By FITSNews || South Carolina home builders would have to shell out an average of $4,000 per new home to install mandatory sprinkler systems under a new law that’s being considered by the Palmetto State’s “Supreme Soviet” (a.k.a. General Assembly). The S.C. Building Codes Council has already adopted the new requirement, but it’s up to state lawmakers to actually put it on the books.
Hmmm … wonder who the home builders will pass that cost on to?
Oh, and after you’ve purchased your home (and paid your obscenely high property taxes), there’s one “GOP” Senator who actually wants to make you pay a $10 tax for joining the local homeowner’s association.
“Ain’t that America, little pink houses for you and me …” right?
The good news is nobody is building (or for that matter buying) houses these days, but once again we’re looking at another government-mandated cost that will suppress home ownership once (if) the economy ultimately turns around.
Way to go, big government …
By Jack March 18, 2010 at 12:06 pm
And just who is it that writes the Fire Codes in the US? Well that would be the National Fire Protection Manufacturer’s Association. Check it out.
http://www.nfpa.org/categoryList.asp?categoryID=124&URL=Codes%20&%20Standards
No conflict here! Move along people and fork over the money on the way by.
By Liberty For Me March 18, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I think this is great!!! I mean who is in the pro-fire lobby??..I think fire safety is a right.
Now I would like to see anti-tornado codes for our homes.Maybe 18″reinforced concrete walls and 2″ thick plexiglass windows.Thank god we have government to protect us from lifes disastors.Somtimes I am not sure how people have survived the last 200 years.
By countryboy March 18, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Sounds to me like the insurance and sprinkler company lobby has been spreading some bucks in Columbia. This is just typical of what is happening in state and federal governments. Elected officials pass legistlation based on either what their parties want, or what some lobby wants and constituents are ignored. I bet if you canvassed voters, you would have a hard time finding anyone who was even aware of this proposed legislation.
By Scott March 18, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
By commonsense March 18, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Correction: When the codes are passed on the federal level, the state must specifically remove the code or it becomes law. The State doesn’t actually write the code into law, rather they must write it out.
By dirtbogger March 18, 2010 at 2:59 pm
You will have to go out side to lite a fart now!
By Brandon March 18, 2010 at 4:18 pm
I have had three seperate instances at my business where spriklers deloyed and there was no fire. The damage is awful. It’s not like a lawn sprinkler. The experts will tell you they only deploy if the temp reaches high enough to burst the fuse, or if they are tampered with. All I can tell you is I have lived through three, and there was no fire, and no sign of tampering. Total damage $100,000+. The last thing I want is a system like that in my home.
By thestruz March 18, 2010 at 6:01 pm
The cost for a residential system is about $1 per square foot which will eventually pay for itself in reduced insurance premiums.
@ Jeff, The NFPA stands for National Fire Protection Association, not NFPMA. The IBC writes building codes, the NFPA writes standards for the design of sprinkler systems.
@ Brandon, while your incidents are unfortunate, system malfunctions make up an extremely small percentage of all systems.
I’m not an insurance or sprinkler hack, just a firefighter who is tired of pulling dead people out of their houses.
By Ynotfirst March 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm
the SCGOP wants every single citizen to be homeless and jobless… then who will be paying their fat cat salaries??
By the way, they need to have a huge tremendous pay cut and take a year furlough.
By Recovering Lobbyist March 18, 2010 at 8:02 pm
“Commonsense” has it almost correct. A national code writing group, the International Code Council, writes the code. Local governments are the ICC’s primary members, and the ICC makes money by selling new code books.
South Carolina law adopts the ICC building codes (International Residential Code, International Building Code, etc.) by reference. The South Carolina Building Code Council could have taken sprinklers out of the code, but did not. So now the only way builders are NOT installing sprinklers in houses on January 1, 2011, is if the legislature passes a law this session taking sprinklers out of the building code.
And by the way, anyone who thinks a fire sprinkler system in a house will cost $1 a square foot has been watching too much Disney Channel. Even in commercial applications, which are much more efficient to sprinkle than a house, costs run $2 a square foot. A house is going to be close to $5 a square foot for a good long while until competition starts pulling the costs down. That won’t happen until people accept the idea of sprinklers in their house.
And by the way Will, this little present from the “use government to make money” crowd is going to insure that no new houses are built for a while. Based on the posts here, it should be apparent that most homebuyers will not want a house with a sprinkler system.
