Sunday’s Chicago Tribune had a story about home sprinkler systems, which are now required in some cities around Chicago. Personally I think it’s ridiculous to spend 2% of a house’s cost on a sprinkler system. The story mentioned how 49 out of 41000 houses with sprinkler systems installed that had fires resulted in no deaths. Wonderful, but isn’t this money that could be better spent somewhere else. Like on making the house with more robust structural materials (instead of trusses and other engineered products that burn through in no time. And of course this is something you must have a contractor for (my assumption). Sounds like the unions and contractors trying to bring more money to themselves.
If this becomes common what’s next? Every door in the house a fire door??? To me this is just one more reason to buy an old home.
What does everyone else think??
Replies
The front line fire dep't guys swear by sprinklers. I'm in the middle of a remodel, and strongly considering adding them. As soon as I get dried in for the winter, I'll be getting the NFPA 13D book to see what it takes to design a system. Once you have a proper design, putting it together is pretty much just normal plumbing work.
-- J.S.
In sacramento area they are required in certain sized houses but luckily I didnt have to do them on my house (only 1800 square feet). Im not sure of the minimum but a freind was given the choice of paying the city for a fire hydrant out front of his place or sprinklers. I work for a fire restoration company and the one job I have done that the sprinklers when off on caused alot more damage then the initial fire.
I work for a fire restoration company and the one job I have done that the sprinklers when off on caused alot more damage then the initial fire.
And how many fire restoration jobs never had to be done (and thus you never heard about) because of sprinkler systems?
Remember, you're only going to see where there has been a significant fire; you're not going to see many of the places where places where the fire never took hold.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Of course a fireman is going to swear by a sprinkler system. Gee, a continual spray of water over the entire exterior of the house will prevent all forest fire related losses too. To bad the odds of lossing your house to a forest fire is 100,000 to 1, so spending an additonal 2% on those each of those 100,000 homes to save one is . . . well silly or I might say stupid.
The point is that just because you can save one house or one life does not mean that every expenditure is justified.
The list of preventive investments for home or auto or yard or whatever saftey is endless. WHAT IS THE COST BENEFIT! That is the proper view of these things. Remove the emotion of "Oh the value of a human life is PRICELESS". Sorry it just aint so. If it were we would all be happy to spend our entire income on such life saving plans just to save one life, and be happy living in poverty.
maybe in the kitchen as a start
Eight to ten years ago there was a fire in NY couple of frirefighters got killed .
The mandatory sprinkler advocates hired the widow of one of the victims as a spokesperson for their lobby.
Did the whole bleeding heart circuit.
Things were moving along just great The deill is boringly routine at this point - the cheap ( builders ,govermennt .realators ) are just trying to increase their profits ate the risk of childrens lives.
Got all the way to the legislature .
THAN someone on the commitee asked this woman about her own home and what kind of system she had!
NONE !
Well going to sell the house in a couple of years ,better to invest the money for college tuition yadda yadda yadda.
End of that effort but it'll be back
you wrote " 49 out of 41000 houses with sprinkler systems installed that had fires resulted in no deaths."
For houses without sprinklers the value is very close to: 49 out of every 41000 houses without sprinkler systems installed that had fires resulted in no deaths.
A sprinkler system may give piece of mind, but is worthless if no fires ever happen.
A sprinkler system may give piece of mind, but is worthless if no fires ever happen.
But what is it worth if a fire does occur? Gotta look at both sides.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
"Sounds like the unions and contractors trying to bring more money to themselves."
I'd say you hit the nail square on the head. ;)
I've worked around a few sprinkler fitters, I've never seen a more greedy or self-important bunch.
Don't get me wrong fire protection sprinklers can do a fantastic job. But they aren't needed everywhere by any means.
BTW If you wanted to install a fire sprinkler system by sure it's a "dry" not a wet system. In a dry system the lines (pipes) are full of air until a head trips. In a wet system they are full of water. Guess what happens when/if you have a leak?
FYI in some parts of the country installing a sprinkler system in residential construction can actually raise the insurance rates. Figure that one out!
Jim
Allowing the use of pex and other cost effective means of installing sprinkler systems would help out a great deal. From what i have heard the pex systems would work well and be very cost effective but approval is being fought because of the fear that the larger sprinkler companies would lose business if it is easier for plumbers to install.
Actually there is a type of pvc approved for sprinkler systems. It has an orange color to make it distinctive, and installs just like any other pvc using a cement made just for it. Can't remember the name right now. This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou cans't not then be false to any man Hamlet
BTW If you wanted to install a fire sprinkler system by sure it's a "dry" not a wet system. In a dry system the lines (pipes) are full of air until a head trips. In a wet system they are full of water. Guess what happens when/if you have a leak?
How does a sprinkler system differ from the existing plumbing system in terms of likelihood of leaks?
