An issue drenched in debate

Tom SAYER has reason to fear fire season. In his youth, flames devastated his family’s Point Loma home. And in October, Sayer stood amid the charred remains of his Scripps Ranch home after San Diego County’s deadly Cedar fire.

But this year, when the city of San Diego pushed for an emergency building code to require interior fire-sprinkler systems in all new residential construction in high-risk areas, Sayer joined other fire victims and building industry officials to successfully oppose the move.

“There’s no fire system on Earth that could have saved our house,” said Sayer, who doesn’t support placing the financial burden of installing sprinklers, designed for fires starting within a structure, on homeowners trying to rebuild.

Historically, major fires have opened a window for debate about a variety of related safety issues, according to Clifford Hunter, fire marshal for Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District in San Diego County.

For about a six-month period after a disaster such as the wildfires of the Cedar and Paradise areas, fire officials often can achieve some code changes, Hunter said. “But then people suddenly and quickly forget what happened, and it starts to become a dollar issue.”

Though no one questions the need for safe homes, not everyone agrees on requiring residential fire sprinklers in new construction or during major remodels. Builders cite high installation costs and low market demand. Safety experts counter that there has never been a multiple loss of life in the United States in a fire that started within a home that had a properly maintained sprinkler system.

Sayer is rebuilding without sprinklers, but Steve Johnson didn’t have that option when erecting his 3,000-square-foot replacement home in El Cajon. There, the East County Fire Protection District requires sprinklers in all new construction.

More than 67 California jurisdictions have adopted standards beyond state building codes, according to Steve Hart, a former deputy director of the California state fire marshal’s office, who is a consultant to the National Fire Sprinkler Assn. And other communities are following suit. On June 26, Downey will begin requiring fire sprinklers in all new construction.

The California Building Code requires fire sprinklers in all commercial or residential buildings of at least 5,000 square feet; in buildings with three or more stories, regardless of height; in complexes with 16 or more apartments; and in hotels with 20 or more dwelling units.

State codes provide minimum fire and life safety standards that leave room for local jurisdictions to further restrict building codes based on geological, topographical or climatic conditions, and other potential hazards, such as limited roadway access and water supply.

Johnson, who completed construction in April, doesn’t begrudge the added $3,100 he spent on sprinklers.

“You’re not talking about that much money,” he said. “If there’s an internal fire in the middle of the night and the sprinklers save one life, then that’s ... cheap insurance.”

On average, sprinkler installation costs range from about $1 to $1.25 per square foot for new construction to $1.50 to $3 per square foot for a remodel or retrofit.

Samy Benarroch’s decision to build on a hillside resulted in the city requiring him to install sprinklers in his Beverly Hills Post Office-area home in 2001. “If you want to live in these areas, that’s what you need to do,” he said. “Otherwise, go to the flats, and you don’t need fire sprinklers.”

Similarly, when developer Martin Perellis applied for a permit to build a 6,000-square-foot French-style farmhouse in Studio City in October, fire sprinklers were required in the hillside residence and the detached garage.

Los Angeles didn’t start the indoor sprinkler trend. Citing cutbacks in governmental spending, fewer firefighters and longer response times, San Clemente became the first city in the nation to require sprinklers in all new construction in 1978. Corte Madera, Livermore and Napa in Northern California followed.

Southern California communities requiring fire sprinklers in all new single-family dwellings include Agoura Hills, Alhambra, Arcadia, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Culver City, Dana Point, Glendale, Glendora, Montebello, Oxnard, Placentia, Rancho Santa Fe, Ramona, Redondo Beach, Riverside, San Gabriel, Santa Monica, Sierra Madre, Stanton, Ventura, Vista and West Hollywood.

Cities such as Buena Park and Cypress have modified sprinkler requirements on new construction that kick in at 3,600 square feet. And the rules are not limited to new construction. Retrofit requirements also can apply to remodels that increase a home’s original footprint by 25% to 50%. Beverly Hills, Rancho Santa Fe and Santa Monica, for example, require retrofitted sprinklers throughout a home when square footage grows by 50% or more.

