National Fire Sprinkler Association Announces Partial Support of Hoffman Estates Sprinkler Ordinance, Refutes Scare Tactic Claims of Home Builders.

Business Editors, Real Estate Writers

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 7, 2000

The National Fire Sprinkler Association announced today that it supports a proposed change in the Hoffman Estates building code that would require life-saving fire sprinkler systems in new condominiums and town homes built on the western edge of that city. The change would affect an estimated 2,500 town homes. Hoffman Estates village officials vote on the ordinance at a meeting tonight.

While the NFSA supports the sprinklering of single-family homes when done in accordance to recognized national building codes, it does not fully endorse the board's additional plan to only require sprinkler heads in new single-family homes in the area of any gas-fired equipment, such as a furnace, clothes dryer or stove where less than three percent of home fires begin (National Fire Protection Association).

&uot;Sixty-eight percent of home fires start in living rooms and bedrooms. That is where sprinklers need to be installed, in addition to the kitchen and furnace rooms,&uot; noted Tom Lia, a retired Fire Marshal for the Orland Fire District and a spokesperson for the NFSA. &uot;There is no reason why -- other than satisfying the financial objectives of the home building industry -- that the owners of single-family homes not be given the same protection as the owners of condominiums.&uot;

The NFSA also refutes scare tactics by the Northern Illinois Homebuilders Association (NIHA) which is on record as being opposed to the life-safety proposal. The NIHA has said that the ordinance would &uot;add $8 million to the cost of new homes in the next five years&uot; in Hoffman Estates, although it offered no backup to its &uot;findings.&uot;

&uot;It is puzzling to me why the home builders association will go to such lengths to avoid providing needed protection to the people they take money from,&uot; said Lia. &uot;The home builders have never contacted the NFSA or its contractors to figure out costs yet its spokesperson has the audacity to pull numbers out of thin air to scare off people. Their numbers are simply untrue.&uot;

The NFSA counters the NIHA's claim by pointing out that sprinklering a single-family home would add less than two percent onto the cost of the home, or about the cost of building a half-bathroom or a fireplace. A leading fire sprinkler contractor in the northern suburbs put the cost at approximately $1.38 per square foot, and it can go as low as .98 per square foot. Homebuilder's estimates peg the cost at well above $2.00 per square foot. In addition, many U.S. insurance carriers offer discounts to policyholders that install sprinklers.

The NIHA has proposed a &uot;public information campaign&uot; consisting of a pamphlet discussing the &uot;problems&uot; with sprinklers, rather than installing sprinklers in homes.

The NIHA also has suggested that sprinklers leak. Loss records of Factory Mutual Research indicate that the probability of a sprinkler discharging accidentally due to a manufacturing defect is only 1 in 16,000,000 sprinklers per year in service. Moreover, the amount of water that is put on a fire by fire department hoses in an unsprinklered building fire is hundreds of times more than what sprinklers would have discharged. During a fire, only those sprinklers closest to the fire activate, limiting the total amount of water needed. The fire damage, as reflected by insurance claims, is also many times greater.

The effectiveness of sprinklers is undisputed. Recent independent tests conducted by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a Boston-based safety group, confirmed that sprinklers can extinguish a typical residential fire in less than one minute and that they improve the chances of surviving a fire by 82 percent. In Cobb County, Georgia, for example, there has not been a single fire fatality in homes protected by residential sprinklers since the program began in 1980. In Scottsdale, Arizona, a ten-year study has shown not a single death in a fire in a sprinklered single-family home, while ten fire deaths were recorded in non-sprinklered homes over the same period.

Fire sprinklers protect those living in the home, as well as the lives of firefighters who normally arrive at a home fire just as flashover occurs. Sprinklers stop fires where they begin, preventing flashover.

The Scottsdale report notes that fires in sprinklered homes caused $1,945 in damage on average, while fires in non-sprinklered homes cause $17,067 in damages on average.

In 1998, there were 4,000 civilian fire deaths nationwide and 74 percent occurred in homes.

Established in 1905, NFSA is a trade association comprised of installers and manufacturers of fire sprinklers and related equipment and services.