Home sprinkler rule fuels debate

A move to mandate sprinklers in every new home built in Virginia has homebuilders squaring off against firefighters.

And right smack in the middle of the competing arguments, fears and voices is Charlottesville’s fire chief, Charles Werner.

At a recent public hearing on the issue, Werner was a prominent voice for compromise.

“I think Chief Werner from Charlottesville expressed that probably better than anybody,” said Art Lipscomb, who retired after 31 years with the Lynchburg Fire Department and is legislative director for Virginia Professional Firefighters.

“It’s all about outcome, not about the specific solution at this point,” Werner said in a Wednesday telephone interview.

The proposed requirement was suggested by an international building codes organization, but it’s up to the Virginia Board of Housing and Community Development to decide what the commonwealth will do.

The main opponents of mandatory sprinklers — builders — have hammered on the systems’ cost.

A sprinkler system can add thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home, something many in the business community feel could hurt the economy.

Among the groups making that argument is the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association, a local group.

“For a homeowner to have to spend several thousand dollars on a sprinkler system that they don’t necessarily want or need doesn’t seem very fair,” said Charlie Armstrong, chairman of the group’s governmental affairs committee.

Tyler Craddock, the Virg-inia Chamber of Commerce’s director of government affairs, said his group is pushing for a strictly voluntary approach to sprinklers.

“We’re leery of any type of thing where you’re going to mandate a specific choice for a consumer,” he said.

Craddock also warned that a mandate would boost home prices, impeding economic development.

Lipscomb said sprinklers can save money in the long run by reducing insurance costs, but the most basic counter-argument from firefighters is simple: It saves lives.

“You have the life-safety issue that goes with it, too,” Lipscomb said. “That’s more important than any cost, I think.”

Almost as often as the business lobby has warned of increasing home prices, fire officials have pointed to the life-saving success of smoke detectors, which were widely made mandatory through building codes.

Lipscomb put the analogy in SAT form: “Sprinklers are to smoke detectors what airbags are to seatbelts.”

A less widespread argument against sprinklers is that they could cause water damage if set off accidentally.

Lipscomb said that setting off one sprinkler head — which he called a rare occurrence — doesn’t affect the other sprinkler heads in a structure.

Each individual head is held in the off position by a metal part with a low melting point, he said.

When the sprinkler head heats up, the metal melts and the sprinkler spews water, regardless of what the other sprinkler heads are up to.

Even in an actual fire, only those sprinkler heads exposed to heat will activate, he said.

He said recessing sprinkler heads into the ceiling reduces the risk of accidentally banging the heads, setting them off.

But he did concede that the least expensive sprinklers are the exposed models.

And as builders argue that sprinklers will drive up housing prices, fire officials also argue that it’s cheaper, lighter structural materials in new homes, in part, that make sprinklers so necessary.

While both Lipscomb and Armstrong said they’d like to see a compromise, one of the strongest voices promoting that message has been Werner.

Werner explained that he’s been so prominent in the discussion largely because, as first vice president of the Virginia Fire Chiefs Association, he serves as the group’s spokesman.

As part of the chiefs’ message of compromise, Werner pushes a combination of changes to the building code as a more palatable way of saving lives than an across-the-board mandate.

That could mean requiring sprinklers in some new construction and making less-costly changes to the way other homes are built, he said.

“I think it’s looking at ‘Where do we see the most fires?’ ‘Where do we see the most deaths that are occurring?’ and then really basing this on facts,” Werner said.

That compromise could become a reality in coming months, as fire officials sit down with state-level building advocates and try to hammer out a compromise, Werner said.

Werner is also hoping to host a sit down with Charlottesville-area builders to help him better understand their concerns, he said.

In December, the question will go back to the state for a decision.