Make no mistake, this is not about saving lives. This is about money. This one building code change has spawned a brand new $5 billion a year industry. Who says government doesn’t create jobs!
By Mike at the Beach March 19, 2010 at 3:10 am
God love a firefighter and all that, but the “fire industry” has become a racket (as evidenced by this kind of nitwittery). Have you noticed that in almost every town in SC (and the US, for that matter) fire trucks roll out to every little fender-bender on the road? Through the years FD’s have moved not-so-quietly into the EMT business to pad their call for service numbers and justify their purchases of crazily expensive shiny trucks. I’ve done some consulting work for small and medium sized SC cities who suffer from fewer than a dozen true structure fires annually, but when you pull the FD-supplied numbers you find that they responded to “500+ calls for service. Ditto on this sprinkler thing- it’s just more nanny state nonsense. Eventually they’ll make us live in bunkers and line our showers with sandpaper…
By CNChapin March 19, 2010 at 9:44 am
@thestruz If you’re “tired of pulling dead people out of their houses” then pick a different line of work. Don’t think that you have the right to tell me that I MUST pay MORE for a house with a friggin’ worthless sprinkler system in it because you don’t like the result otherwise. You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do with my house. Furthermore, I suspect that your statement is nothing more than a gross exaggeration of the circumstances in an attempt to appeal to peoples’ emotions so they will agree to exchange more liberty for a perception of safety. That is a common statist tactic.
BTW, I thought that smoke detectors were supposed to save us all from dying in house fires? They’re mandated by code now, so shouldn’t we see fire related deaths eliminated? Hmmm…. kind of funny how it never works the way the statists claim it will. So, what’s next? They will start mandating Halon extinguishing systems? Maybe they’ll start mandating that all kitchens should be built as a structure external to the main sleeping quarters? Perhaps they’ll mandate that we all sleep in ejection seat style beds that could catapult us out of the house if excessive heat or smoke is detected? I mean, we should want to do whatever is necessary to make sure that people don’t die, right? Nope. I’d rather run the risk of burning alive in my home than to allow government to continue to arbitrarily mandate and control what I can and can’t do. If you think you have a high risk of burning alive in your home, you’ve seen nothing until you look at the probability of the government becoming oppressive and tyrannical because you demanded that they take away your rights in exchange for a possibility of safety.
It never ends with these people. They’re ALWAYS arguing for more control over EVERYTHING we do in the name of making us “safer.” Screw safety. I’ll make my own damned choices. If I’m stupid enough to live in a house made of straw, then let my ass burn if the place catches fire. Just stay the fawk out of my business already or find out how much I support the 2nd amendment. I don’t want your stupid, arbitrary, ineffective “safety” measures and the government control and intrusion that comes with it.
If fire fighters don’t like it, too damned bad. Get a different job.
By Darth March 19, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Let me see, this reeks of Joe Riley’s sprinkler tap on fee revenue enhancement for the Joe Riley Slush fund (refer to perennial CPW candidate Marc Knapp or a few other Chucktown cognisciente).
Mandate hardwired alarms first, though those and sprinklers don’t seem to have saved the clubhouse on Kiawah recently…
By Liberty For Me March 19, 2010 at 9:06 pm
CNChapin….You might be on to something with the catapult bed idea.You might want to get a patent on that.
By SnakeMD March 21, 2010 at 6:49 pm
The government should make sprinklers mandatory in every home. Plus the following;
You must cut your grass with an electric mower.
No more outdoor polluting charcoal or gas grills.
No more wood burning fire places.
Compact fluorescent lights in every home.
No cigar, pipe, or cig smoking in house if you have children.
No firearms of any type unless you are law enforcement.
All homes must be inspected yearly for ozone, radon, and lead content.
Only two pets per household–with proper licensing.
There is is no end to this madness if you let today’s government dictate your every move!
By Nicholas March 22, 2010 at 1:08 pm
What a joke. No insurance company is going to want to pay for all the water damage done by this law. not to mention homeowners are just going to shut off the water valves when these things break so that they don’t have to pay someone to fix it. the same home owner is going to die from a fire and then their family is going to sue the builder or the government because no one knew the sprinklers where shut off. and then the governemt will decide they need to tax people to pay for law suites too…..
Our government gets more and more like Natzi Germnany or the USSR everyday. what a joke.