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Edited 10/28/2003 7:12:34 AM ET by Bob Walker
"How does a sprinkler system differ from the existing plumbing system in terms of likelihood of leaks?"
Basically two ways.
There are typically many more connections then in the plumbing system especially the sprinkler heads. Each head is a potential leak and if they have to be replaced because they start to seep (leak) you have to drain down the system and refill.
Also while it is possible to design a wet system with low standing pressure they can build up sediment or debris in the control system (unless regularly checked) that can slow the system or even stop it from responding. This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou cans't not then be false to any man Hamlet
I guess where I would worry about leaks was if the kids decided to play catch with a football in the house, that sprinkler looks awful susceptible to damage. Or if some moron decided to use it as a coat hanger and broke the seal, flooding the room. That one happened at my college ( not to me ;) )
http://www.town.northborough.ma.us/fire/residential_sprinklers.htm
One view -
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
in residential construction can actually raise the insurance rates. Figure that one out!
That's easy, the insurer is taking the risk of potential water damage in every room of the house, on top of every other risk in the structure. Whether or not that is a "real" risk is a different question.
Now, another question is what sort of heads are "we" requiring? Do you really want a 178 gpm head where mischevious children (you know, the rotten ones from across the street) might play with it?
The issue that would seem to go hand-in-hand, is alarms. The local alarm guy is going to make you a great deal on a full service package (fire/break in/monitoring). What they may not spend much time on is who gets to pay for false alarms ($500 and $1500 each, in some jurisdictions)--hint: alarm guys won't. But do you want your sprinkler system pumping hundreds of galons of water into your house--for whatever reason--while you are away?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
A dry system just has a slower response time. It is use where the pipes may freeze. If you have a leak the air is followed by the water. A dry system will cost more.
"A dry system will cost more"
Oops I did overlook that. Sorry
Part of what I was thinking about was the piping being run in an attic and the possibility of freezing under the right conditions.
Jim This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou cans't not then be false to any man Hamlet
IMHO sprinkler systems are a grand idea. I'm surprised that it would take 2% of the total cost of the house to install one. I suspect that smaller homes, particularly single story ones, would take considerably less than 2%. That said I don't think that 2% is too much.
I think the driving force behind this is common sense and insurance. Even a small fire if allowed to smolder can easily cost many times more than the cost of the sprinkler system. I have also been told, by at least one homeowner that had one installed when his home was constructed, that he would recoup the cost in a few years through savings on insurance.
In my roll as electrician I have worked on quite a few burned buildings. Commonly referred to burnouts. The one that had sprinklers was a breeze to work on. The fire was isolated to a single room. Smoke and water damage was more wide spread than just the single room but still very light compared to fires in unprotected buildings. The fire was out when the fire department arrived. They turned off the water, double checked the scene for fire and opened, usually the smash everything within 20' of the fire, the windows in the room involved.
The commentary from the inspector was that the sprinklers paid for themselves by saving a million dollar commercial building and allowing the business to remain in operation. The business remained open during the renovation period.
4Lorn1, you miss the point.
Sure if you were to spend 2% of the value of a house to save 100% of the value in a fire, great!
But if on average only 1 in 10,000 homes burn, society spends the equavilent of the value of 200 homes to save the value of 1. Does that sound like a good investment to you? If so you should be very pleased with the preformance of your 401K which lost 50% of it's value in 2000 and 2001.
JR - first, have you seen anyone here arguie "a human life is priceless?"
I agree with you entirely, we should be doing an economic analysis, not throwing out emotion.
So, do you have any insights based on the facts and costs posted in my previous messages?
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Gee Bob, got your undies in a bundie?
If 2% is the cost figure, for that to be economically justifiable 1 in 50 homes must burn to the ground during the life of the sprinkler system. That is the point, end of story.
If you want a sprinkler system, knock yourself out.
Why install fire blocking, why fill air gaps, why use the correct wiring: fires are so rare. I get it.
BTW: One thing is incorrect in your calculation of 2% multiplied by the number of homes lost: the sample set includes both sprinkled and unsprinkled dwellings. A lot rides on the definition of "home." If "home" includes sprinkled high rises and condos, and sprinklers are effective at stopping fire, the total could be so skewed that it would look like you would never recover the cost of the total number of sprinkler systems, while those systems are the reason the losses are so low in the first place. You really need to have mutually exclusive sample sets, then do your loss calcs with both sets, then compare. Or else we could draw the totally wrong conclusion.
One last point. Sprinklers save the lives of ocupants. Fine. If you don't want them manditory for this reason OK, it is your neck (or you kids). But I suspect that if and when fire does occur, the owner of the building (who fire will never happen to) will call someone to put it out, at least before it spreads to your neighbors house, or the rest of the block, or the surrounding overgrown tinder dry forrest. This is why there is at least some arguemnt (in my mind) that this should be manditory: it directly affects the lives of those answering the call.
