sprinklers are better than no sprinklers at least for now, Walsh said. "I believe this is a good compromise, a beginning. We will revisit the issue the next time it is time to update our building codes."

Issues larger than cost are involved when altering a national standard, said Robert Solomon, chief building/fire protection engineer for NFPA.

"Standard 13D is a minimum standard, and if a jurisdiction wants to amend it to make it more restrictive then that's great," Solomon said. "But if a jurisdiction wants to go the other way with it, there's nothing the NFPA can do to stop it or prevent it from happening, but we won’t agree with it or support it.

"(Hoffman Estates) is potentially taking on liability when it claims the minimum is too much. If someone is hurt or killed in a fire in one of those partially sprinklered homes, I’m not sure what the jurisdiction's fallback argument could be to protect itself legally. Someone could be called on the carpet and asked what information he had that led him to believe he knew more than the NFPA, which wrote the standard. The courts will most likely look to the national standard as the closest thing to a law," Solomon said.

The issue that remains at the top of homebuilders' list of concerns is the cost associated with fully sprinklering a new home.

"We are an advocate for the builder as well as for the potential home buyer," said Bruce Deason, vice president/governmental affairs for the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago. "We are seeing an increase in costs that similar regulations and code changes are adding to the price of a new home. Other code issues like stair configurations and masonry issues add costs to a home, and there's a myriad of other expensive code issues as well. In one suburb, we are dealing with 10 pages of code changes. Overall, in the Chicago area it's increasingly rare to see new homes being built for under $100,000."