Other areas base the requirement on value. Burbank requires automatic sprinkler systems for remodels that exceed 75% of the replacement value of the building. Downey’s retrofit rule will apply when a remodel exceeds 50% of the replacement value.

Remodel regulations that require homeowners to retrofit with sprinklers give fire officials the opportunity to make older homes safer, proponents point out.

George Saadin, president of Fire Protection Group Inc. in Los Angeles, who has been installing fire sprinklers for 23 years, says lobbying efforts by fire departments and sprinkler advocates will prompt even more communities to adopt stricter regulations. “It’s an important life-safety system,” he said.

Though building experts agree that fire sprinklers have their place, the industry does not want to “be governed by the code of good ideas,” said Philip F. Bettencourt, president of Bettencourt & Associates, a Newport Beach real estate development firm.

“In most instances, fire sprinklers are a personal-choice commodity on the same plane as the home burglar alarm or solar power,” Bettencourt said. “Each time you remove consumer choice and mandate items, you ultimately drive up the cost of housing and drive people out of the market.”

Bettencourt supports fire sprinklers in higher-density occupancies, where safety and risks associated with attached dwellings present a real danger. In single-family detached dwellings, however, he believes sprinklers should be optional.

But Orange County Fire Authority official Laura Blaul said fire safety shouldn’t be elective. “You wouldn’t think of buying a car without an air bag,” she said. “And the bottom line is that fire sprinklers save lives and save homes.”

About 4,500 people die in fires each year in the United States, and 75% of those fires and 85% of fire deaths occur in the home. Studies indicate that most fire sprinkler systems are about 98% effective in containing fires.

Depending on the manufacturer, residential sprinklers, which are designed to protect lives by providing a window of time for occupants to escape, discharge water at a rate of about 12 to 16 gallons per head per minute. By comparison, commercial sprinklers, which are designed to protect both life and property, release about 18 to 40 gallons of water per head per minute.

A single firefighter with a 1 1/2-inch adjustable fire hose douses flames at a rate of 75 to 250 gallons of water per minute.

Invented by Henry S. Parmalee to protect his piano factory in 1874, automatic sprinkler systems became widely used in warehouses and factories. In the 1950s, hotels started to install them. A modern sprinkler can be concealed behind a color-coordinated, flush-mounted cover designed to drop away at 135 degrees to expose a sprinkler that will open and discharge water at about 155 to 165 degrees.

Fire safety experts say sprinklers are heat-activated, can’t detect smoke or alarm noise, are designed to move with a building during an earthquake, can be insulated to protect pipes from freezing and don’t discharge water in unison. In fact, Blaul said, 90% of all residential fires are extinguished or controlled within about two minutes by a single sprinkler.

Building industry officials caution that sprinklers can create a false sense of security. Defensible fire zones around a residence offer better fire protection to homes in wild-land areas. And there have been incidents “where they go off unexpectedly and cause property and water damage,” said Mike Balsamo, director of governmental affairs for the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Assn.

In the case of Marty Flynn, a thumbnail-sized hole in a second-floor sprinkler pipe resulted in a torrent of pressurized water gushing down through light fixtures and air-conditioning ducts in 1998. It took five minutes for the Napa resident to turn off the water, and the home incurred $8,000 in property damage.

Because poor construction was blamed, homeowners insurance covered the repairs. Flynn, meanwhile, is not sold on the idea that sprinkler systems are a cure-all. “It was a terrible experience,” he said, “but it could have been much worse if we weren’t home when it happened.”

Despite such instances, the rate of accidental discharge is about 1 in 16 million sprinklers per year, according to David Symons, owner of El Cajon-based Symons Fire Protection Inc.

Still, Symons said, even with the promise of insurance premium reductions of 5% to 15%, few homeowners voluntarily install fire sprinklers.

“It comes down to a dollars-and-cents issue,” he said. “And when you’re building a house for $230,000, and you thought you could build it for $200,000, what are the luxury items that are getting tossed out? Fire sprinklers.”

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Michelle Hofmann is a Los Angeles freelance writer. She can be reached at michellehofmann@earthlink.net.