Gee Bob, got your undies in a bundie?
No, I just react negatively when I see someone arguing against positions that no one has taken and pronouncing the need to do analysis and then doing it wrong.
BTW, no one has ever argued in this contect that human life is priceless, but few have gone so far as to say there's no value for it, as you have by excluding any value for lives lost (as well as all of the other costs) from your analysis.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Bob are you whining now?
It appears to me that you are the Bhead making erroneous statements about other peoples posts now. Pull your undies out or your crack and grow up. NUff said.
Simple question: who claimed human life is priceless in determining the value of a residential sprinkler system? Remember, you soundly trashed that argument, only nobody made it in the first place.
It appears to me that you are the Bhead making erroneous statements about other peoples posts now
And what did I get wrong? Easy to make the accusation, but it might mean something if you could back it up with a fact or two.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Listen AS, it was you who throw-out baseless erroneous accusations in response to an innocent post. Plain and simple.
I never claimed anyone on this board said a human life was priceless. LEt's try that one time, for any dense readers out there, I NEVER CLAIMED ANYONE ON THIS BOARD SAID A HUMAN LIFE WAS PRICELESS. That is some fiction of your own fantasy, Bob.
I have no idea what your problem is. I don't know if your wife left you for another woman and you are upset or what your problems is. I might suggest counciling, if that is the case.
To summarize my position, to which any Normal person or Otherwise can disagree (which ever the case is), is that spending 2% of a homes value is a waste of MY MONEY (not yours). Secondly, anyone attempting to justify regulations to FORCE me to waste my money can not justify it based on saving lives.
JUST MY HUMBLE OPINION!
JR - if you'll stick to facts and reasoned discussion, I'm there.
If, however, you're going to keep resorting to baseless, scurrilous personal attacks then, in my opinion, you're merely showing that you don't have anything rational to say and so are forced to hurl insults.
Sad, in my opinion.
_______________________
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Your mileage may vary ....
Edited 10/29/2003 2:17:46 PM ET by Bob Walker
Bob, you clearly have a mental illness. For that I am truely sorry.
If you were able to read and read my post you would see that it is you who are making baseless accusations. If you can not see that, then I refer to your mental illness again. This is really very very simple to those not suffering from either low IQs or some illness.
If you insist on making your accusations against me, and would like to prove you do not suffer from some illness, please return to my post and show BY EXACT quote where I said that anyone on the board said that a "human life was priceless". I realize that this request is totally beyond your abilities as I have asked numerous times before and you continue to malign me, again I refer to your mental illness.
Have a great day, and please see that doctor very soon.
A somewhat interesting article in the N.Y. times on a fire resistant house (registration is required to access the NY Times, but they have never sent me any spam):
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/garden/30FIRE.html
And a slightly less interesting opinion piece in the LA Times (no registration but be prepared for a number of "popup adds"):
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-pyne30oct30,1,307019.story?coll=la-headlines-oped-manual
I never claimed anyone on this board said a human life was priceless. LEt's try that one time, for any dense readers out there, I NEVER CLAIMED ANYONE ON THIS BOARD SAID A HUMAN LIFE WAS PRICELESS. That is some fiction of your own fantasy, Bob.
Yep, you got that one right. You didn't make that claim about anyone on the board, you just made the claim:
The list of preventive investments for home or auto or yard or whatever saftey is endless. WHAT IS THE COST BENEFIT! That is the proper view of these things. Remove the emotion of "Oh the value of a human life is PRICELESS". Sorry it just aint so.
Remember?
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
So WHAT THE HLL is your problem if I never said what you claimed I said. What a Loon!
Are you suggesting that NO ONE ever justifies a regulation or spending money based on an inflated value of a human life? What planet are you from or what fantasy world do you live in? Is it that mental ward? Just curious.
It's about time to notice the irony here -- a thread on fire sprinklers has turned into a flame war..... ;-)
-- J.S.
Agreed!
Bob is a mental case. So I will leave it at that, and move on.
Sorry everyone had to endure Bob.
Hope to see everyone with my thoughtful and thought provoking insight on other threads.
Enjoy!
Actually I believe that it is you, not Bob that has made this a personal attack. You don't seem to have an actual argument. Your point, what little of it I could find amid your attacking Bob, has some validity. Sprinkler are not free. The question of return on investment is open for debate but it seems to me you got side tracked by your own straw man, a position not held by any opponent. No one, at least not on this thread, has claimed that human life has an infinite value.
When would, based on an ever decreasing cost and ever increasing benefit, mandatory installation of sprinklers in all new construction make sense? If you answer never your not debating sprinklers your resisting authority and fighting the right of society to set norms of behavior. Your fighting for individual freedom from social control and has nothing to do with sprinklers. I name this "case 1".
