Push For Home Sprinklers Looks Bleak

The Virginia Board of Housing and Community Development is expected to cast a final vote Monday on amendments to the state building code, putting to rest a debate that has raged for years between fire-fighting organizations and the building industry over whether sprinkler systems should be mandatory in new home construction, an action that will open the next chapter for those who are still hoping to see sprinklers become a part of all new development.
Last July, the board took a preliminary vote on changes recommended by the International Code Council, an association that deals with safety and fire prevention actions, to begin requiring sprinkler systems in all new single-family homes and townhouses as part of the regularly scheduled changes to building codes across the country. In that 9-2 vote, the board chose to leave the sprinkler systems as optional in all new development, but told the firefighters and homebuilder associations to work together to try and find some common ground and propose a compromise.

After the proposed regulations were voted on by the board last summer, the changes went through a review public process, including a period of public input, Stephen Calhoun, the regulatory coordinator in the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, said. Once the board takes its final vote July 26, the code changes will then be sent to Office of the Attorney General and the Governor for review.

For firefighters, sprinkler systems are about keeping lives and property safe, but homebuilders say there already are ample safety measures in place in new homes and the sprinklers systems pose too much of an increased cost for homebuilders.

“The fire code should be about public safety,” acting Loudoun County Fire-Rescue Chief W. Keith Brower, who has been working on the issue for several years, said. “We’ve had five fires since last June stopped by sprinkler systems.”

After the July 2009 vote, the Virginia Residential Sprinkler Coalition decided it needed to make an effort to compromise on the issue, Robbie Dawson, Chesterfield County Fire Marshal, and chairman of the coalition, said.

“We said we have to show we’re willing to step out into the middle of the road with this,” Dawson said last week.

The representatives of various fire-fighting organizations and localities brought forward what they believe is a compromise, to require only townhouses to be constructed with the sprinkler systems and leaving all single-family homes voluntary. Under the current code all townhouses that are more than three stories, often two-level homes stacked on top of each other, must be outfitted with the system. The new proposal would have applied to townhouses with fewer levels.

“We thought we would work incrementally to get to where we want to be,” Dawson said. “And we thought it was a good point to get the systems in economically. In the hopes that will build the sub-trade up enough so that there’s enough competition to keep the prices down.”

But the Codes and Standards Committee, which includes a majority of members of the larger board, voted earlier this summer to defer consideration of that proposal until the 2012 code review. The Virginia Building Code is reviewed in three-year cycles.

Michael L. Toalson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia, pointed out that the new code would include some changes to try to address the concern.

“The committee is recommending the board adopt some incentives to encourage townhouse builders and developers to sprinkler those,” Toalson said. Among the incentives are the option for narrower roads in developments, spreading the required distance between fire hydrants, and the size of pipes needed to provide the appropriate amount of pressure for those hydrants could be reduced.

“With the adoption of this code cycle, all new homes in the future will have a requirement that a fire extinguisher be installed in the immediate area of the kitchen,” Toalson said, noting that an “overwhelming majority” of home fires begin in the kitchen. “Fire extinguishers can be operated by untrained people. They’re a very effective means to fight incipient fires.”

Also included in the code changes anticipated to be adopted Monday are the allowance that a plumber could install any sprinkler system, where previously a third-party company was required to do the installation.

“So they have created a new methodology for the installation of sprinkler systems, to make it part of the water system,” Toalson said. “The notion behind that is there will be a savings…right now the cost is all over the map. Our belief is that with this lower cost, you might see some builders choose to go ahead and experiment with it. It will certainly give us more information [about the impacts] on cost.”

But representatives of the other side of the issue say they have been looking at the cost concerns all along, and a lot of the design options included in the proposed changes to the building code were added to offset the cost of installing the systems. There have been several studies on the subject, and Dawson noted one put the price of installing a system at $1.61 per square foot.

“We really think we can make these things cost-neutral,” Brower said. “The other code changes would obtain that goal.”

Brower and Dawson also noted that it was not just the firefighters who are concerned about the inclusion of sprinkler systems, and members of Virginia Building and Code Officials Association and representatives of local governments have expressed their support. Loudoun has been one of the biggest advocates for the systems, stemming from the May 2008 home fire on Meadowood Court near Leesburg where four firefighters were dangerously trapped inside the burning home, leaving one firefighter seriously burned and others injured, as well as the large number of residential developments that are still to be constructed in the county.

Following the ICC’s 2008 recommendation, County Chairman Scott K. York (I-At Large) sent a letter requesting the Board of Housing and Community Development to support the sprinkler system mandate.

Brower also noted that the county has experienced a large percentage of fires stopped by in-home sprinklers. An April 7 a fire at the Extended Stay Hotel in Sterling was only “smoldering remains” when emergency personnel arrived on the scene, thanks to the mandated sprinkler system. Condos and apartments in Ashburn and Sterling also have been saved by sprinkler systems in recent months, according to fire reports from several scenes.

Part of the issue facing firefighters in Loudoun is the number of new homes, mostly built without sprinkler systems that are constructed out of lightweight materials, with more open spaces where oxygen can feed a fire. The lightweight materials burn faster and collapse quicker.

“It used to be 17 minutes for a building to become untenable. Now it’s three to four minutes,” Brower said.

An April fire at home in Vermilion Court near Leesburg could not be entered for six minutes after the blaze began. Firefighters were forced to attempt to control the fire from the outside. A January fire at a townhouse in Ashburn Village had fully engulfed the home when firefighters arrived on the scene five minutes after the call came in.

Art Lipscomb, legislative director for the Virginia Professional Fire Fighters, said last year that when smoke detectors first came out on the market, people had between five to seven minutes to get out of their homes during a fire, but now that time is down to around two minutes.

After the Meadowood Court fire a series of changes were suggested following a study of the fire department’s actions that day. While those changes are in process, the department already has implemented other procedural changes, directed at protecting fire-fighters, including when a home may be entered, and determining the safety of a structure for firefighters.

With this round of the building code review almost behind them, Brower and others on the firefighting side are looking toward the future and what other options might be available to them. One thing is clear to them, however.

“This process is broken,” Brower said. “It is staff-driven. And there is an alignment issue with the mission of the code.”

While they say they have tried to stay within the confines of the board process during this round of review, they agree that it is time for some changes. One of the biggest issues is that when the Fire Marshal’s Office was moved from the departments of housing and development and into the public safety arena, the fire code was left as part of the building code. Now some fire officials are wondering if it is time for that code to be moved.

Dawson said there has been “literally no dialogue” on the issue that could be called open and honest, the way other codes are addressed, and Brower noted that meetings had been changed to accommodate the schedules of other groups, but never fire-fighting associations.

“It is staff that is driving and directing the code process,” Brower said. “[They're] really pushing the interests of business and not safety.”

There is the additional complication that localities cannot enact their own regulations without authority being granted by the state.

“There is special language in the state code that says no locality can change the building code,” Dawson said. “If we had that [control] we’d be going locality by locality with this. But we don’t.”

If the July 26 vote goes as expected, the firefighter organizations do have the option of seeking help from the General Assembly in the form of legislation. While Brower noted working through that process “muddies the waters” that may be the firefighters’ only option if they want to continue seeking the mandate.

One area that intrigues both men is Gov. Bob McDonnell’s government reform panel, where discussion of pulling the fire code out from the Department of Housing and Community Development could be reviewed.

“I think that becomes the focus,” Brower said. “And we will just keep working until the 2012 review.”

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Posted by Resident on Jul 26 2010. Filed under Northern Virginia News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.