I will be building an ICF home in a fire area that requires fire sprinkler system. With Icf will I still have to install the sprinkler system. The job is in califorina.

Yes you will.

Sprinklers are a municipal fire department regulated. So in some areas they are called for no matter what, others there is a square footage threshold and recently one county I was working in did not require them for residential no matter what.

What about type 1 non-combustible construction? Can one build with ICF and eliminate the need for sprinklers in this manner?

Have a project ready to go on the side of a mountain but being help up because of available gpm for sprinkler water.

Kevin
www.icfinstall.com

There are so many wildfires out here sprinklers are mandatory in most every area I build in, no matter what the type of construction.

If you cannot get enough water I have seen 5000 gallon storage tanks, pumps, pressure tanks, etc. put in place in order for the people to get a permit.

The fire sprinkler set up as described had to be installed and approved BEFORE the basement could be dug.

Fire spinklers add a lot of $$$ to the construction budget and if you need to go beyond the standard riser, monitoring, bells, piping and heads it gets really costly. But it is also life saving as well and that we can't put a price on.

Do they put sprinklers on the outside?

Outside as in below the soffit? No, haven't seen that one.

Rule of thumb I know is every 8x8 area needs one head, closets are not required unless there is a gas source within them (furnace, laundry, etc.)

What is the rationale for requiring fire sprinklers on SFD in wildfire areas? Even if the fire doesn't destroy the home, haven't you just opened up a whole nother can of worms by soaking the entire home with water and destroying everything except the slab? It makes sense for MFR or commercial office, etc. as there are multiple units and are trying to prevent fires that start in one unit from spreading throughout the entire structure (sacrifice one to save the rest); but that is normally for fires that start from inside the building, not wildfires or forest fires that are fueled from the outside.

A fire sprinkler is not to save the structure, it is to save the individuals that are within the dwelling unit, as well as the fire fighters when they show up and come to realize someone is inside and need to enter a burning structure to save someone.

A dwelling is replaceable, life is not.

But if someone is still in the house when a wildfire comes though, what are they going to do, run outside?

I would think the roof and outside should have the sprinklers.

Sprinkler heads are put in the enclosed portion of the attic. I would assume if the overhang reaches a certain size or threshold it too may require sprinklers, but I have never come across that situation yet.

This just doesn't relate to wildfires, it relates to fires in general and saving lives.

Another thing to realize is if a fire happens, even in an ICF home, once the fire is over and done with the whole structure needs to come down and be replaced.

We see all this wonderful advertising showing ICF homes surviving a fire, yes the structure may have held up better than another type of constructed house but, it is still damaged. The advantage is there is a higher rate of getting out alive in both an ICF home and one with sprinklers.

When we refer to saving lives.....how many people die from wildfires because they're home burns down? Normally it is due to a fire that starts inside the home (Christmas tree lights, Falling asleep while smoking, etc.) and they normally succumb to smoke inhilation . Anyways, shouldn't homes have Fire Alarms and or CO2 Alarms to notify people there is a fire? It seems to me that everytime there is a wildfire people start talking about sprinklers as the solution, when in reality it doesn't seem to serve as a solution for wildfires. As ICFconstruction said, If there is a wildfire and it breaches the home and begins to burn to the point that the sprinklers go off.........where is the individual supposed to exit to? Again, they will still probably die from the smoke inhilation (unles they are prepared enough to have a breathing aparatus available - in which case they probably would have functioning detectors).

To me it seems like a solution backed by 1) the jurisdictions that collect fees for additional H2O hookups for the additional H2O source REQUIRED 2) the plumbing contractors and suppliers that just added $5,000 to $10,000 in revenue for every home built and 3) the same fire officials that claim that ICFs kill their fire fighters because of the toxins that they give off during a fire, while at the same time dismissing the fact thay they ALSO have to wear breathing devices when they enter wood structures (CAL FIRE) - because that can kill them as well.

I know this is not an ICF related topic, I just thought it would be fun to mix things up a little!!

The real solution for wildfires, in particular, is to identify and rectify the problem ares of any structure in a high fire danger area: openings in eaves, doors & windows, roof truss structure, roof substrates, etc. Build better homes that are less susceptible to fire breach instead of pouring water on the problem.

ICF walls, tempered glass windows, concrete roof (pitched or flat), rollshutters, defensable space, not stacking your firewood pile within 50' of the home, exterior fire suppression systems (foams & H20), etc. Is it realistic to require every home in California to have sprinklers because a coulple of dumbasses every year fall asleep while smoking? Whats's next, every car had to have built-in expanding bubble pack that fills a car immediately after a collission.

Remeber - accidents are avoidable, so it is not society's responsibility to be burdened by the lack of preparation or attention of a select few of its members. Wildfires, on the other hand, burn from the outside-in, so having an inside-out solution seems kind of backwards.

This is not just a California item and is something every homeowner should think about. 

A friend of mine lives in a rural, wooded area southeast of Austin, TX.  It has been dry this year and on a windy day a couiple of week or so ago, a brush fire started as a result of a power line problem.  It quickly spread, consumed several homes and forced the evacuation of several others. 

My friends house is stick construction with brick veneer and a concrete tile roof, but he has a LOT of trees close to the house and his corrugated steel clad pole barn.  He had about an hour of warning and he fortunately happened to be home when it started. 

In his collection of toys is a bulldozer (used to maintain his backyard motocross course).  He was able to knock down the trees around the buildings and push them away.  His place doesn't look as good as it did, but his house and shop are still standing and undamaged.

Thinking through the "what ifs" is important.  While this was a relatively small incident, it CAN happen to almost anyone......even if it the house next door catching fire on a windy day.

Bruce