If, on the other hand, you can accept some point where a very inexpensive but very effective sprinkler system could be justifiably become mandatory then it is just a matter of identifying the point where benefits exceed costs. The question then becomes: Where is the break even point? I name this "case 2"
The cost of the sprinkler systems are fairly well established. A link provided uses the figure of 1-1/2% of the total cost and $1 per square foot, perhaps more as this is the low end of the scale, for retrofitting existing homes.
The remaining part of the equation is the benefit. This is the hard part. How to set values on relative intangibles like:
Life. My life. Your life. Your kids life - I don't know how you figure this but There are two sides to this in my mind. On the low end some children, in Africa, go blind for lack of $.05 worth of vitamin A. Some children die in this country for lack of a thousand dollars or less of medical attention. On the other end EPA regulation, while not designed from this end, when costed out works out to something close to $1,000,000. per life. You might also consider the average earning potential of someone born today assuming an average life span.
Disability - some fraction of life.
Peace of mind - We, as a nation, spend billions on makeup. Weed killer for lawns and cosmetic surgery. Obviously if we spend such on superficial comfort in looking good peace of mind has some value. Not sure how you nail it down.
Societal benefits - A sprinkler system is like a fireman, always on alert, living under your roof. It suppresses fire, often extinguishing them, while they are small. Firemen are at little risk. Occupants have time to get out. Children less likely to become orphans. The longer reaction time common to rural areas become more tolerable and survivable. The fire is likely limited to one structure. Less likely to threaten neighboring houses. A disaster is often reduced to an inconvenience.
What all of these benefits is worth in money, time, difficulty, in avoiding societal and personal disruption, in personal tranquility of occupants and families of emergency workers is anyones guess. Anyone is welcome to guess, debate or cogitate. I'm sure, with time and effort, a rough calculus can be had. I'm also sure that these values are variables and tend to wander a bit between people and through life's events.
I think that if you fall under the ideation of "case 1" you should frequent sites specializing to catering to the Montana "Freemen" movement. Your fight is between your individuality and societies norms. It has nothing, very little, to do with building construction. There are many sites on the internet where you can thrash out your views in a supportive atmosphere.
If you are more of a "case 2" type you might find it more constructive, entertaining and educational, on both sides, to limit you commentary to the relative value of the points above and avoid personal attacks. I must say that your lame attempts at derision and sarcasm have been entertaining and educational. I enjoy watching people doing things in areas where they seem to have little talent and have learned that you lack said talents when you get too emotionally involved. They say men are emotionally remote. Good to see your avoiding the stereotype.
"side tracked by your own straw man, a position not held by any opponent. No one, at least not on this thread, has claimed that human life has an infinite value."
Gee, Lorn are you a Bob clone?
You are RAILING loadly at your own straw man. You like Bob Clueless rail against a position I never made.
Knock yourself out! And by all means flush your 2 grand down the toilet on your next sprinkler system. Just MY OPINION, Jack.
I'm glad you wholeheartedly agree.
Great!
If you are interested in cost benefit of a sprinkler system, what about a exterior roof sprinkler system for homes in fire country. If you live in dryland type forests (not all forests) or heavy dry brush like the CA hills, an exterior system might make sense in some cases. Actually a much easier and cheaper proposition than an interior system.
I heard of a family in CA that just lost their THIRD home in 15 years. Hmm?
Of course in a major fire water presure could be a problem and a roof top system might fail anyway.
Just a thought.
What they do in some of these places, such as Stevenson Ranch, is build with tile roofs and run stucco under the soffits. The idea is that embers can blow onto the roof and burn out without transmitting enough heat thru to ignite the interior. There's also no place under the eaves for an ember to catch. That seems to have worked pretty well this time.
Of course that won't stand up to a mile wide front of 3000 degree flames coming at 60 MPH. But then again, no kind of sprinkler would either.
Perhaps the way to go is to have a small fleet of light airplanes equipped to do high resolution thermal imaging. If these things could be detected and drowned when they're small, it would either solve the problem or allow us to build up an ever bigger fuel load and have an even bigger problem later on....
-- J.S.
"It's about time to notice the irony here --a thread on fire sprinklers has turned into a flame war...."
I noticed that too. It's been a while since anything useful was posted. Probably time to put the thread on ignore.Nothing more impairs authority than a too frequent or indiscreet use of it. If thunder itself was to be continual, it would excite no more terror than the noise of a mill. [Alfred Kingston]
Seems a compromise would be to sprinkle top two or three fire sources - kitchen stove, gas furnace
Yes. I regret that my previous post may have been misinterpreted as taking a position on the flame blame game. ;-)
-- J.S.
JR:
I have read your psychological assessment and views on my mental state. I appreciate all the time and effort you have put into those ejaculations.
I find it charming and a bit flattering that you would take so much time out of your feckless life to offer up such pungent splatterings. The strain on your resources must have been immeasurable.
