Atchison, Kansas - Fire Dept. - Residential Sprinkler Systems

Fire Dept. - Residential Sprinkler Systems

How Sprinklers Help Save Lives

Residential sprinklers are a method of ensuring your families safety. Sprinklers detect potential fire and can quickly control a potentially dangerous situation.

Properly installed, residential sprinklers greatly reduce the incidence of fire death.
The average cost of residential sprinklers is $1.50 per square foot of coverage.
The cost of sprinklers is cheaper than having new carpeting placed in your home.
Building costs and supplies are often cheaper when using a residential sprinkler system
Residential sprinklers can put out 90% of fires with one sprinkler head.
Fewer trips by the fire department increases the department's availability for large scale emergencies.

Sprinkler Basics

A small fire can be put out with a single sprinkler head...imagine the effectiveness of a network of sprinklers installed all over your home.

How they work:

Residential sprinklers are "elements" to detect and respond automatically to the source of heat. To reduce water damage, each sprinkler head acts independently of the others. Many are hooked directly to your waterline and require very minimal water pressure.

There are several types of residential sprinklers to fit new or older homes. A single sprinkler head releases 13-14 gallons of water per minute on a fire. Compare that amount to a fire hose releasing 125-500 gallons of water per minute.

After a fire bursts into flames, an entire room can be consumed within three minutes time. Most fires are not reported until 10 minutes after the fire began.

Between 75% and 90% of all residential fire deaths could have been prevented by the use of a smoke detector and residential sprinkler combination.

Who Needs Sprinklers ?

You do!! Children and the elderly are most at risk. Smoke can easily disorient and confuse all ages. However, residential sprinklers can put on the confusion.

Isn't My Home Safe?

It's amazing that even with smoke detectors, power surge cords, and fire extinguishers, your home and family may not be safe.

Approximately 80% of all fire deaths occur from residential fires. One out of every 10 homes is affected by fires. Every 74 seconds a residential fire occurs.

Statistics Don't Lie

Most people feel confident but a smoke detector just isn't enough. If a fire takes place, people believe the smell of smoke, a barking dog, an alert neighbor, personal intuition, or the buzzing of a smoke detector will urge them to safety. Unfortunately, people and animals fall into a deeper sleep because of the potent fumes. Neighbors will not see the fire until it is too large to fight.
Americans spend over 50% of their day at home where fires occur most frequently.
Each year over 2 million fires take the lives of an estimated 5,200 people.

Test Your Home Sprinkler System's IQ

Here are five statements about home sprinkler systems. Are they true or false?

1. When one sprinkler goes off, all the sprinklers activate.

FALSE! Only the sprinkler over the fire will activate. The sprinkler heads react to react to temperatures in each room individually. Thus, fire in a bedroom will activate only the sprinkler in that room.

2. A sprinkler could accidentally go off, causing severe water damage to a home.

FALSE! Records, which have been compiled for well over 50 years, prove the likelihood of this occurring is very remote. Furthermore, home sprinklers will be specifically designed and will be rigorously tested to minimize such accidents.

3. Water damage from a sprinkler system will be more extensive than fire damage.

FALSE! The sprinkler system will severely limit a fire's growth. Therefore, damage from a home sprinkler system will be much less severe than the smoke and fire damage if the fire had gone on unabated or ever the water damage caused by water from firefighting hose lines.

4. Home sprinkler systems are expensive.

FALSE! Current estimates suggest that when a home is under construction, a home sprinkler system could cost less than 1% of the total building price. Residential sprinkler systems could use standard piping and hardware with domestic plumbing.

5. Residential sprinklers are ugly.

FALSE! The traditional, commercial-type sprinklers as well as sprinklers for home use are now being designed to fit in with most any decor.

Sprinklers Are A Good Investment For Homebuilders

New homes may be built further away from a fire station if they have approved sprinkler systems.

Home sprinkler systems offer both safety and financial advantages to home buyers, a rare combination.

Sprinklers Are A Good Investment For The Homebuyer

Families with children, senior citizens, and handicapped members have special fire protection needs. Home sprinkler systems provide added protection for these people.

In case of a home fire, firefighters will have less risk of injury or life loss since they will be fighting a fire of less intensity.

Allocation of scarce community resources may be improved with the adoption of home sprinkler technology.

Communities will be able to make better utilization of available land and thereby increase their tax base.

Insurance Discount

Insurance from homeowner underwriters will vary depending on type of coverage. The discounts now range between 5-15%, with a projected increase in available discounts.

The Move Toward Home Sprinkler Systems

The U.S. Fire Administration's research in home fire sprinkler systems successfully focused on systems that would be low cost, fast acting and reliable. As a result, residential fire sprinklers have gained increased acceptance.

Installation of approved systems using the newly designed residential sprinklers can be installed with standard piping and hardware.

Residential sprinkler protect from the fires you don't detect!!!!

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