By Maddie Hanna
The Concord Monitor
CONCORD, Conn. — Plans to require sprinkler systems in new homes in Concord’s rural areas would end under a bill working its way through the Legislature.
The Senate last week sent an amended version of the bill back to the House. It would prohibit the state fire marshal from requiring sprinkler systems in new one- and two-family homes. It would also prohibit cities and towns from adopting the same requirement. The ban would last until July 1, 2011.
The Legislature took up the bill just as Concord’s planning board considered subdivision regulations to require sprinkler systems in new homes outside the city’s urban growth boundary. About 90 percent of Concord residents live within that boundary, which is roughly one- third of the city’s land area.
The rest are scattered on the more rural east and west sides of town, which are not served by city water and are far from the city’s fire stations, said City Planner Doug Woodward.
“We’re not going to build new fire stations out in the rural area,” Woodward said.
The planning board was receptive to fire officials’ recommendation to include the sprinkler requirement when it came time to update the city’s subdivision regulations.
The city’s plan is less sweeping than what the state building code review board adopted in December, requiring as of April 1, 2012, that any newly constructed one- or two-family home include a residential sprinkler system. Bill Degnan, the state fire marshal, downplayed the scope of the state requirement, which the bill would also block.
“This only applies to new construction the way the building code is written, and it would definitely save lives,” he said.
While residential sprinkler systems have been around for about 30 years, Degnan said they were incorporated into national building standards only recently. More homes and floor systems are now built using lightweight construction rather than dimensional lumber, Degnan said, and fail more quickly in a fire.
Residential sprinkler systems address that problem by activating “so fast, we feel confident if a person were sleeping in the room where the fire originated, they would survive that fire,” said Tim McGinley, deputy chief of the Concord Fire Department.
The problem is their price. The systems generally cost several thousand dollars, though McGinley said cost estimates range widely. While he and other fire officials touted the safety benefits, opponents of the sprinkler requirements say the added costs would burden homebuyers.
Some homes in Concord already have sprinkler systems in place, a result of case-by-case requirements issued by the planning board. Woodward said he thought the bill before the Legislature would prohibit the planning board from continuing that practice, depending on the final language.
“It certainly appears to me we would not be able to do anything for that year,” he said.
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