Although lacking in insight and perspicuity, your eruptions more than make up for those deficits with their insensible effervescence, not to mention the vigor and crudity of their expression.
Adios.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Bob:
I am certainly happy that you appreciate the time and effort I have put into thoughtfully considering your mental handicap. Please don't think a bit about it. Really I am always happy to add people of your incapacitation to my prayer list.
You are right that my resources in terms of time are limited, and I am glad once again that you recognize your need for intervention, so the investment on my part is certainly worth it. They say the first step to recovery is to recognize your sickness. So you have taken a BIG first step. My support will be with you throughtout your treatment.
During your recovery I will be forebaring of your juvenile eruptions and lack of intellectual clarity of thought. Crudity on your part and baseless lashing out are equally forgiven.
May God bless you in your journey to a full and complete recovery.
Gentle reader - an aside.
I know I indicated I was withdrawing from the exchange of my insights for JR's baseless and unimaginative jibes; I had hoped to withdraw from the field of battle with humor and a touch of merriment. I repent of that hasty promise.
Imagine my initial delight when I first read JR's attempted riposte.
Apparently at a loss for anything meaningful or inventive to say, he not only inartfully attempted to replicate the witty, lightly sarcastic tone and jaunty nature of my sally, he actually borrowed several of my words and expressions in his feckless attempt!
"Ah hah!" I proclaimed to myself. "He has truly demonstrated the limits on his cerebral maneuverings. An implicit admission of infelicity!"
But, as I pondered his message, second thoughts surfaced. He tried to catch the tone, he witlessly repeated some of my inventions, but, I realized, he failed to recycle several of my artful thrusts, missing entirely "ejaculations," "feckless life," and " insensible effervescence" (a favorite) to name just a few.
Quid malborg en plano, elation crumbled to consernation!
Had my comments missed their mark? Gone entirely over his head? Failed to pierce?
Indeed they had. Why, he didn't even realize he had been skewered.
"A failure," I told myself. "What point in creative fleers, when the intended target stumbles unwittingly along, unscathed and unbloodied through sheer ineptitude and insentience?"
So I retreat from the contest, unwilling to continue with my fustian slices, overcome by the sheer lack of sport in, and the ultimate futility of, engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
Say "Goodnight, Gracie"
For large industrial buildings, as far as I know, it is virtually impossible to get fire insurance without sprinklers. At least it was when I was working for the largest fire re-insurance company in the US a few decades ago. These guys have sharp pencils and it is all about dollars. They figure that they are going to pay out a lot less money for damaged goods when a sprinkler goes off and soaks a few racks of boxes of merchandise than if the fire is allowed to burn. And these are facilities in which forklifts knocking off sprinkler heads is not unknown.
In industrial buildings, the primary reason behind dry sprinkler systems is to minimize freeze damage. The dry portion is filled with compressed air at a sufficiently high pressure to keep the flapper valve shut so that the water stays in the piping that is protected from freezing. If there was much of a leak in the sprinkler piping, the air pressure would would probably fall fairly rapidly below the level at which water was kept out of the sprinkler piping. I would thus guess that there would be little difference in the likelihood of water dripping from dry vs wet sprinkler systems. However, as a qualification, my work was primarily in the San Francisco area where we had almost all wet systems because it was felt there was little danger of freezing.
In regard to sediment in the system that someone mentioned, all commercial systems are required to be flushed periodically to test the water flow. Otherwise, there is no water flow in the system and thus there would be no entry of sediment into the piping once the system was activated. In testing many hundreds of systems, I never had and never had heard of problems with sediment in sprinkler systems in the S.F. Bay Area.
My, my, I see your sickness has worsened! You once claimed to be far above name calling all the while slinging mud. Now of course, you can not hide your colors or your game. Your mud slinging is beyond compare for all to witness.
Perhaps you should show your lastest post to your doctor. Your mother would be a good idea as well. Shame is a good medicine.
You should take heart in your mental illness, many many on the left suffer the same intolerance of differences of opinion, which of course I fear started your recent flare up. Presented with an opinion opposite your's and you wig out and sling the slander, claiming quotes which were never expressed. Your disease is rampant.
Please seek help immediately for the sake of all on the board.
As always in my prayers, and again I will forgive your childish temper tantrum.
Bob, whether people on the board explicitly argued that a human life is priceless (AND I NEVER SAID THEY DID), people in general do all the time. This is one explanation for why stupid regulations come about. Sorry you rail so hard against the facts and twist other people's positions to make yourself comfortable, but fact are facts.
I can't and won't argue with anyone who wants a sprinkler system. People do all kinds of things with questionable pay backs and they do them for peace of mind. I likely make a few of those myself. Can't think of one, but I probably do.
If you don't think mandatory sprinklers don't put a "priceless" price tag on a human life, you do the math. Of course, you are a word spliter and if the number does not come out at more than three-hundred-thousand-trillion you will say "see it ani't priceless". I got your number. But whatever the number is it will be very very high.
