It was rather ironic that within days of the decision by the Welsh Assembly to stand as the only country in the world to make the installation of Automatic Fire sprinklers in Residential homes mandatory that a motion to repeal a similar law was passed in the state House of Representatives of Pennsylvania by an overwhelming majority.
Now the United States could be fairly described as the cradle of Fire Sprinklers accounting for almost 80% of world production and numbers of installed heads and yet the decision by Pennsylvania, if it is confirmed as expected by the state Senate, will leave only California of the 50 States that requires sprinklers to be installed in domestic dwellings by law.
The lobby groups on both sides of the argument were delighted and dismayed in equal measure but some of the data presented made interesting reading and has close parallels with the UK including Wales.
Those pushing for repeal cited the high cost of installation at a time when the housing market was already belly up which has a familiar ring. Their estimate for a typical house in the US was $15000 or close to £10k in our terms whilst the pro sprinkler lobby claimed the cost was barely a third of this figure.
True figures for similar residential sprinkler installation costs in the UK are hard to come by but seem to vary between £2 -£5 per square foot depending on the type of construction and local conditions such as available water pressure - not normally, I suspect, a problem in Wales. Even so the argument that these additional costs will impact on the affordability of new build homes and further depress the housing market cannot be ignored.
A study by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) was also presented by the repeal lobby. This showed that the installation of Fire and Smoke detectors increased the survival chances of homeowners by an impressive 99.45% whereas installing sprinklers increased this to just 99.6% which on the face of it is too little to justify the additional cost.
What was not made clear are the comparable survival chances of the actual home given that Smoke Detectors only alert residents to a fire event and rather depend on someone being at home to hear them, whilst sprinklers are on hand 24/7 to control a fire irrespective of the homeowner being in residence.