By SnakeMD March 22, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Well said, Nicholas….When is it going to end?
By Billy March 23, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Has anyone thought about what kind of water supply is going to be needed to operate a sprinkler system? Our local towns and rural water companies are not equipped to supply the type of force main lines necessary to operate these type systems. Who is going to pay for the necessary upgrades to the water systems?
By Fire Marshal Jim March 30, 2010 at 7:08 am
Okay so I think that there is a quite a few things going unsaid here. The in home sprinkler system is the “Holy Grail” of fire protection. I am a Battalion Chief at my local department and have been here for 30 years and I will tell you all a point that is being left unsaid. What about the firefighters that die trying to get people out of there home. With the new lightweight truss construction that houses are being built with today the average escape time from a burning residence has gone from 20 min to 5 min. Fire departments average response time has gone from 6 min to 4 min, but that is all dependent on traffic and location of the department You may think that it is unfair for a city or state to mandate sprinklers systems but here are some facts. Residential sprinkler systems are nothing like commercial systems. They dont just go off and flood your house. The failure rate is .01%, they are designed this way to prevent damage from lack of upkeep that homeowners tend ignore. They have a life span of 50 years. The plumbing in your house is more likely to go than your sprinkler system. Sprinkler systems DO WORK!!! They are not a waste. In studies that I have personally helped with in my community, the actual property damage to homes that have these systems averaged at $1,546 with 0 deaths (1203 fires) while properties without averaged $11,234 with 43 deaths (2342 fires). This study is over a 10 year period. Look at other community studies and you will see an average 90% drop in property damages and 95% drop in lose of life. These systems have been proven to put fires out before departments get there and if they dont do that, they at least slow down the fire so it is not a raging inferno by the time we get there. To whoever said that these systems cost 5$ per square foot of house… DO YOUR HOMEWORK. The average system right now is about 2$ a square foot and as demand increases these prices have been dropping. People say well if I have a small fire in my living room my entire house gets drowned in water. WRONG! Each head needs to be individually activated by heat between 160 and 200 degrees, depending on ceiling height. Only the sprinkler above the fire will go off and I assure you if one of these go off your fire extinguisher wouldn’t have been enough to stop the fire, or even slow it down. A sprinkler head will use about 300 gallons of water to extinguish a fire that a firefighters hose would do with 3000 gallons. Which damage would you choose on that one? 3000-4000 civilians die per year in house fires. there is an estimated 300 billion dollars in fire damage per year in the US. This may seem high but this estimate includes 76 billion for the lose of income to families that lose fathers and mothers, 12 billion in property damage, 112 billion in cost to departments (fire calls calculated only) responding to emergencies. Our community has seen a 60% drop in cost to running our fire departments. We were able to cut back a little BECAUSE of these sprinklers which means less burden on the community (and believe it or not lower taxes). One more thing to the last comment about rural water supplies. There are systems designed to run from well water and the likes. They do not noticeably cost more (its just one part) and multipurpose 13d sprinkler systems are designed to run off of normal house plumbing. They do not require any more water than that. These systmes are not like commercial systems people. Please do your homework. The United States is ranked 7th in the industrialized world for fire protection. China for god sakes uses these systems. The US has a fire problem. It is the 5th leading cause of death in this country and the number 1 cause of property damage. Think about this, if 3000 people died in a single fire per year and the total property damage was 12 billion dollars, and this happened every year, people would be running to the top of a mountain crying bloody murder for codes like this. Example: The Minneapolis bridge collapse caused at least 12 billion (The last number I heard) in bridge inspections nationwide. If you ever have a chance read the report “America Burning.” It was written to address the fire problem in the US in the 70s. Since then the NFPA has been fighting the American Home Builders Association and state and local government to implement these standards, and have quite often won. In 1979 the US averaged 14,000 deaths a year from fire. Since then with changes in code, smoke alarms and better fire safety education those numbers have dropped to 3000/yr while the US population has grown significantly. The National Fire Protection Association knows what it is doing. These are not ploys by lobbyist to make profits. Wake up and do your homework. Do firefighters really have to sit here and explain that putting water on fire saves your stuff and your LIFE!!!!!!!(PS to all those that say government shouldn’t tell you how to run your house I full heartedly agree. I don’t want to die trying to get you out of there in a fire, but I will and so will just about every firefighter in this country. Thats why we do what we do. But what about our families? What will they do when we are gone? Just something to think about)