Again, if 1 in 10000 houses burn, and if in that house 1 life is lost (doubtful, but for the sake of arguement) the value of that life would be 199 houses (assuming the cost of the sprinkler system is 2% of the value of each house). 199 houses at $150,000 puts the value of a human life at $29,850,000. And since probably less than 1 in 10 of those fires has a human life lost, the value would be closer to $298,500,000. Raise the value of the house and the number climbs.
But, if it just saves one childs life, it would be worth it. (She says in a whiny tone of voice) :>(
Sam, Oh ya, "for the children". Glad those eight moronic years are over with, even if the baseless sentiment lives on and on and on.
The value of human life is always an interesting concept. The first analysis I remember on that topic was in regard to requiring rear bumpers/guards on heavy trucks that prevented automobiles from going under the rear of the truck when the truck stopped but the automobile didn't (sort of the Jayne Mansfield accident prevention act - and, by the way, she wasn't actually decapitated in the accident). Like almost all such studies, the analysis was based on potential earnings of the person killed in the accident plus associated costs. I believe the value of human life given in that study in the late 1960's (I think) was around $300,000.
Such analysis of the effects of government programs are made all the time to determine whether the costs of saving lives are "excessive". The value of seat belts and other automotive safety requirements has been done but I don't recall the values for human life that they used or arrived at.
One of the latest flaps over putting a value on human life was the value used by the EPA in assessing the costs of cleaning up the air (or in the case of the somewhat misleadingly named bill "Clear Skies", the values assigned to the additional lives lost when the act allowed additional pollution.) The value used here was in the range of $3.8 to around $6.6 million. If the median household income is around $40,000, then this would seem to be well above what would be expected from a simple lifetime earning analysis, but I haven't been able to find all the details.
I would guess that the value given for human life depends upon whether that life is yours or someone else's. While one might feel that $3.8 million is a pretty high value for some wino laid out on the street, I doubt that most would happily accept $3.8 million in exchange for allowing someone to "off" them.
CaseyR
Good points. I halfway recall a study a number of years ago of all of the different values given for a life by all of the different government agencies - it was a very wide range of values.
On the one hand it seems sort of absurd to try to come up with a value, but on the other hand if we're going to ask regulatory agencies to make rational cost-benefit analyses, we have no other choice.
I don't recall anyone outside of the pulpit who has tried to argue "a human life is priceless."
There is, of course, a whole methodology for assigning such value arising from tort cases, but in those cases one is always addressing the value of a particular person -brain surgeon or rag picker - gets harder to do for a population as a whole.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Your grasp of the obvious is truely astounding!
Of course NO ONE would do a cost benefit analysis with the benefit being infinite, ie a human life. Duh!
However, if you justify sprinklers with the cost side of the equation coming in at $300,000,000 per human life that comes pretty close.
Obsession?
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
I offered to discuss the merits with you several rounds ago, but you persist in name calling and puerile attacks, so forgidabowdit.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Sorry Buck, you NEVER offer to discuss anything, just whine and name call! That is a mental illness.
As for name calling I suggest you read your recent post. It appears that you have that skill pretty well mastered.
I, on the other hand, have only offered to pray for you. Sorry that offends you so.
Casey, please be gentle with Bob. He is in a very delicate state. The slightest expression of thought even remotely removed from his can set him off on a tantrum of the type which percipitated 9/11. Very unstable.
Perhaps you will join me in praying for the poor pitiful sole. In the meantime please be gentle with the child.
I think it's a ridiculous thing to require. Why not start off by requiring fire rock and steel framing in all homes if it's reallly such a problem?
OK, so this won't be scientific, yada, yada, BUT:
How many of you know anyone who's home has burned to the ground or who's family has had serious injury of death from a home fire?
I've known three people who've had minor fires. No injuries. I've mostly lived in places with mostly older frame homes. Lots of homes in our town still have K & T wiring in use.
Just wondering - and people you met because you were called out to do fire repair don't count!
Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Matt, in the same article you read it said that town with the 49,000 new sprinklered homes (I think it was Phoenix?) has created a competitive sprinkler industry that has driven prices way below 2%. Also, they cited Libertyville, IL, which does not require sprinklers. A builder negotiated smaller access roads with the village in exchange for sprinklering all the homes in his developement. The cost of the sprinklers washed against the reduced cost of road building. If you live in Chicago, surely you see the weekly stories on the local news during the summer about some deaths caused by house fires. Granted, a lot of these places don't have working smoke detectors, but in cases of handicapped, elderly or children, sprinklers would help a lot more than detectors. As far as leaks, I work in a large building that has sprinklers and the hundreds of wet heads in this building have never leaked.
