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County explores sprinkler solution

Requiring indoor sprinklers could save money and lives. Opinions vary on whether it could lead to scaling back of a full-time firefighter plan.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published February 13, 2005

The County Commission is grappling to find a way to pay for 27 full-time firefighters as growing Citrus County builds its first full-time force. They need millions of dollars. Jim McIntosh thinks he has a solution. Just look up.

Not to the heavens. But to the ceiling of the Citrus Springs Community Center. Round shiny caps line the tiled ceiling like stars. They are pop-out sprinklers.

Earlier this month, McIntosh, a local government watcher, was at a commissioners' goal setting session at the community center. Again, he proposed the idea.

Instead of building a firefighting force that could cost the county upwards of $20-million someday, why not require every building in the county to install sprinklers?

The volunteer fire rescue force already working could supplement them. Money would be saved.

The idea got traction when commissioners became receptive enough to investigate. They want to see if the other communities that require indoor fire sprinklers, including Altamonte Springs, have realized a cost savings to their fire department. More importantly, they want to know how many lives have been saved.

What struck commissioners first about the proposal was the small cost for homeowners and business owners to install sprinklers: Between $1 and $1.50 per square foot in new construction, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.

They are also small, and when homes are built or remodeled, require minimal extra piping and labor, the administration says.

So far, at least eight communities nationwide require indoor automatic sprinkler systems, including Scottsdale, Ariz. That community passed a law in 1985 requiring all its new buildings to be "sprinklered." During remodeling, if a city building permit cost more than 25 percent of the value of the structure, owners are required to install sprinklers, too.

Since then, more than 46,000 homes, or 55 percent of all homes, and 60 percent of all apartments or townhouses have indoor sprinkler systems. About 80 percent of commercial buildings also feature the devices.

The city got the idea in the early 1980s, fire marshal Jim Ford said, after fire officials saw that commercial sprinklers stop fires. So why not homes?

To get its city council onboard, Ford said, the fire officials set a Christmas tree, contents of a trash can and a kitchen on fire in a demonstration. An insurance company then calculated what would happen with and without sprinklers. The evidence was compelling.

House fires still take place, Ford said, but instead of having to tie up, say, three fire crews that respond, the sprinklers allow two to move on quickly to other scenes.

Costs to sprinkler homes have decreased in Scottsdale because the law has spurred sprinkler-installing companies to compete. While it cost $1.14 a square foot per home in the 1980s, Ford said, adding sprinklers costs no more than 70 cents per square foot now.

Water damage caused by sprinklers can be controlled, too, because technology prevents all the sprinklers from going off. Besides, Ford said, the damage they cause at 15 to 20 gallons a minute is nothing compared to a fire truck hose pouring 200 gallons a minute on a small fire.

"A little water early on is much better than a lot of water later on," Ford said.

While Scottsdale had a population of 107,000 when it began requiring sprinklers and is similar in size to Citrus County, there is one major difference: Scottsdale didn't have many mobile homes. About 28 percent of Citrus' housing stock are mobiles.

But Ford said mobile home manufacturers can build sprinklers in, too.

Citrus County Public Safety director Charles Poliseno supports the sprinkler plan. He said it has merit.

"It's one more tool in the toolbox," Poliseno said.

But he disagreed with McIntosh's assessment that it could lead to Citrus' scaling back its full-time firefighter plan.

Of Citrus' 4,000 annual calls for service, only 300 are for structure fires - most of which are mobile homes. The rest are for car accidents, brush fires, rescues and other mounting emergency needs.

"We want fire sprinklers," he said. "It's just not the only thing."

Getting them, however, could prove to be a tough task, Citrus County Development Services director Gary Maidhof said.

He wrote commissioners a memo recently telling them they would have to petition the state to vary from the building code if they wanted to make indoor sprinklers mandatory.

Doing that, he said, requires a laundry list of studies showing the impact the law would have on homeowners, builders and law enforcement.

An alternative, he said, might be to encourage residents and developers to install sprinklers through tax relief or fee reductions. He said another factor to consider is whether wells can keep a sprinkler system charged all the time. Every third home in the semi-rural county is on a well, he said.

Then there are the numbers of buildings, most without sprinklers, that would be affected by the proposal. As of Census 2000, there were nearly 40,000 homes and more than 17,000 mobile homes.

"It's a great idea," Maidhof said. "I don't want to downplay the benefits of a sprinkler system in someone's home. But for us to achieve that in Citrus County, we're talking about a major undertaking."

Justin George can be reached at 352 860-7309 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 13, 2005, 01:07:16]