The Government Has Mandated Residential Sprinkler Systems - We Have to Get the State to Say NO!

On Tuesday evening my husband, Scott, and I attended the Rock Hill, SC, Home Builders Association meeting. Much of the evening was spent discussing the impact of the International Residential Code that was just passed in Washington. Unless state legislation is passed to opt out, every new house built in each state, after July 2011, will be mandated to have a fire sprinkler. Currently statistics show that the chances of surviving a home fire where working fire alarms are present is 99.45%. Smoke detectors save lives. The addition of sprinklers in the home is unnecessary and detrimental in two ways. First, it will add to the cost of ANY home, large or small. Secondly, most municipalities are not set up to handle the kind of water flow it would take to operate residential sprinkler systems. That means that if this regulation is passed by the states, individual water tanks would have to be buried in each yard to provide the water needed to run the system. The cost of this could run anywhere from $7 to $10 per square foot. In a 1,000 square foot starter home, the total cost of installing a sprinkler system and required water infrastructure would be $7,000+. Research shows that for every $1,000 increase in the cost of a house, 200,000+ young first time SC home buyers will be forced to give up the dream of owning a home.

Mandatory fire sprinklers will keep low income citizens at risk. In raising the cost of a house, the government is forcing the economically disadvantaged to stay in older, marginal housing, with little fire protection instead of moving into a safer modern home. Statistics show that most home fires are in older or mobile homes without hard-wired fire alarms. Mandatory sprinkler systems are no answer in this case.

My blog posts are normally about interior design and how to make your home beautiful. This subject, however, affects all of us and our children. I felt the need to post this so that we can all realize what is at stake and do something about it. Please call, write or email your state reps and let them know that mandatory sprinkler systems for private residence are just another government invasion of our homes and that this regulation MUST be thrown out! Thanks.