Rich, I do see the stories about the house fires. And most of them are in older, not very well maintained homes, not new homes that might have sprinklers. If we're talking about making them put in sprinklers, why not talk about making them get rid of the knob and tube wiring and ancient furnaces....or bring their porches up to code, which is an entirely different subect....When people 100 years from now see my work, they'll know I cared. --Matt Mulka
"How many of you know anyone who's home has burned to the ground"
Me. My house burned to the ground because of an electrical problem. Went to work. Came back. Lots of fire trucks on the street. said "wow, somebody has a fire". That turned out to be me. Very unpleasant. If I built a new house for myself, I'd install sprinklers. Maybe $5K. Probably will not pay back in terms of lower insurance premiums. Doesn't really matter. Its not the money. Losing the house, going through the experience, losing all your stuff. Insurance does not really compensate for all that. An experience that stays with you. If you have the option, get sprinklers. Don't know that it should be required, but I'd want them.
RE: "How many of you know anyone who's home has burned to the ground or who's family has had serious injury of death from a home fire?"
Three times I have had houses near my residence burn. All were so badly damaged that they were either leveled and rebuilt or the entire interior was removed and redone. In two of these cases it was only a matter of luck that no one was seriously hurt.
In one case firemen had to fight their way, literally, through flames to rescue children trapped on the second floor. Their bedroom was isolated by the fire that started under the stairs at the center of the house. Time and limited access to the back yard didn't allow the firemen to get equipment or ladders around back in time so they attacked through the front door and up the burning stairs to get to the back bedrooms. As it was the water, the amount immediately available on the trucks, ran out shortly after the rescue was made. The house was leveled.
According to the fire chief had the fire been allowed to burn another few minutes the rescue would not have been possible with the resources at hand. I learned all this when an extensive article appeared in the local newspaper the next day.
In the second case a neighbor, not me, saw smoke coming out of attic vents and woke the family at 6AM on a Sunday. The roof was engulfed in flames as the firemen arrived. Had the family not been alerted in time the firemen reported that the family would have been lost.
In the third case no one was home and an air conditioner, a window unit, left on caused the fire. It had smoldered for many hours before flaming. The fire damage was light, limited to a single room, but the smoke damage, imagine a 1/8" coating of oily soot coating everything and spread to every room, necessitating a massive recovery effort. All the drywall, walls and ceiling, was removed.
In all three cases, less so in the third, sprinklers would have limited the danger and damage.
I find it interesting that people who don't flinch at paying hundreds of dollars every year, a few thousand each decade, balk at paying a few thousand for a sprinkler system and paying half as much for fire insurance each month. In the long run sprinkler systems pay for themselves and save money. This, of course, does not include the peace of mind and saving of lives. How much is that worth?
I get your point, but that line of thinking is carried too far, IMO. Why not require totally non-flamable homes? Insurance cost would surely be low. Masonry buildings (relatively) don't fair well in earth quakes. Why not ban them all together? Human reproduction leads to population growth which leads to increased energy consumption which leads to global warming which leads to.... Lets just ban humans. They obviously aren't safe to have around.
More people die each year in auto accidents than in????????? Shall we ban autos?
I'm all for people who want a sprinkler system to have one. But requiring such BS will run each and every one of us into trouble if the trend continues.
Life is a gamble. Shall we ban it?Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
My .02 worth,
Differant materials increase or decrease the risk of fire destroying a home.. Log homes for example would burn very slowly, as would a modern timberframe. However, a home made of OSB and TGI's would burn so quickly as to be in my opinion (however humble) a real risk..As would traditional stick built homes.
Homes framed with steel or ICF homes would also be low risk for fires, as would cement block homes..
In those homes the cost benefit clearly isn't in favor of sprinklers.
Fire damage, while very real, would most likely ruin the interior materials such as trim and carpet, something that a sprinkler system would do anyway, without much structural damage to the house itself..
As to the human life issue, a smoke detector that wakes up everyone is the best bet. Get everyone out and safe then worry about saving the house.. before there is fire there is usually smoke, detectors will usually activate much sooner than sprinklers.
Edited 10/30/2003 1:48:02 PM ET by frenchy
Seldom, discounting mobile homes or other very light construction, from what I hear from firemen, does the actual construction of the house make a big difference in the survival of the occupants and the fire becoming well established. The contents burn long before the interior of the walls becomes an issue. Many of these contents, particularly foam use in upholstery and under carpets, burn with the intensity of napalm. In addition to getting the fire established the toxic smoke and gasses poison the occupants long before the flames meet flesh.
That said I have heard that structural steel studs, uninsulated steel joists and wood I-beams are a worry to firefighters. They can fail quickly and without warning when exposed to fire. Because of this once the building is cleared the firemen are less likely to enter the building or go onto roofs to fight the fire aggressively. They adopt the safer tactic of surround and drown. They keep the fire contained to the building involved and pump water. More buildings, once they catch fire, are consequently total losses.
