

Water damage from a sprinkler system would be more extensive than the damage from the fire itself.Your home is much more likely to be damaged by leaks from ordinary household plumbing than from a residential sprinkler system. The likelihood that a sprinkler could discharge accidentally due to a manufacturing defect is extremely remote. A sprinkler could accidentally go off causing severe water damage to my home.Each sprinkler is individually activated by heat and will only go off in the event there is an actual fire. Smoke alone cannot trigger sprinkler operation. If I burn something on the stove, the sprinklers could go off.90% of all home fires are contained with a single sprinkler. The rest of the sprinklers in the house will not activate unless there is also a fire in that location. Thus, only the sprinkler closest to the fire will activate, spraying water directly on the fire. When one sprinkler goes off they all go off.ĭespite what you might see in movies or on television, sprinkler heads react independently to temperatures in each room.Some misconceptions about fire sprinklers: Using quick-response sprinklers and approved piping, homes can be built or even retrofitted to include low-cost automatic sprinkler systems connected to a domestic water supply. The City of Fairfax Fire Department recognizes the effectiveness of fire sprinklers in saving lives and protecting property, and actively encourages homeowners to consider installing residential sprinkler systems. Combined with the use of smoke alarms, fire sprinklers also reduce the risk of dying in a home fire by 82 percent (as compared to having neither). Home fire sprinklers can contain or even extinguish fires in less time than it would take the fire department to arrive at the scene. Fire sprinklers can save lives, reduce property loss and can even help cut homeowner insurance premiums. But what about where fires are most common - in our homes? Until recent years, fire sprinklers in homes were relatively rare and limited primarily to high rise and high-density residences.įire sprinklers, however, offer potential benefits for virtually every home. For more than a century, sprinkler systems have been used to protect our factories, office buildings, schools, and other commercial structures from the devastating effects of fire.
