Costs
In 2008, the installed costs of sprinkler systems ranged from US$0.31 – $3.66 per square foot, depending on type and location. Residential systems, installed at the time of initial home construction and utilizing municipal water supplies, average about US$0.35/square foot. Systems can be installed during construction or retrofitted. Some communities have laws requiring residential sprinkler systems, where large municipal hydrant water supplies ("fire flows") are not available. Nationwide in the United States, one and two-family homes generally do not require fire sprinkler systems, although the overwhelming loss of life due to fires occurs in these spaces. Residential sprinkler systems are inexpensive (about the same per square foot as carpeting or floor tiling), but require larger water supply piping than is normally installed in homes, so retrofitting is usually cost prohibitive.
According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), fires in hotels with sprinklers averaged 78% less damage than fires in hotels without them (1983–1987). The NFPA says the average loss per fire in buildings with sprinklers was $2,300, compared to an average loss of $10,300 in unsprinklered buildings. The NFPA adds that there is no record of a fatality in a fully sprinklered building outside the point of fire origin. However, in a purely economic comparison, this is not a complete picture; the total costs of fitting, and the costs arising from non-fire triggered release must be factored.
The NFPA states that it "has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a completely sprinklered building where a sprinkler system was properly operating, except in an explosion or flash fire or where industrial fire brigade members or employees were killed during fire suppression operations."
The world's largest fire sprinkler manufacturer is the SimplexGrinnell division of Tyco International, other manufacturers / suppliers include The Viking Corporation, Victaulic, NNI Inc, P.u.P. Feuerschutz und Anlagenbau GmbH and Reliable Sprinkler Company.
Read more about this topic: Fire Sprinkler System
Famous quotes containing the word costs:
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“That which costs little is less valued.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.—Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)