VeeEhEnn

I am an architect/builder in Salt Lake City. I do a lot of resort work in the ski areas around here: dry, heavily- wooded hillsides that are often too far from fire stations for comfort. We have been requiring fire sprinklers in all new construction for years. Cost can be an issue when we show budgets to our clients, but never for long.

This new code will save lives, no doubt. I think we should focus our energy on questioning the many code requirements that do NOT help anybody, unless it's certain specialized subcontractors who have attached to the increasingly Byzantine requirements like leeches.

I'm afraid the biggest beneficiaries of this and many other regulations are the insurance companies, who lobby the IRC continually. In my calculations, the costs of sprinkling a house take 20 YEARS to amortize with fire-insurance savings, meaning that sprinklers are a huge profit-maker for the insurance industry.