Deaths from fires and burns are the third leading cause of fatal home injury in the United States. Despite spending significantly more than many countries on fire prevention, the mortality rate in the United States from fires ranks seventh worst among the 25 developed countries for which statistics are available. Many firefighters lose their lives fighting these fires too. How can we change this? Residential fire sprinklers could play a potentially significant role in reducing these injuries and deaths caused by residential fires.

To learn more, read below about the benefits of installing residential sprinklers, as well as dispelling some common misconceptions about how fire sprinklers work and appear. Finally, we have some links to more information about residential fire sprinklers and the effort to increase their use in North Carolina. We hope you find this page both informative and enlightening with regard to fire safety in the home.

• Designed to detect, report, and confine a fire until fire suppression forces arrive to fully extinguish the fire.
• Sprinklers protect paths of egress - bedrooms, hallways, kitchens, dining rooms and laundry rooms - providing for maximum life safety for the occupants inside or to protect those who may be trapped and unable to escape on their own.
• Sprinklers contain a quick response element that allows the sprinkler head to react very quickly thus preventing a small fire from becoming too large to be handled by the system.
• Sprinkler piping replaces the cold water domestic system, which saves money for the homeowner.
• The sprinkler system will severely limit a fire's growth. Therefore, damage from a home sprinkler system will be much less severe than otherwise would be the case. It would even be less than the water damage caused by firefighting hose lines.
• Homeowners could realize insurance discounts up to 15%. This would be in addition to any burglar alarm or fire discounts already in force.
• Residential sprinklers increase firefighter safety and reduce the risk of injury by reducing the size and intensity of the fire. They also assist firefighters in rescue efforts by limiting the fire's size and reducing deadly smoke and gases that result.

• When one sprinkler head activates, they all do. This is NOT the case. The only sprinkler heads that activate are the ones directly subject to the heat caused by a fire. It is not unusual for only one or two heads to activate to put out a small fire.

• When a sprinkler system activates copious amounts of water are discharged. The average sprinkler head discharges 12 to 15 gallons of water a minute. The average fire hose discharges 125-150 gallons of water a minute. Which do you think causes more water damage?
• Sprinkler heads create an eyesore in the home and are ugly. Sprinkler system design and construction has advanced to the point where sprinkler heads may be nearly hidden or styled to match the décor of any size or style home.
• Fires extinguished by sprinklers cost more and cause more property damage that one extinguished by the fire department personnel only. In a typical residential fire, the average amount of repair costs for unsprinklered homes is $45,019. In homes with sprinklers the average cost for repairs after a fire is $2,166.
• In the winter time sprinkler pipes will freeze and burst. Residential sprinkler systems are designed to provide the cold water to the building. Therefore the water inside the pipes is regularly moving, which removes freezing pipes as an issue.
• Residential sprinkler systems are expensive. While not without cost, installing a sprinkler system in a new home typically adds between 1% and 2% to the cost of construction. Given the enhanced safety and insurance savings such a small cost is well worth the investment.

To learn much more about the benefits for residential fire sprinklers and the efforts by the fire service in North Carolina to increase the use and presence of residential sprinkler systems, we encourage you to visit a web site set up by the North Carolina State Firemen's Association. You may also wish to visit the U.S. Fire Administration's web site on Residential aprinkler systems too. Other resources to consult include the International Residential Code Fire Sprinkler Coalition and the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition.

If you have more specific questions or are interested in viewing a DVD on residential fire sprinklers, feel free to call the Carrboro Fire-Rescue Department at 919-918-7352 or email us at fire@townofcarrboro.org.