Misconceptions About Residential Fire Sprinklers

Getting a fire sprinkler system installed in your home is one of the most effective ways of protecting your family and property from fire hazards.
But there is still a taboo lingering around the concept of a fire sprinkler system in your home and that these are mainly best suited for commercial buildings. This notion is widespread due to several misconceptions about fire sprinkler systems.
Today, we would like to do our part in dispelling some of these myths. Read further to clear any doubts regarding this.

Myth: Fire Sprinklers will activate by smoke alarms going off.

Fact: It is common for your smoke alarm to go off now and then. It can happen due to cooking or lighting up your fireplace.

But you don’t particularly need to worry every time your smoke alarm goes off. Your fire sprinkler system will not go off whenever your smoke alarms do. The fire sprinklers become activated solely with heat, and not by smoke.

Myth: Fire sprinklers at home require frequent maintenance.

Fact: Fire sprinkler systems installed in commercial settings might require excessive frequent maintenance, but this is not the case for residential sprinkler systems. Residential sprinklers are simple in design and thus require less maintenance than commercial systems, but still definitely do need maintenance.

Anything necessary in terms of maintenance is just a simple flow test once or twice a year, and four quarterly inspections. This can be performed by a licensed fire protection contractor, like Mill Brook Fire Protection!

Myth: Fire sprinklers will soak up all your possessions once activated.

Fact: As we stated in our first myth breaker, fire sprinklers are not activated by smoke, but by direct, extreme amounts of heat. When a fire sprinkler head encounters extreme heat, it goes off- and just because it goes off in one area, does not mean that it will trigger any other sprinkler heads along with it. Each sprinkler head works and responds to heat individually, not as a whole.

So, a fire sprinkler head or two most likely won’t destroy all your possessions. In fact, in most cases of a house fire, only the sprinklers right above the areas with fire go off and become extinguished fairly quickly. In reality, whatever the water from a sprinkler head will get soaked, would have been severely damaged by the fire. Water-damaged items can be salvaged far more than items damaged by smoke or fire.

Myth: Fire sprinklers are unpleasant to look at.

Fact: Nobody wants a weird-looking, exposed piece of metal dangling from their ceiling all around the house.

But the good news is, that you don’t have to look at these fire sprinkler heads in your home if you do not want to. Commercial fire sprinklers are designed differently than residential fire sprinklers, so residential fire sprinkler heads can be covered by a cover plate, available in multiple colors and pattern options to match your home’s aesthetic. This cover plate looks pleasing to the eye and can easily detach and drop off when a fire sprinkler head needs to activate.

Myth: All fire sprinkler heads discharge at once during a fire.

Fact: Many homeowners don’t prefer fire sprinklers as they have this false assumption that even if there is a small fire in a particular room or area, the whole house will get drenched in water from every sprinkler head. But this is not the actual case!
Fire sprinkler heads are neither interconnected to each other, nor get triggered by any other sprinkler going off. A fire sprinkler doesn’t have an audiovisual feature to detect other heads working. It will only disperse water when it’s individually detected a heat source below itself.

The Bottom-Line:
We hope that this information resolves your doubts and helps you differentiate between factual information and what is a mere myth.

And, if you require a fire sprinkler system and need further guidance — well, we are here for you!

Mill Brook Fire Protection provides fire sprinkler services for both residential and commercial buildings.

Contact us right away to protect yourself and your property from fire accidents.