WASHINGTON – After a Christmas tree fire claimed the lives of a Maryland couple and their four grandkids, fire experts are stressing the importance sprinklers would have made. Depending on your home, they could be relatively cheap or very costly to install.
Firefighters say they are life saving, especially in newer houses built with lightweight materials.
“From the time the fire starts before it’s untenable and you can’t escape is down to three minutes now with this type of modern construction,” says Chesterfield Asst. Fire Chief Robby Dawson.
Dawson is past president of the Virginia Fire Prevention Association and helped draft the commonwealth’s home sprinkler assessment. There was an initial draft in 2008.
“They repeated that study in 2013, and found installing sprinklers averages $1.35 per square foot. It really is scalable to the size home you’re building,” he says.
But adding them to an existing home will likely cost the homeowner big bucks. Ripping out the drywall is not the only alternative, though: Dawson says some sprinkler systems can be installed under the crown molding on the wall.
“If you’re going to retrofit, you think about where do we have fires most commonly: kitchens and bedrooms. And what way are you going to go to get out of your bedroom in the middle of the night,” which, Dawson says, is when most fires start.
He says the ideal way to ensure your family’s safety is to have sprinklers installed when the house is built. It’s not an option many homeowners had when closing on their home, especially in Virginia, where sprinklers are not required by the state building code in single-family houses.
They are required in new construction in Maryland. And some counties have required builders to add them long before it became a state law. Read more about home sprinkler laws on WTOP.com.
Dawson says the best time to put them in an older house is when you’re considering remodeling.
