Fire Protection Critical For Structural Buildings

In 2005, there were 511,000 structure fires in the U.S. that resulted in $9.1 billion in losses. About 84 percent of fire deaths and 85 percent of civilian injuries resulted from structure fires last year, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.

(Click here (PDF) for a chart.)

Fires can sweep through a typical house in five minutes. That’s why companies like SimplexGrinnell and Capital Structures offer fire protection for commercial and residential structures, such as sprinkler systems, fire alarms and a new product to the region called No-Burn.

Capital Structures of Fort Smith is the No-Burn dealer for Western Arkansas and has used the spray-on fire retardant on one of the River Valley’s most famous houses last year, Colleen Nick’s home. Last year, ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” built a home for Nick, whose daughter, Morgan, was kidnapped from an Alma baseball field in June 1995.

According to No-Burn’s pamphlet, a fire in a home protected with No-Burn could reduce choking and toxic smoke by as much as 80 percent.

Steven Spradlin, president of Capital Structures, said he became interested in the product when he got involved in building the Nick home. The demonstration of the No-Burn product made him a believer.

The liquid is sprayed on to the structure’s exposed wood once it is framed. No-Burn not only limits the amount of damaged caused by a fire, but it also prevents mold growth, Spradlin said.

Capital Structures has used No-Burn on 50 to 100 structures. Spradlin said selling No-Burn to speculative builders is tough, but the company uses it on many custom-built homes. The cost to add the product is less than 2 percent of the overall cost of construction.

Duplexes, apartments and hotels are also structures No-Burn is used on.

Fire and Smoke

SimplexGrinnell, a unit of Tyco Fire and Security of Boca Raton, Fla., is a $2 billion company with 12,000 employees in the U.S. It is the largest sprinkler and fire alarm contractor in the U.S.

The company’s Springdale office has 36 employees and installs sprinkler alarms, fire suppression systems, nurse call systems, paging and intercoms, as well as kitchen hoods, said Jimmy McLellan, the company’s Springdale district general manager.

Currently, SimplexGrinnell is installing fire protection systems at the University of Arkansas’ Chemistry building, Homewood Suites and Comfort Inn & Suites in Rogers.

The company also won a contract to the do expansion at Washington Regional Medical Center.

“Primarily we work with electrical contractors on fire alarms and more with general contractors with the sprinkler systems,” McLellan said.

What little work SimplexGrinnell does on residential homes is installing sprinkler systems, doing a few jobs a year at the most.

“Hopefully that will change at some point,” he said. “It’s not required by code at this point to have sprinkler systems in single-family homes. Now that will probably be changing over the next few years. I think we’ll see that adopted into code shortly.”

McLellan said it typically costs $7,000 to $8,000 to install a fire sprinkler system in a home.