Fire Hardening Homes – Active Fire Suppression System

People have been adding sprinklers to roofs and exteriors of buildings for years. Unfortunately, that’s only as good as your water pressure. If the Fire Department is using the fire hydrants, the domestic water supply that your home is hooked up to, quite possibly will have reduced pressure. Another issue would be inside corners where embers can collect. Fire suppression systems can protect those areas.

via Associated Press

1. There are automatic home fire sprinkler systems to protect the interior spaces from fires, required by some municipalities. These can also be used on the exterior of the building. They can also be used in attics, basements and crawl spaces of a home. They typically need a fire to trigger the sprinkler.

   
   

2. There are many news reports and online posts of people that build and sell systems out of their garage, with generators that will continue to power a pump, to pump pool water through a sprinkler system when the power is out, onto your home.  This is a good idea, and we have all seen successful results. The catch is, someone needs to stay behind to turn on the generator and pumps on or switch the system over from the water service to the pool/reservoir.

3. There are also exterior fire sprinkler systems available for new and existing construction. One that adds a white fire retardant to the exterior of a home. Same fire retardant as the red stuff the planes drop (the red one is dyed red, so they can see where they dropped it…). That system operates with government early warning systems and automatically springs into action to prepare a home for a fire that is coming.