When seconds matter: home and residential fire sprinklers

Modern homes, filled with plastics and foams, can spiral rapidly into flashover within minutes, blocking safe escape and placing the lives of you and your loved ones in peril. The quest to make our homes more comfortable has inadvertently introduced fire risks – synthetic furnishings and furniture, open plan designs, and lightweight construction all helping to stoke the rapid development of a modern home fire. Thanks to significantly increased fuel loads, our modern homes burn at a fierce pace, a stark contrast to the double-brick-and-hardwood-timber constructions of previous generations. The result is that people now have as little as two to three minutes to escape a burning building safely, before their lives are critically threatened by heat and smoke. Each year in Australia there are around 64 preventable fire fatalities – a ‘diffused disaster’ of one here, another there, maybe more than one, or a family. And yet there is a tried, tested, and trusted solution: automatic home fire sprinkler systems. Unlike smoke alarms, which can only warn of danger, home fire sprinklers actively fight the fire. Each unobtrusive concealed sprinkler head in a residential system can sense a tell-tale rise in temperature, releasing a spray of water that directly tackles the fire at its point of ignition – and quickly. Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition Australia (HFSCA) is leading a funded research program to develop a safe, reliable, cost-effective and fit-for-purpose home sprinkler system designed for Australian Class 1 homes. By tapping into the expertise within respected industry, fire engineering and research partners, HFSCA is developing the compelling case for the National Construction Code to mandate fire sprinklers in new Class 1 builds.