Timber framed buildings, due to the cross section of the wood used, have an advantage in this. Unfortunately much of this advantage is lost when harried firemen don't have time to develop a unique strategy for each house they are called to. Most houses, of reasonable size, will burn to the ground in under an hour once the fire gets going. They have to make the call to fall back or fight from the inside in the first minutes. That your house is safer for them to go into to get to the seat of the fire is likely to be lost in the heat of the moment.
Edited to clarify points and add last few sentences.
Edited 10/30/2003 8:40:08 PM ET by 4Lorn1
there are two issues here.. life and property..
Fireman are at risk because of some construction techniques.. and firemen are killed in fires from falling debris more often than any other reason..
You are absolutely correct when you say that smoke claims the majority of lives rather than flames.. that's why to me, reliable smoke detectors should be required long before we require sprinklers.. Wakeup and get out.
As for the techniques used by a fireman to fight fires, if I'm standing there I can explain the contruction and relative safety. I intend to meet with the fire marshall when my home is complete and explain the safety features of my home to him and let him inspect it. Most fireman understand that the risks are differant with a log home or timber home than a stick built house, those that aren't will have a very long wait to contain the fire. (how long do you think it takes to burn thru a 12x12 oak beam enough for it to fail?)
I am currently building a home in Sacramento County. Here a sprinkler system is required if you are building in an rural area where there are no water mains or hydrants. The system must be designed by a special licensed contractor. It cannot be designed by an architect, engineer, or anyone else. It must be installed by the special contractor or the property owner, no one else. The design is checked by the fire department who also does the inspection, and of course they collect a seperate fee for this. The building inspector just checks to see that the fire dept has signed off on the system before you can get a final. In my case the special contractor is charging $900 for the design, and will sell me all the parts for $1800. As owner-builder, I will do the install. The Fire dept. gets $175
To me it's not that expensive, and there are a lot of other things that are required that are more worthless and cost more, so I am not too upset about it. It's somewhat like fire insurance, you probably will never need it. Also, sprinkler systems would be totally worthless in big fires from outside the house like they are now having in So Cal.
I can see putting one in if you're in the middle of nowhere with no hydrant. I do think the fire department is making a mint of you out there though. To me that inspection oughta be included in your taxes and/or result in lower taxes if there's less chance the fire department will be needed. I also think $900 is a little steep for a house. Of course a lot of that probably goes to the contractor's insurance in case something goes wrong.
Matt
Per the NFPA:
In 2002, there were 389,000 reported home fires in the United States, resulting in 2,670 deaths, 13,650 injuries and $5.9 billion in direct property damage.
The 2,670 home fire death total in 2002 was the lowest seen since NFPA began collecting this data in 1977. Since then, these deaths have fallen 54%, and the number of reported home fires has fallen 46% over the same period.
Nationwide, there was a home fire death every 170 minutes.
Re cost from another site: The economic implications of fire loss are staggering - such as the cost of built-in fire protection, the cost of providing fire insurance, the cost of fire fighting services, the disruption of business operations after fire, medical costs for those injured, etc. When these costs, and the human and property losses directly due to fire are combined, the true cost of fire pushes up past $100 billion a year
Standard risk analysis provides that you take the degree of the risk - potentially the entire house and death, and the likelihood of the risk 389,000 out of 119,302,132 housing units (http://eire.census.gov/popest/data/household/HU-EST2002-01.php) (0.33%) and you calculate the cost of preventing the risk
One site reports costs as:
Over the years the cost of installing a fire sprinkler system has drastically declined where today many jurisdictions report the cost as low as $0.50 per square foot for new construction. Retrofitting, installing a fire sprinkler system in an existing home, depending on structural obstructions, can vary from as little as $1.00 per square foot. At $1.00 per square foot, that is still very reasonable. That amounts to $9.00 a square yard, which is much less than the cost of installing new carpets. [Emphasis added]
http://www.firesafedwellings.org/sprinklers.html
So, although the likelihood of a fire is pretty darn low, the risk is pretty darn high. With a cost less than insatlling wall to wall carpeting, you decide for yourself.
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
The 2,670 home fire death total in 2002
Nationwide, there was a home fire death every 170 minutes.
FWIW
Number of minutes in year = 525600
525600 / 170 = 3092 total deaths per annum
525600 / 2670 = 197 minutes per death
SamT
SamT - their math stands corrected! (I wonder if the d/m was an older calc?)
BTW, like your tagline!
_______________________
Albert Einstein said it best:
“Problems,” he said, “cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Your mileage may vary ....
Edited 10/28/2003 9:58:56 AM ET by Bob Walker
The installed cost of sprinklers in residential construction is usualy around a $1 a sq ft. And as for the argument that the money would be better spent on fire retardent materials built into the home remember that a home is filled with furniture, papper, and numerous other flamable materials.